This dissertation in industrial design focuses on the gap between the context of design and the context of use. It aims to open up design to the layperson and investigate an active role for the layperson in the design of everyday products. Over the last century, the industrial paradigm has institutionalised and professionalised many practices, including product design. A binary spectrum of production and consumption has been established with distinct roles for the professional designer, who engages in production, and the consumer, who engages in consumption. However, this clear distinction has been blurred recently and the consumer, or layperson, is no longer involved only in consumption, but also in production. In this research I have explored and examined the participation of the layperson, or the non-professional, in design, which I refer to as lay design. It constitutes a shift for the professional designer from knowing what a future user would like to have towards knowing what a layperson would like to design, which is for most designers an unfamiliar way of thinking. I specifically investigated how the layperson can be involved in design through the use of so-called digital-physical toolkits, software applications where one designs in a digital environment and which outputs a physical product. Lay design is enabled by two developments: On the one hand, the creation of variable designs is enabled by computational design, and on the other hand, the fabrication of variable products is enabled by 3D printing. The two main questions that I focused on are: How will the roles of the professional designer and the layperson change when the latter engages in the design of personal products and how can designers develop digital-physical toolkits for the layperson to collaboratively create value and meaning? The theory that I drew on consists of existing approaches which involve the layperson in design, such as mass customisation, meta-design, and co-design, and I used the theory of technological mediation to analyse and discuss the mediating role of toolkits in lay design. I investigated the research questions through a series of studies, both analytical and experimental. For the experiments I took a constructive design research approach, which means that I engaged in the making of toolkit and product prototypes in order to obtain insights and an understanding of the subject. The main contribution of this research is a framework of lay design that consists of a set of principles and guidelines that enables the professional designer to develop digital-physical toolkits that empower the layperson to engage in the design of everyday products. Through the participation of the layperson in the design process, lay design constitutes value created by both the professional and lay designer, thereby eliminating the separation of production and consumption. The framework’s principles outline the basic ideas of lay design while the guidelines support the professional designer in the development of toolkits and their products in practice. Lay design is concerned with the layperson designing personal products and is therefore primarily self-serving. It deals with creating meaningful products by enabling the layperson to personify designs, meaning that the designed product cannot exist without its originator. This research established an understanding of design spaces and toolkits and of the roles the professional designer, layperson, and toolkits play. The implications of lay design concern the role of the professional designer, the way value is created, a shared accountability, and also the way designers are educated regarding the tool-sets, skill-sets, mindset, and knowledge.

Education is a sector that has the potential to become a critical area of action for the full exploitation of ICT. Educational systems of developed and developing countries have an ever-increasing tendency to apply ICT to education, in an attempt to prepare their students for the future's society. This thesis attempted to explore what kind of ICT is used in the Greek Primary Schools and develop an understanding on the relationship between the ICT and the teachers. The philosophical background is post-phenomenology and the methods chosen for collecting data for this research are policy document analysis and interviews. The empirical findings show that various ICT are being used in the classrooms of the Greek Primary Schools,  others widely and others occasionally. The research compares the legal framework revolving around ICT in Primary Schools in Greece, with the teachers' own experiences and shows that the guidelines suggested by the Greek Ministry of Education cannot be followed easily, due to economical and pedagogical reasons. It also investigates the ICT's effects on the teachers and the students through the teachers' own words and perceptions. The effects are mostly positive, there are mentioned however, some negative ones to take into consideration. Finally, the research presents a number of sectors where the participant teachers suggested there is room for improvement. By comparing the legal framework with the situation in the Primary Schools, this research adds a new perspective to the previous literature. The findings show that the current situation can be improved and the teachers' statements may trigger further research.

Despite a strong commercial trend towards wearable technology, this thesis considers the distal devices that have played an important role in our lives for over twenty years. Suggesting that the distance we have had between our bodies and our devices has given us the space to form meaningful relationships; the research explores how these relationships change when our devices migrate onto and into our bodies in the form of wearable technologies. The methodology of performative scenarios is developed to examine examples of relationships between people and their devices. Using examples of technologies that live with us now to inform the design of future technological developments reflects a post-phenomenological perspective calling for a materially oriented design approach. This thesis will explore this approach through focusing on the question; what would we lose if our distal devices became wearable devices? Ideations aiming to prevent any loss caused by the transition of devices from distal to wearable will provide examples of post-phenomenological wearable technology that not only maintains our relationships with our devices, but also helps our relationships to grow.

<p>This dissertation argues that critical practices in the expanded field of art, technology, and space illustrate the potential of twenty-first century media by materializing depths of our experiential dimensions. Scholarship on digital embodiment and materialism in art, media studies, and aesthetics has paid much attention to the central role played by the human body in contemporary media environments. Grounded in these studies, however, this study moves forward to understand the more fundamental quality that grounds and conditions the experience of the human body—namely depth. </p><p>Drawing on diverse disciplines, such as art history, visual studies, media studies, critical theory, phenomenology, and aesthetics, this study provides a reconstruction of the notion of depth to unpack the complex dimensionality of human experiences that are solicited by different critical spatial practices. As a spatial medium that produces the body subject and the world through the process of intertwining, depth points to an environmental affordance that prepares or conditions the ways in which the body processes the information in the world. The dimension of depth is not available to natural human perception. However, incorporating twenty-first century media that are seamlessly embedded in physical environments, critical spatial practices sensibly materialize the virtual dimensions of depth by animating space in a way that is different from the past. </p><p>This dissertation provides comprehensive analyses of these critical spatial practices by artists who create constructed situations that bring the experiential dimensions of depth to the fore. The acknowledgement of depth allows us to understand the spatialities of bodies and their implication in the vaster worldly spatiality. In doing so, this study attends to major contemporary philosophical and aesthetic challenges by reframing the body as the locus of subjectivity that is always interdependent upon broader sociocultural and technological environments.</p> / Dissertation

The purpose of this study is to determine the viability of this technology as a realistic archaeological field tool and discuss what advantages, limitations, and implications this technology has for the purposes of archaeological field survey in Sweden. To determine this, five targets in Stockholm County already professionally surveyed and documented, have been scanned with LiDAR as well as two also with photogrammetry via smartphone apps on an iPhone 12 Pro Max to compare the scanning process and the respective results for each target. After analysing targets in Angarn, Fresta, Sollentuna, Österhaninge, and Kärrtorp parishes, a post-phenomenological perspective was applied to each model to discuss their potential as technologically mediated human experiences. An additional sixth target was scanned to compare against other 3D techniques. This study has determined that the photogrammetry tools in the apps provided the best conditions and results for use in archaeological field survey documentation while the LiDAR tools have room for improvement as a professional tool.

This investigation attempts to consider the identity of the contemporary Bergsonian philosophy of immanence by reflection on key conceptualisations from the work of Henri Bergson. From the view that thinking Bergsonian is an attitude of philosophy that anticipates the metaphysics of a philosophy of process, the demands of the emergence of thinking in art plays a role the directions of philosophical development. It is by this concern that key Bergsonian concepts serve as grounding of philosophical reflections of the related themes of time, images, and movement, and the change of thinking, towards an encounter of the practice of philosophy through the process of painting. Under the rubric of contemporary process metaphysics in art, we will attempt to establish a conceptual framework from principle Bergsonian conceptualizations, to acknowledge the process of painting as a different methodology of philosophy. This study of philosophy through painting then becomes a corresponding philosophy of the difference of thinking and the challenges to go beyond its identity. Proceeding by Bergsonian conceptualisations, to frame the context for a philosophy of painting, the question of the identity of painting is situated according to the didactic philosophies of Wassily Kandinsky. The comparisons and philosophical engagement between Bergsonian thinking and Kandinskian painting will be mediated by the counter interpretations of the philosophy of Michel Henry. The motivation to return to Bergsonian, exercised by a synthesis of Bergson’s concepts and Kandinsky’s theoretical practice, is situated according to an understanding of the identity of painting according to the terms of an ontology of images. In terms of a Bergsonian account of image, supported by a Kandinskian perspective, the focus will be towards the possibilities of philosophy and the metaphysics of becoming through the process of painting.

This thesis examines key concepts from philosophers Nishida Kitaro, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Fredriche Nietzsche and applies them to elements of Michael Chekhov’s practice of acting. The three philosophers, in different ways, suggest an ‘optimal’ state, beyond a dualistic separation of the fictive from the real and the visible from the invisible, that challenges seemingly unbridgeable dualisms between inner and outer, subject and object, being and becoming and experiencer and experienced. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze and understand these selected ‘optimal’ modes of consciousness in performance and, therefore, open up new ways of thinking about Michael Chekhov’s acting processes; in particular the ‘Psychological Gesture’. The thesis asks the following questions: 1. How can the application of selected philosophical paradigms to the Psychological Gesture through theory and practice further our understanding of Michael Chekhov’s work? 2. How do selected aspects of the fields of phenomenology, post-phenomenology, cognitive sciences, consciousness studies and philosophy of mind, aid in developing an articulation and understanding of an ‘optimal’ state of consciousness as a necessary aspect of the actor’s performance in Michael Chekhov’s work and theatre practice? 3. How can this project develop the way we are able to talk about Michael Chekhov’s work and wider acting processes?