abstract: Open Design is a crowd-driven global ecosystem which tries to challenge and alter contemporary modes of capitalistic hardware production. It strives to build on the collective skills, expertise and efforts of people regardless of their educational, social or political backgrounds to develop and disseminate physical products, machines and systems. In contrast to capitalistic hardware production, Open Design practitioners publicly share design files, blueprints and knowhow through various channels including internet platforms and in-person workshops. These designs are typically replicated, modified, improved and reshared by individuals and groups who are broadly referred to as ‘makers’. This dissertation aims to expand the current scope of Open Design within human-computer interaction (HCI) research through a long-term exploration of Open Design’s socio-technical processes. I examine Open Design from three perspectives: the functional—materials, tools, and platforms that enable crowd-driven open hardware production, the critical—materially-oriented engagements within open design as a site for sociotechnical discourse, and the speculative—crowd-driven critical envisioning of future hardware. More specifically, this dissertation first explores the growing global scene of Open Design through a long-term ethnographic study of the open science hardware (OScH) movement, a genre of Open Design. This long-term study of OScH provides a focal point for HCI to deeply understand Open Design's growing global landscape. Second, it examines the application of Critical Making within Open Design through an OScH workshop with designers, engineers, artists and makers from local communities. This work foregrounds the role of HCI researchers as facilitators of collaborative critical engagements within Open Design. Third, this dissertation introduces the concept of crowd-driven Design Fiction through the development of a publicly accessible online Design Fiction platform named Dream Drones. Through a six month long development and a study with drone related practitioners, it offers several pragmatic insights into the challenges and opportunities for crowd-driven Design Fiction. Through these explorations, I highlight the broader implications and novel research pathways for HCI to shape and be shaped by the global Open Design movement. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Media Arts and Sciences 2020

Robotics engineers' ongoing quest to create human-like robots has raised profound questions on their lack of ethical implications. The rapid progress and growth of humanoid robots is said to have a significant impact on society and human psychology in the near future. Interaction Design is a multidisciplinary field in which designers are often encouraged to engage in important conversations and find solutions to complex problems. On the other hand, animators often use animated videos as metaphors to reflect on important matters that are present in our cultural and societal spheres. This study investigates the use of animation in Speculative Design settings as material to bridge two communities together - the animators and roboticists, to foster ethical behaviors and impact future technology. The main result of the design process is a concept for a mobile platform that stimulates discussions on the ethical considerations of human relationships with humanoid robots, through speculative animation. Moreover, the interactive platform enhances imagination, creativity and learning processes between users.

In the field of human-computer interaction, the majority of domestic IoT and smart devices run on proprietary software that possess limited technical properties and predetermined functionalities. As practices of building, modifying, and making IoT applications grow, this thesis follows an open-source approach to IoT to investigate the relationships of humans and things in a domestic setting. As a result of this material exploration, proprietary frameworks for interactions with smart devices are challenged through speculative scenarios, that include diverse instances of human-things interactions. Thus, a research through design methodology is suggested to support series of experiments, conducted to explore instances of perceived intelligence of these open-source hardware, without the use of advanced computational systems as proprietary devices entail. The suggested process is the creation of a speculative design artifact that combines hacking practices, to support designers in generating insights and to further iterate on possible open-source IoT interactions.

The ideas expressed in this thesis are meant to address the need for a transformation in the identity management systems currently in use in different parts of the world. Specifically, the paper presents a logical deduction of essential processes to allow for communication between individual people, governments, organizations, and private institutions to exchange and manage information pertaining to identity. This thesis proposes a conceptual framework for the design of an ecosystem that supports self-sovereign identity. The research reviews theory, methodology, and technology from subjects such as design, identity, and distributed systems. Through the design process, a set of elements and functions supporting interactions within an ecosystem were developed. The design is revolved around the ideas of privacy, security, distribution, and interoperability. The findings are presented as two parts of a whole, the first being the conceptual framework that describes a set of essential factors that an ecosystem requires in order to fulfill the goals of self-sovereign identity and interoperability. The second is a set of visualizations of how the framework can be used to design systems and interactions, inside and between the systems, to create an ecosystem. / <p>2022-06-20: Author's name has been corrected on the front page.</p>

This thesis explores the concept of ‘feral’ while speculating possible futures of more-than-human interactions in urban environments. Feral in this project is described as living and non-living entities that are uncontrollable, unintentional, situated and dethatched from humans. The aim of this thesis to implement more-than-human theory and concepts into design practice to expand the design space of non-anthropocentric design. A speculative design approach is used to question and alter the status quo of power relations within more-than-human interactions through its experimental and critical nature (Bardzell, Bardzell and Koefoed Hansen, 2015; Dunne and Raby, 2013). Further, a series of methods, approaches and speculative fabulations (Haraway, 2016) are proposed that tell stories of possible worlds and act as a catalyst for moving more-than-human theory beyond concepts towards design practice.

This thesis aims to answer the question how our relation to money will look like in a potential cashless society.  In a world where all cash has disappeared and the only existing way of paying is digital, what will the notion of money be? How are we interacting with it? How is it affecting our way of spending and saving? With the digitalization of money comes a lot of potential problems that may not be as clear in the beginning, and are being over shadowed by the much clearer and easier to grasp benefits. People tend to spend much more when using a card instead of paying with cash. Overspending a budget is easy when borrowing money through services such as “Buy now, Pay later” - payments. There is no difference between paying 50 units and 5000 units when doing it through the internet.  What will this do to us in a future society? By using Sweden as a context, this thesis is exploring how the transition to a cashless society will look like and the consequences it may have. Initially having a user centered-focus, trying to solve problem, the project takes a turn and switches to a more speculative point of view, exploring different possibilities of how we can connect and interact with money. The final proposal includes three probes acting as conversation pieces, enabling a discussion regarding the removing of cash.

Artikelns syfte är att undersöka hur vi kan skapa en gestaltning som väcker tankar kring ‘Human Enhancement Technologies’ (Pariseau-Legault et al., 2018) genom kritisk design och VR-teknik. Detta har skett genom ett utforskande av våra fysiska händers beröring (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2009) i vardagliga aktiviteter samt spelarens beröring i en VR-upplevelse. Denna undersökning ledde till en gestaltning som vill förändra en spelares upplevda beröring i samband med en vardaglig aktivitet, där vi genom teknologiska modifikationer ger dina händer ny funktionalitet. / This article aims to research how we can design an experience that challenges our ideas about ‘Human Enhancement Technologies’ (Pariseau-Legault et al., 2018) through critical design and VR-technology. This through exploration of our hands physical touch (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2009) in everyday activities and exploring touch in Virtual Reality. This research helped to create a design that aims to change a player's touch in connection with an everyday activity where we through technological modifications give your hands new functionality.

Contemporary society is rapidly changing. The emergence of social inequalities and the use of new technologies to access communicates produce and exchange information among others deeply affects citizens and the complex interactions among citizens businesses and governments. This thesis explores how might technology in the future enable better communication with governments and higher participation of citizens in decision ma ing processes? It showcases a designerly way to approach this question while designing for interactions with an explicit intention of placing value in citizen participation in decision making processes with an aim towards plurality. The design outcomes showcase the possibility of employing technology to achieve greater levels of democratic citizen participation but that which would require major restructuring of government organisations and new ways of working with data.

The project is inspired by the idea of trying to simplify and create understanding on a broader level regarding the issues of climate change within the author’s field of design. How can design help us understand the relevance of acting now by visualizing how a potential future might look if action is not taken. Out of many issues that might arise due to climate change the project specifically targets that of desertification. The consequences global desertification already has on life and nature could potentially reach devastating levels in a not-so-distant future making it a highly important topic. Desertification if left uncontrolled is expected to force billions of people from the densest areas of the world onthe move by 2090. Driving densification of the last liveable land to reach unprecedented levels. This is a scenario that we want to stay clear of at all costs as it gambles our survival as a species on this planet. It would lead to the creation of vast unhabitable areas, potentially major conflicts, and large-scale segregation. Leaving little to no room for our ally nature to regenerate would mean the mass extinction of species and potentially life on our planet. To enforce the urgency of action taking the project steps into the distant future of 2086 to portray how a growing desert would have affected the way we live, the struggles it has brought, and how we are putting all efforts towards assisted regeneration of the planet. As much as the project is speculative the scenario builds from data and analytics mapped by scientists and research within the fields of eco- science. As the issue of desertification is an already existing problem today. Scientists and inventors are working on ways to counter its growth. Taking inspiration and learnings from biodiverse reforestation work done today and applying it to the potential scenario allowed the author to highlight issues in the current process. As the scenario was pushed to the extreme so were the problems within the current system. Scalability, cost-effectiveness, and flexibility came up as some of the most prevalent issues. Mobility already plays a great role in distributing the efforts of today’s work and will come to play an even greater role in future reforestation efforts. With technological development and systematic changes come new possibilities for innovation. The process behind the development consisted of exploring solutions that hinder desertification whilst simultaneously promoting and assisting in the regeneration of nature. This involved research into large-scale reforestation development and up-and-coming technologies. Through creative development and ideation grew potential scenarios that resulted in story-driven final visuals. The result is Terra Nova. A lighter than air propelled cocnept that allows long term cargo- mobility in barren areas with minimal impact to the environment. The vehicle is multifunctional in the sense that it carries the capabilities of both personal and cargo transport making it a great all-around vehicle.

The way we use interactive mobile technology everyday is changing the human cognitive landscape and how we are dealing with reality. In our daily life, SnT (Social-networking technology) has become something we cannot avoid using, as the need of being constantly updated and virtually connected to our social and working circle has prominently emerged. In this Interaction design thesis, I intend to explore the possible ways in which digital users, physical people in the first place, can prevent addictive loops of being constantly connected to such services and smartphones. Ethnographic research methods were performed along with iterative prototyping phases, leading to the development of speculative design interventions. Altering different responsiveness rates of a mobile user experience led me to design six bodystorming concepts and enact relative roleplay activities supposed to prevent SnT addiction and eventually help people being in control again of their spent digital time.