Workshops, Workshop-Studios, & Studios
TEI 2015, January 15–19, 2015, Stanford, CA, USA
Un-Crafting: Exploring Tangible Practices for Deconstruction in Interactive System Design Martin Murer
Mattias Jacobsson
Christian Doppler Laboratory for Mobile Life @ SICS “Contextual Interfaces”
Box 1263
ICT&S Center, University of
Kista, SE-164 29, Sweden
Salzburg, Austria
[email protected]
[email protected] Manfred Tscheligi Anna Vallgårda
Christian Doppler Laboratory
IxD Lab
for “Contextual Interfaces”
IT University of Copenhagen
ICT&S Center, University of
Copenhagen, Denmark
Salzburg, Austria
[email protected]
[email protected]
Abstract With this studio-workshop we aim to explore and debate how disassembling computational things can yield a potential for design practices. We believe there are significant qualities to be found in extending the mundane ‘taking things apart’ into an elaborate practice of un-crafting. The studio workshop comprises a series of collaborative disassembly activities with the aim of beginning to identify the key qualities and issues at stake. We also hope to have a diverse crowd, whose interdisciplinary viewpoints will enable us to ground an un-crafting practice in a diverse set of contexts.
Keywords
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Deconstruction; design decomposition: reverseengineering; disassembling; taking things apart; uncrafting
ACM Classification Keywords H5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI): Miscellaneous.
TEI '15, Jan 16-19 2015, Stanford, CA, USA ACM 978-1-4503-3305-4/15/01. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2677199.2683582
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TEI 2015, January 15–19, 2015, Stanford, CA, USA
Introduction
Related work
In her opening keynote [2] at the 2014 CHI conference, science fiction author Margaret Atwood talked about taking things apart as a practice to make sense of the world surrounding her. In her childhood, she had felt an almost bodily urge to understand the inner workings and the functions of everyday objects (e.g., the moving eyes in one of her dolls) and so she had developed a habit of disassembling them.
Others have acknowledged the values of disassembling things. Most prominently through practices in the realm of reverse engineering for the purpose of design recovery and as means to identify some system’s components and their interrelationships [3]. In most cases, these activities are aimed at enabling an understanding of a particular system, its components and their interrelations in order to replicate its construction or production process and, thus, are less design oriented than we believe an un-crafting practice could be.
We too recognize this almost bodily urge to become familiar with things through disassembly, a particular tangible enterprise familiar to anyone concerned with practices of making, tinkering, or crafting technology. The motivations are manifold: we disassemble appliances as a necessary step for repair [6], as means to harvest components [10], as essential part of iterative design or circuit bending [7], or simply driven by a curiosity to uncover a technological mystery [8]. With this studio-workshop, we aim to explore and debate how taking computational things apart yields a potential for design practices. We believe there are significant qualities to be found in extending ‘taking things apart’ into an elaborate practice of un-crafting. Indeed, when understanding the design of computational things as a form-giving practice it is easy to conjecture how un-crafting can aid in getting an embodied sense of the physical form, the temporal form, and the interaction gestalt [11]. Through a series of collaborative disassembly activities at the studio-workshop, we hope to begin identifying the key qualities and issues at stake.
Moving beyond reverse engineering, the relevance of disassembling was proposed as valuable for educational science, following Seymour Papert’s constructionist learning. For example, Griffin et al. argue that there is a “ying/yang interplay of the two learning modalities of Constructionism (learning by building) and Deconstructionism (learning by taking apart)” [4]. Specifically, they have proposed Deconstruction Kits that seeks to creatively engage learners in STEM education, problem solving, and critical thinking – while being taken apart. Regarding the design of interactive systems, as demonstrated by two of the coordinators’ earlier work [8], the collaborative act of taking apart an unknown, mystery device can be a powerful means to bootstrap explorative design exercises. Moreover, they argue that disassembling an appliance of unknown function can help an interdisciplinary design team to build common ground and a shared terminology. Taking computational things apart is, however, not limited to physical properties and aesthetic qualities of artifacts. Approaches such as inspirational bits [9] demonstrated
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Figure 1: A robot being disassembled by one of the coordinators, keeping its circuit and function intact, while radically transforming its expression by altering its physical form, i.e., nailing the individual components to a plywood board.
how design might benefit from practices that aim to expose the dynamic properties of digital design materials by dissecting them in a crafty way. For the conceptual design of interactive artifacts Hallnäs and Redström [5] propose a methodological exercise that turns the classical leitmotif “form follows function” upside down in order to discover functionality in expressions. Taking things apart might be one of the more suitable practices to actually achieve this goal of rediscovering “the hidden aesthetical choices in the expressiveness of things in use.” [5]
Studio-Workshop Proposal A current rise in interest of diverse socio-technological phenomena around Maker and DIY cultures have lead to a re-emergence and re-evaluation of handcrafting skills and practices in our research field. This can be seen in past years conferences and most recently, stressed by the 2014 conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS), themed “Crafting Design“ [1]. The corresponding research on design processes is primarily concerned with the synthesizing aspects of making; with giving form to interactive artifacts through putting things together. Consequential, this is reflected in the practical experiences offered to Studio attendees at the previous TEI conferences, focusing on a diversity of practices, techniques, and skills for creating, making, crafting, and building. The format of studio-workshops introduced this year offers the great opportunity to complement those experiences with a dedication to un-crafting; an explorative journey around the various tangible practices and techniques applied when taking things apart, as well as their present and future applications at various stages of a design process.
TEI 2015, January 15–19, 2015, Stanford, CA, USA
As stressed by the term un-crafting, we consider the thoughtful, reflective process of disassembling to be a very particular style of tangible activity. We see uncrafting as a something which could be developed into a practice that – not unlike other studio crafts – requires particular skills, involves specific ways of reflection, and develops and according set of terms and framings; a practice that may allow one to strive for mastership. We also see how it must start with the bodily urges of our childhood and those small mundane practices of playfully exploring and tinkering with everyday artifacts that are widely spread across cultures so nearly anyone can relate to them. Thus, we encourage a diverse audience to participate in our studio workshop, with no particular prior skills required. Consistent with the reflexive nature of disassembling, the studio workshop will tightly intertwine hands-on activities (i.e., taking things apart) with reflections in action and academic debate. The anticipated interdisciplinary perspectives of the participants, together with the material gained throughout two days of collaborative experience, will allow participants to identify, explore and debate various facets of uncrafting: practical, methodological, and theoretical considerations.
Topics to be covered In order to build common ground while provoking as fruitful a debate as possible, the studio workshop will cover the following topics that all aiming to identify, explore, and debate how un-crafting as a very particular reflective practice may contribute to design: un-crafting for repair, un-crafting for learning, collaborative un-crafting, and un-crafting for design. This outline will allow participants to explore and
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discuss the particularities of taking computational things apart, e.g., different remembrance or documentation strategies for later reassembling, in order to explore its potential for design. A final phase will encourage participants to make an artifact, e.g., a piece of art, or an interactive piece like the one made from robotic materials in Figure 1, that repurposes all or parts of the material gained in the previous stage. We hope the openness of the stages will inspire participants to further incorporate un-crafting into their design and research practices.
Goals & Discussion Objectives The primary goal is to begin articulating the potential qualities of an un-crafting practice based on the tangible acts of taking a series of computational things apart. Through discussions and reflection among a hopefully diverse group of participants we further aim to begin identifying contexts for which an un-crafting practice yields potential.
Acknowledgements The financial support by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science, Research and Economy and the National Foundation for Research, Technology and Development is gratefully acknowledged (Christian Doppler Laboratory for "Contextual Interfaces”).
TEI 2015, January 15–19, 2015, Stanford, CA, USA
[3] Chikofsky, E., and Cross, J.H., I. Reverse engineering and design recovery: a taxonomy. Software, IEEE 7, 1 (1990), 13–17. [4] Griffin, J., Kaplan, E., and Burke, Q. Debug’ems and other deconstruction kits for stem learning. In Integrated STEM Education Conference (ISEC), 2012 IEEE 2nd (2012), pp. 1–4. [5] Hallnäs, L. and Redström, J. Abstract Information Appliances - Methodological Exercises in Conceptual Design of Computational Things. In Proc. DIS2002, London, UK 2002, pp. 105-116. [6] Jackson, S. J., Ahmed, S. I., and Rifat, M. R. Learning, innovation, and sustainability among mo- bile phone repairers in dhaka, bangladesh. In Proc DIS ’14, ACM. [7] Mellis, D. A., Jacoby, S., Buechley, L., PernerWilson, H., and Qi, J. Microcontrollers as material: Crafting circuits with paper, conductive ink, electronic components, and an ”untoolkit”. In Proc. TEI ’13, ACM, pp. 83–90. [8] Murer, M., Jacobsson, M., Skillgate, S., and Sundstroöm, P. Taking things apart: Reaching common ground and shared material understanding. In Proc. CHI ’14, ACM, pp. 469–472. [9] Sundström, P., Taylor, A., Grufberg, K., Wirstroöm, N., Solsona Belenguer, J., and Lunden, M. Inspirational bits: Towards a shared understanding of the digital material. In Proc. CHI ’11, ACM, pp. 1561–1570.
References
[10] Verplank, B., Gauthier, D., and Bak, J. Tei 2013 studio: Motors and music. In Proc. TEI ’13, ACM, pp. 431–434.
[1] DIS ’14: Proceedings of the 2014 Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (New York, NY, USA, 2014), ACM. 608146.
[11] Vallgårda, A. Giving form to computational things Developing a practice of interaction design. Personal Ubiquitous Computing. 18, 3. (2014) 577-592.
[2] Atwood, M. Robotics in my work and life. In CHI EA ’14, ACM, pp. 13–14.
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