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Culén, Alma Leora; Junge, Ines Petra; Stevens, Nicholas Sebastian & Gaver, William
(2023).
Plurishop – a workshop-based method for transitions design .
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Prillard, Ophelia; Karahasanovic, Amela & Culén, Alma Leora
(2023).
Sustainability driven MAAS for Rural areas.
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Karahasanovic, Amela; Osterberg, Linda Elisabet & Culén, Alma Leora
(2022).
Sustainable tourism and mobility in rural Norway.
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Culén, Alma Leora & Stevens, Nicholas Sebastian
(2022).
Exploring Difference Between Traditional and Transition Design Postures .
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Culén, Alma Leora & Stevens, Nicholas Sebastian
(2022).
A Paradigm Change: Introducing Transition Design to Interaction Design Students.
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Culén, Alma Leora
(2021).
Learning Transition Design by Making: a Speculative and Critical Approach.
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Karahasanovic, Amela & Culén, Alma Leora
(2021).
A Service-Dominant Logic based framework for teaching innovation in HCI.
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Børsting, Jorun & Culén, Alma Leora
(2019).
SlowBreath: First-Person Research for Self-Management of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis .
Show summary
This paper gives an account of a first-person research and sensory experiences of a researcher making an artefact called SlowBreath. SlowBreath is an interactive cushion featuring heath and warmth, combined with meditative, relaxing, rhythmical vibrations. It is intended as a tool that supports energy balancing, a critical component of self-management for those with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME). In contrast to approaches that focus on users’ needs, the researcher has designed the artefact by exploring different combinations and dynamics of materials, forms, and computational expressions, guided by own aesthetic judgments, focusing primarily on meditative and bodily experiences generated when using SlowBreath. Only when the researcher was satisfied with experiences, people with ME were to use SlowBreath for energy balancing, and minimizing of sensory input, to reduce the chances for illness-specific over-exertion, that can have a negative impact on their health, i.e., further research with users focused on the use, not design.
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Culén, Alma Leora & Børsting, Jorun
(2019).
Community Involvement in Social Innovation for Health.
Show summary
Many communities, on and off-line, are engaged in communication and exchange regarding challenges concerning their health. Sometimes, their health conditions are chronic, long-term, or still, a scientific challenge in terms of understanding their causes, as is the case with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) - a condition that reduces normal functioning by at least 50%, and for which self-management is the most frequent approach to symptoms containment. For many such communities, digital solutions are limited, insufficient or inadequate, as tech firms that develop such solutions are un-incentivized (at the design phase) to learn the socio-cultural terrains of where they deploy their technological tools. However, there is a growing tendency to include and activate communities in design and co-design for social innovation in general, and for health in particular.
We base our position (and interest in this workshop) on our research and experiences from the fieldwork with ME communities, including the ME patient association, youth association, and communities providing support to those with ME.
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Srivastava, Swati & Culén, Alma Leora
(2018).
Transition‐oriented Futuring: Integrated Design for Decreased Consumption amongst Millennials.
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Culén, Alma Leora & Katie, Coughlin
(2018).
Exhibiting Speculative Installations Concerned with Current Social Issues at Events for Children.
Show summary
This paper is concerned with installations as a mode to engage children and youth in discussion of current, serious issues that affect the world we live in. We use critical and speculative approach in design of installations. These installations are made possible through cross-sectional collaboration between a children’s museum and academic research and design. The collaboration has been built over a long period, nearing its 12th anniversary. We consider it to be a sustainable cross-sectional practice, delivering fresh content to the city’s youngest (4-15 years of age) every fall. Over 30 collaborative projects have been implemented so far, and only a portion of them are interactive installations of the kind we address in this paper. They represent work at the intersection between technology, art, design and, as we try to communicate in this paper, society. This paper describes our theoretical and practical approach, grounded in Research through Design. The installations cater to families as the audience, thus, also include parents as active participants and as helpers to their children to understand and interpret activities and provoke reflections on matters of concern, such as immigration policies, city violence, sustainability and the like. Two installations are chosen to illustrate our approach. The first one uses a dystopian scenario, where the Earth is increasingly polluted and outbreaks of violence and terror are an everyday occurrence. However, it is possible to relocate from Earth to the beautiful planet Axzaylia, but only if a person’s DNA is deemed acceptable by a computer system. The second installation focuses on climate changes and how the children can understand them and further work with this understanding. Together, the installations illustrate opportunities for Human-Computer Interaction design to, through speculative and provocative design, engage children in political and civic issues and move from matters of children’s needs (neither installation is utilitarian or needs oriented in any way) to matters of concern to their future.
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Culén, Alma Leora & Stuedahl, Dagny
(2017).
Temporalities of engagement in design for public spaces.
ID&A Interaction design & architecture(s).
ISSN 1826-9745.
p. 113–117.
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Culén, Alma Leora & Stuedahl, Dagny
(2017).
Preface 'Temporalities of Engagement: challenges of co-design in public spaces'.
ID&A Interaction design & architecture(s).
ISSN 1826-9745.
34,
p. 113–117.
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Culén, Alma Leora & Galewicz, Oskar
(2017).
Smart Skating Spaces for Smart Cities.
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Culén, Alma Leora; Zivkovic, Masa & Barisa, Borisa
(2017).
Emigrate to Axzaliya, Speculative design exhibit.
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Pandey, Sumit & Culén, Alma Leora
(2017).
Hearsay: Speculative Exploration of Intelligent Voice Based Interfaces.
Show summary
In this paper, we present a reflective visual account
of the process and outcome from a speculative
research through design project – Hearsay.
Through this account we unpack and present the
conceptual, technical and material explorations that
guided our design process. Further, using this
mode of reflective visual articulation, we
contribute to interaction design research by
highlighting potential possibilities and
problematics for design within the emergent space
of intelligent voice based interfaces.
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Culén, Alma Leora & Gasparini, Andrea A.
(2016).
Design Thinking Processes: Card Methodologies for Non-designers.
In Minaříková, Pavla & Zbiejczuk Suchá, Ladislava (Ed.),
Librarians as Designers: Case Studies on Improvement of Library Services.
MUNI Press.
ISSN 978-80-210-8360-8.
p. 71–83.
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Culén, Alma Leora & Pandey, Sumit
(2016).
Share Infinity Oslo.
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Culén, Alma Leora; Murad, Hani & Stuedahl, Dagny
(2016).
Temporalities and Spaces for Youth Engagement in Co-Creative Activities.
In Fjeld, Morten & Bødker, Susanne (Ed.),
Proceedings of the 9th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, NordiCHI '16.
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).
ISSN 978-1-4503-4763-1.
doi:
10.1145/2971485.2987683.
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Culén, Alma Leora; Srivastava, Swati & Pandey, Sumit
(2016).
Temporalities and Spaces for Engagement in Design Activities.
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Culén, Alma Leora; Pandey, Sumit; Koplin, Martin; Siegert, Stephan & Coughlin, Katie
(2016).
Participatory Cultures: Making Annotated Portfolios.
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Pandey, Sumit & Culén, Alma Leora
(2015).
Design Thinking: Bridging the gap between organizational innovation and organizational acceptance in public libraries.
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Srivastava, Swati & Culén, Alma Leora
(2015).
Design to Conserve and Consume.
Show summary
In today’s consumption-based economy, the mass-market business strategies are carefully crafted for fast product absorption and long term consumer engagement with the brand. These consumption oriented market practices are offering purchase options with attractive buying experiences to improve their quality of life the environmental impact of these products and services has become a threat to the very quality of consumer life, which they advertise to improve. With the increasing awareness of the effects of unsustainable services on the environment and society, there has been a rise in efforts by companies and communities towards bringing sustainable services in practice. While this has initiated a positive trend towards a green consumption economy, these business model lack the appeal of their unsustainable yet mass market counterparts. Despite the existing demand for sustainable products and services,
such services are still largely limited to niche and/or premium market segments - stemming from environmentally conscious consumers.
Product demand and high consumption have been traditionally viewed as traits of successful business. On the contrary sustainable solutions aim to alter the consumption driven processes and reducing the harmful impact on the environment.
This situation poses an interesting dilemma for designer of these services. The intent of making a sustainable solution a mass-market phenomenon challenges the fundamental
ethos of the mass market itself. However, recent trends also suggest a growing interest in product service systems which are described as “system of products, services, networks of players and supporting infrastructure that continuously strives to be competitive, satisfy customer needs”. We intend to investigate through our literature review if service focused business models can achieve an environmentally efficient yet profitable mass market positioning. Can product service systems serve as potential
areas of disruptive innovation for sustainable entrepreneurship? Further, we examine a theoretical framework grounded in three primary aspects - Design Thinking, Sustainable Entrepreneurship and User Experience Design as key drivers for the creation of mass-market sustainable services. We consider Design Thinking as an
approach for working with this problem area, Sustainable entrepreneurship (centered on product service systems) as the underlying vision and User Experience Design as the potential area of innovation. We review the literature of these aspects to understand their historical and current models and suggest theoretically evaluate their potential
contribution to the problem space.
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Culén, Alma Leora & Coughlin, Katie
(2015).
Living Labbing in a Museum: Forstering Active Engagement and Creativity.
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Culén, Alma Leora; Murad, Hani & Stuedahl, Dagny
(2015).
Youth Participatory Cultures: a CSCW perspective.
Show summary
Designing innovative participatory and collaborative spaces that enhance awareness and mobilize to engagement amongst Urban European youth is a challenge. This workshop aims to discuss opportunities for collaborative methods and other tools of the trade within the CSCW, to help increase engagement and participation in civic, leisure and cultural activities among urban youth. The goal of the proposed workshop is twofold: to discuss experiences with diverse methods and approaches from ongoing European projects, and to discuss the role of digital and material artefacts in building environments that support, motivate, engage and mobilize collaboration with urban youth in participatory culture processes.
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Murad, Hani & Culén, Alma Leora
(2015).
Scaffolding maker-centered practices in HCI education.
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Culén, Alma Leora
(2015).
Dilemmas regarding sustainable design from the perspective of HCI: efficiency and its effects.
Show summary
The technology is perceived as an essential element of the infrastructure of competitive economies and a key enabler of economic growth. However, the competitive economies are not on a sustainable trajectory also concerning design and development of new technologies, in particular, ICT. Design and development of ICT are fast-paced. The innovation in the field is driven by diverse factors (technology, markets, users, design etc.), and is considered to be either an improvement over previous solutions, or a disruptive, breakthrough innovation. The latter kind often causes large, well-established firms to fall because they fail to adopt such technologies or adopt them too late. These innovation activities, coupled with consumerism, are responsible for overuse and problematic use of resources (e.g., coltan that is used in lap-tops, mobile phones, jet engines and game consoles among other products) and e-waste generation, where both the amount of waste and its toxicity for humans and their environment are problematic.
Since Blevis’s seminal paper from 2007 that introduced sustainability to the HCI community, the sustainable HCI research has grown significantly. Initially, the field was preoccupied with how to use the technology to make a desired social change. The appeal to an individual’s sense of efficiency (doing things right, making the appropriate behavior changes) through the use of persuasive technologies was made. The strategy turned out to be ineffective, also in Ackoff’s sense of not being wise, posing dilemmas about how to truly make changes for the better. The question of the scale was brought forth in Durishe’s work. Dourish recognized that the traditional HCI discourse obscures political and cultural contexts of environmental practice that must be part of an effective solution. Questions were asked: why does consumerism have such a stronghold and why do people continue to make environmentally harmful choices? It became clear that mechanisms beyond awareness and scale needed to be in place for people to make right choices. Also, even if they did, could the field resolve the intrinsic paradox of being in a business of research and design of new technologies? Voices, supporting a focus on collapse informatics or self-obliviating systems and less technology, became audible. Dilemmas continue to arise on how to design for more sustainable future related to technology design.
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Culén, Alma Leora & Pandey, Sumit
(2015).
Unge Urbane Uttrykk - Children's City Tapestry.
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Gasparini, Andrea A. & Culén, Alma Leora
(2015).
The Position of the User Experience in the Academic Library.
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Culén, Alma Leora
(2015).
Rigor and Relevance: Knowledge Production in Interaction Design.
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Culén, Alma Leora
(2015).
Digital Media and HCI: Ways of Knowing and Producing Knowledge.
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Culén, Alma Leora
(2014).
Innovation: Design Thinking and HCI Perspectives.
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Culén, Alma Leora
(2014).
The Children´s City Tapistery.
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Eike, Morten Christoph; Skorve, Espen; Håndstad, Tony; Fontenelle, Hugues; Børsting, Jorun & Aanestad, Margunn
[Show all 9 contributors for this article]
(2014).
GenAP workbench: aiding variant classification in clinical diagnostic settings.
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Culén, Alma Leora & Karpova, Anna
(2014).
Designing with Vulnerable Children: a Researchers Perspective.
In Isaías, Pedro & Blashki, Katherine (Ed.),
Human-Computer Interfaces and Interactivity.
IGI Global.
ISSN 978-1-4666-6228-5.
p. 118–136.
doi:
10.4018/978-1-4666-6228-5.ch007.
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Culén, Alma Leora
(2014).
Creating Competitive Advantage in IT-Intensive Organizations: HCI and Design Thinking Perspectives.
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Culén, Alma Leora & Følstad, Asbjørn
(2014).
Innovation in HCI: what can we learn from design thinking?
IFI.
ISSN 978-82-7368-407-3.
442(1).
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