This thesis presents a study of transcendent experiences (TXs) — experiences of connection with something greater than oneself — focusing on what they are, how artefacts support them, and how design can contribute to that support. People often find such experiences transformative, and artefacts do support them — but the literature rarely addresses designing artefact support for TXs. This thesis provides a step toward filling that gap. The first phase of research involved the conduct and analysis of 24 interviews with adults of diverse spiritual perspectives, using constructivist Grounded Theory methods informed by relevant literature and by studies performed earlier in the PhD programme. Analysis found that TXs proceed in three phases — creating the context, living the experience, integrating the experience — and that artefacts support two phases and people desire enhancements to all three. This TX framework supports and extends experience structures from the literature: it recognises the top-level categories as phases in a cycle where integration may alter future contexts, and it extends the structure of TX by incorporating the relationships of artefacts and of enhancement desires to the phases of these experiences. This extended structure constitutes a grounded theory of transcendent user experience (TUX). The second phase involved the design and conduct of three “Transcendhance” game workshops for enhancing transcendence, which incorporated themes from the grounded theory and aimed to elicit design ideas in an atmosphere of imagination, fun, and play. Participants sketched 69 speculative ideas for techno-spiritual artefacts, and analysis mapped them to TX phases and identified possible extensions inspired by relevant research. The great majority of ideas mapped to the phase Creating the Context, with very few mapping to Living the Experience, which suggests that context may be easier than lived experience to understand and address directly. This point is especially important for experiences such as TX that are tricky to define, impossible to arrange or anticipate, and thus unsuitable for straight-forward “classic” user experience methods. The final phase involved the elaboration of workshop ideas to explore the extension of design fiction for TUX. Analysis related design fiction to the TX phases and suggested features that affect design ideas’ potential for TUX design fiction. This phase ended with the proposal and analysis of three new forms of design fiction — extended imaginary abstracts, comparative imaginary abstracts, and design poetry — using workshop ideas to illustrate the forms, their construction and use, and their benefits to TUX design. Transcendhance workshops and TUX design fictions approach techno-spiritual design peripherally, “sneaking up” on lived experience by addressing context and enabling the consideration of ineffable experience through storytelling, metaphors, and oblique imagery. This thesis combines the grounded theory of transcendent user experience with the Transcendhance workshop process and new forms of design fiction, presenting peripheral design as a promising strategy for facilitating design to enhance transcendent experience.

For many, design is the production of useful artefacts. Designing can however also provide a basis for exploration, speculation or critique. This thesis develops this conception further by providing a theoretical framework for conceiving designing and design objects as a mode of and media for philosophical inquiry. Design is regarded as a material philosophy that explores and reflects philosophical issues by situating them in the concrete and particular reality of human life rather than in a generalised and abstract realm. Design objects are equipment and media that can be understood in terms of their contextual references and consequences as well as the way in which they mediate human action, thinking and existence, and thus in terms of the worlds that they open up. As media for reflection they allow one to gain an experiential understanding of these contexts and worlds. Design thus relates to philosophy in terms of ethics and concepts; that is, in terms of exploring possibilities of existence and new forms of thinking. Since design objects can cre-ate new experiences and interactions they can lead to new values and concepts. These objects can be used to reflect on philosopical issues and to thus see the world from a new perspective. These new perspectives may be brought about through three approaches: First, through fictions that render possible worlds experienceable or show the existing world in a new way. Second, through models that serve as tools for understanding and mediation between the general and abstract and the concrete and particular. Third, through situations, simulations and re-enactments that facilitate a direct and bodily experience of a new per-spective. These approaches can make abstract ideas experienceable, as they materialise these issues in concrete situations and thereby allow one to judge them in a real world context, including possible consequences. The activity of designing is accordingly considered an exploration of philosophical questions that uses design objects both as media for conducting an inquiry and communicating its outcome.

O objetivo desta tese é propor um aporte teórico-filosófico vale dizer, uma filosofia do design que possa, de um lado, dimensionar a dinâmica dos processos simbólicos mediados pelo design e, de outro, situar a experiência estética articulada por esses processos. Os instrumentos de orientação utilizados foram as obras de Nietzsche, Clément Rosset, Paul Ricoeur, Rogério de Almeida e Mario Perniola, entre outros autores, além de obras literárias e cinematográficas, convocadas a ilustrar a noção de hermenêutica trágica, inaugurada neste trabalho. Tais instrumentos foram operados metodologicamente por meio de revisão bibliográfica (modalidade básica de pesquisa), guiando-se pela hermenêutica simbólica (Ricoeur). A discussão delineada em três capítulos (Filosofia do design, Filosofia trágica e Hermenêutica trágica) visa apresentar, no quarto capítulo (Design como articulação simbólica), aspectos de uma articulação simbólica operada pelo design e da qual se vale o olhar contemporâneo para compreender o mundo e para nele atuar. / This thesis aims to propose a theoretical and philosophical supply that is, a philosophy of design which can, on the one hand, to scale the dynamics of symbolic processes mediated by design and, on the other, to place the aesthetic experience articulated by these processes. The orientation tools were the works of Nietzsche, Clément Rosset, Paul Ricoeur, Rogério de Almeida, Mario Perniola, among others, in addition to films and literary works, convened to illustrate the notion of \"tragic hermeneutic\", inaugurated in this thesis. These instruments were methodologically operated through literature review (basic mode of research) and guided by the symbolic hermeneutics (Ricoeur). The discussion delineated in three chapters (\"Philosophy of design,\" \"Tragic philosophy\" and \"Tragic hermeneutics\") aims to present, in the fourth chapter (\"Design as symbolic articulation\"), some aspects of a symbolic articulation operated by design and by which the contemporary view takes to understand the world and to act on it.

O objetivo desta tese é propor um aporte teórico-filosófico vale dizer, uma filosofia do design que possa, de um lado, dimensionar a dinâmica dos processos simbólicos mediados pelo design e, de outro, situar a experiência estética articulada por esses processos. Os instrumentos de orientação utilizados foram as obras de Nietzsche, Clément Rosset, Paul Ricoeur, Rogério de Almeida e Mario Perniola, entre outros autores, além de obras literárias e cinematográficas, convocadas a ilustrar a noção de hermenêutica trágica, inaugurada neste trabalho. Tais instrumentos foram operados metodologicamente por meio de revisão bibliográfica (modalidade básica de pesquisa), guiando-se pela hermenêutica simbólica (Ricoeur). A discussão delineada em três capítulos (Filosofia do design, Filosofia trágica e Hermenêutica trágica) visa apresentar, no quarto capítulo (Design como articulação simbólica), aspectos de uma articulação simbólica operada pelo design e da qual se vale o olhar contemporâneo para compreender o mundo e para nele atuar. / This thesis aims to propose a theoretical and philosophical supply that is, a philosophy of design which can, on the one hand, to scale the dynamics of symbolic processes mediated by design and, on the other, to place the aesthetic experience articulated by these processes. The orientation tools were the works of Nietzsche, Clément Rosset, Paul Ricoeur, Rogério de Almeida, Mario Perniola, among others, in addition to films and literary works, convened to illustrate the notion of \"tragic hermeneutic\", inaugurated in this thesis. These instruments were methodologically operated through literature review (basic mode of research) and guided by the symbolic hermeneutics (Ricoeur). The discussion delineated in three chapters (\"Philosophy of design,\" \"Tragic philosophy\" and \"Tragic hermeneutics\") aims to present, in the fourth chapter (\"Design as symbolic articulation\"), some aspects of a symbolic articulation operated by design and by which the contemporary view takes to understand the world and to act on it.

No description available.

Following the Covid-19 pandemic, a relatively mild global disruption, our global society experienced large-scale shortages of high-tech materials, the increasing cost or absence of many commodities usually taken for granted, and the floundering of industries that facilitate our global industrial civilisation such as shipping and aviation. By comparison, catastrophic climate change stands to be far more devastating.  Body-Safe Apocalypse is an attempt to encourage a shift in thinking and practice away from the presumed possibility of eternal “sustainable” growth within a digital, high-tech global context and towards a practical, grounded framework of understanding, preparing for, and working beyond the collapse of global, high-tech, industrial civilisation. The method of exploration is through an analysis of sexual materiality, the contextualisation of sexual and broader materiality within a failing industrial civilisation, and the creation of a sex toy using materials and processes accessible in a collapsing/collapsed global civilisation.  As well as focusing on the craft and materiality of sexual practices in a collapse context, Body-Safe Apocalypse provides theoretical framework on collapse meant to address a current gap in design literature, critique on the current Western/anglo design paradigm that is yet to consider the catastrophic as non-speculative, and encouragement to designers to look into- and then beyond- the upheavals and endings of the systems most of us have built our lives/careers around and upon.

No description available.