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Pockets and cities : investegating and revealing the networked city through interaction design

Martinussen, Einar Sneve
Doctoral thesis, Peer reviewed
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URI
http://hdl.handle.net/11250/2419331
Date
2015
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  • Doktoravhandlinger / Doctoral theses [64]
Abstract
This thesis is about investigating and revealing the networked city through

interaction design. The ‘networked city’ describes the interweaving of digital,

networked technologies with the urban landscape and everyday city life. The

networked city has become a prominent topic in recent years across academia

and industry, and is making its mark on daily life. Networked city life is

enacted through wireless networks, satellite navigation, and ever-more sophisticated

mobile devices, while the discourses of emerging technologies in cites

are dominated by technology-led visions of the ‘smart city’ (Greenfield, 2013).

In this thesis I address these issues through practice-led interaction design

research that seeks to explore, visualise, and communicate the technological

and cultural invisibilities of the networked city.

This project comes out of a collaborative project- and design-based practice.

It is a ‘research-by-design’ project that draws together an interdisciplinary

frame spanning interaction design, urbanism, and theories of everyday life

and culture. In this project I pursue an explorative, reflexive design research

practice that seeks to visualise and communicate emerging technologies in

cities. The thesis addresses two connected research questions: first, how can

the often invisible, technical structures of networked city life be investigated

and made visible through interaction design? And how might practices of

explorative and communicative interaction design contribute to new perspectives

on the emergent networked city? These questions are further part of the

research challenge of developing an analytical position on the networked city

and interaction design situated in everyday life and culture.

The design, development, and dissemination of a film series titled Immaterials

plays a central part in the research practice of this thesis. The Immaterials

series was produced by myself and a small team of interaction design

researchers. In this series of online films we investigate and visualise three

common, yet invisible, urban technologies: RFID, WiFi, and GPS. With the

Immaterials films, tools and approaches from interaction design were used for

doing technical, material investigations of technology, and further turning

these investigations into communicative and discursive artefacts for engaging

with the popular cultural understanding of technologies. The films and

artefacts produced in this thesis therefore have a dual analytical and methodological

function; they are a means for revealing the networked city, and catalysts for a wider cultural discussion of the role of emerging technologies in urban life.

Through the practice of this thesis I illustrate and argue for an expanded

view of interaction design that is not limited to issues of technology and use,

but that explores how technologies are understood culturally. Interaction

design is here approached in a discursive and cultural frame, where the tools

and methods of the discipline are put to use for navigating, translating, and

engaging between and across technology, materials, and media. We have

termed this a ‘discursive design’ approach that uses the languages and techniques

of design to explore and communicate complex technological issues,

and to promote discourse, critique, and invention.

In this project, analysis is threaded through a reflective design research practice.

Alongside the body of the design work, I have identified and developed

a set of themes for analysing the relationships between interaction design and

the networked city. These are informed by the practice-led interaction design

research, alongside interdisciplinary analysis that draws together concepts

from interaction design and networked urbanism with theories of everyday

life and culture studies. Together, the thematics work towards developing

an analytical position on the networked city and interaction design. This

analytical positioning situates these fields in relation to both everyday life and

to the cultural materials and expressions that accompany new technologies

into daily practices. This is further connected to how design can contribute to

these cultural materials through discursive, mediated artefacts such as online

films.

With this thesis, I make contributions on three main levels. I develop

analytical themes and discussions that investigate the relationships between

the networked city, interaction design, and daily urban life. Through the

practice-led research, I also develop examples of how interaction design can

be used for contributing to, and stirring, popular cultural discourses of technology.

Finally, through this project I have created and communicated a body

of design work that in itself contributes to the imagery of networked city life.
Publisher
Oslo School of Architecture and Design
Series
CON-TEXT, PhD thesis;74

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