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Electronic waste (e-waste) has become the fastest growing waste stream in the world. So called ‘smart’ Internet of Things (IoT) devices, now ubiquitous in our homes, are increasingly contributing to this waste stream, due to their lack of repairability and consumer cycles driven by planned obsolescence. However, other electronic household products, such as gaming devices, are often used and cared for by their owners for far longer than other IoT devices, whose protean lifecycles are driven by fast moving, profit-focussed consumer markets. This paper argues that by developing a deeper understanding of the relationship between gamers and their devices, and the communities they inhabit, design practitioners and researchers can learn to engender the design of IoT products that foster emotional durability and care, and support the development of more sustainable repair practices, to tangibly improve the lifespans of next generation IoT products.

In this research, an approach for creating a holistic digital record system that integrates information about the tangible (physical: dimensions, materials) and intangible (cultural: methods, skills, history) aspects of heritage buildings in Saudi Arabia is presented. Many heritage buildings in Saudi Arabia are in poor condition due to negligence and lack of conservation (UNESCO World Heritage Centre, 2020), and the lack of scientific research focusing on the digital recording of heritage buildings' information exposes them to loss. Research, application, and experiments in digital recording of heritage buildings are needed in Saudi Arabia. So, the purpose of this research is to establish a framework to improve the recording process of heritage buildings' data, conserve and promote Saudi's Islamic, Arab, and National heritage locally and internationally, and support Saudi's Vision 2030 in developing recording and scientific research in the field of national heritage (Vision2030.gov.sa, 2020, pp. 2-54). The aim is to establish a new framework for the intense digitalization of heritage buildings in Saudi Arabia as part of a holistic digital platform for voluntary public records. Such a framework and platform are supported through a pragmatic research approach and the use of mixed research methods considering novel fieldwork techniques: laser scanning and digital photogrammetry in combination with documentary research acquired from governmental and private parties. The framework findings resulted in the most holistic digital record system generated in Saudi Arabia recording intangible and tangible information by utilising several digital recording methods, integrating different recording systems, and saving and disseminating the data digitally in an open-access platform. The delivery of this system and the resulting published information highlights the essential research needed regarding technology practical application and system accuracy between Historic Building Inf

In this paper we present findings of research into Trust, specifically within the context of Autonomous Systems. The research is based upon an exploratory workshop attended by domain experts from academia and industry. The aim of the work is to synthesise interdisciplinary and high-level understandings of pertinent issues into a singular and cohesive Master Narrative relating to Trust an Autonomous Systems. The inquiry constructs a Master Narrative that casts Trust as a notion that is necessarily constructed by complex relationships, disciplinary lenses, and multiple concurrent stakeholders. We term this ‘Trust as a Distributed Concern’. The paper describes the research and analysis which underpins the concept of Trust as a Distributed Concern and discusses how the concept may be operationalised in research and innovation contexts.

The Repair Shop 2049 was a pilot research project which explored the limitations of current Right-to-Repair legislation which does not account for the repair of ‘smart’ Internet of Things (IoT) devices. It is estimated that by 2030, there will be over 30 billion ‘smart’ Internet of Things devices in active use worldwide. Unfortunately, with their lifespans designed to be short, most current IoT devices will end up in landfill in the form of electronic waste. Using the notion of a future high street ‘Repair Shop’ as its lens, the project team collaborated with partner The Making Rooms, Blackburn’s community digital fabrication lab, to bring together key stakeholders, including repairers/makers, civic leaders, device end-users and manufacturing representatives, to collectively envision pathways for developing new localised, sustainable IoT device repair ecosystems and circular economies. This paper outlines how the project used novel design research approaches co-design and speculative design to better understand how citizens’ might be empowered to increase IoT device Right-to-Repair within their local communities. We conclude by presenting elements of our findings including an initial vision for a Localised IoT Device Circularity framework as co-created with research participants, and a wider Socio-technical Imaginary for a IoT Repair ecosystem which illustrates the independent and interdependent relations between bottom-up and top-down stakeholders that must be negotiated to improve IoT device repair.

Discussions of beyond-human worlds have primarily considered post-anthropocentric models in response to climatic breakdown. However, we must also account for an increasingly techno-mediated experience in the landscape of everyday life through emerging pervasive and ubiquitous robotics in the built environment, particularly drones and their wider social impact. This paper presents two methods of understanding: speculative ontography for more-than-human understanding and design fiction as an alternate and heterogeneous world-building task that moves beyond corporate technological visions and “captured” futures. These methods are set in context with two specific diegetic prototypes: “Game of Drones,” a drone-gamified civic enforcement tool, and “Drone Logi*,” a drone logistics game for more-than-human alternative visions. The design fiction approaches develop an understanding of emerging robotic sentience within broader constellations and services.

IoT products are increasingly becoming the default, with non-IoT versions of common hardware (e.g., TVs and printers) harder to find. Alongside this adoption surge, lack of support, outdated security, and planned obsolescence present concerning sustainability issues, contribute to eWaste growth and widen digital divides globally. This workshop aims to present and discuss legal, social, technical, and design aspects of repair practices, engaging the Ubicomp community in exploring challenges and opportunities for more repairable IoT devices. Focusing on diverse repair scenarios, the workshop seeks to establish a concise, holistic, and inclusive agenda for this research domain's future. Participants will map key research questions to support the movement towards more repairable technology.

The EPSRC PETRAS Edge of Reality project team discuss how they collaborated with BBC R&D to co-create an innovative and provocative Human-Data Interaction experience aimed at helping audiences to better consider how growing impacts of IoT and AI related data sustainability and cyber-security might present challenges and opportunities for people and the planet in the near future.

From Netflix recommendations to Amazon Echos sitting proudly on kitchen countertops, artificial intelligence (AI) has been inserted into the mundane settings of our everyday lives. These ‘smart’ devices and services have given rise to the collection of data and processing within everyday objects, accumulating new challenges, particularly in legibility, agency, and negotiability of interactions. The emerging field of Human Data Interaction (HDI) recognises that these challenges go on to influence security, privacy, and accessibility protocols, while also encompassing socio-technical implications. Furthermore, these objects challenge designers’ traditional conventions of neutral interactions, which only work as instructed. However, these smart objects go beyond typical human-object relationships functioning in new and unexpected ways, creeping in function, and existing within independent and interdependent assemblages of human and non-human actants—demanding alternative considerations and design practice. This thesis aims to question the traditional practice of considering and designing for AI technology by arguing for a post-anthropocentric perspective of things with agency, by adopting the philosophical approach of Object Orientated Ontology with design research. This research ultimately presents and builds (a currently) unorthodox design approach of Human-AI Kinship that contests the design orthodoxies of human-centred design. Conclusively, this research seeks to bring into being AI as a material for design and justify through the case study of AI legibility. A More than Human Centered Design approach is established through a transdisciplinary and iterative Research through Design methodology, resulting in the design of AI iconography that attempts to communicate and signify AI’s ontology to human users. This thesis is concluded by testing the legibility of the icons themselves and discussing philosophy as an asset for design research.

The design of computationally enhanced products requiring human interaction is commonly approached through methods that operate within the paradigm of Human Centred Design (HCD). Meanwhile, as still exemplified through Moore's Law, the computational power designers have available to incorporate in their designs has exponentially increased, whilst the cost of this computational power has exponentially decreased. This has resulted in an increased use of computing within an array of products often with the aim of enhancing functionality or automation, and replacing analog or mechanical controls. During the last decade the incorporation of computation into products has been augmented with a huge increase in “networkification” of these devices. This networked capability introduces new product-platform assemblages that are facilitated by the internet and have fundamentally altered our relationships with devices, manufacturers, service providers, regulators, and the interactions between them. One aspect of this change manifests through a disconnection between what products “are and do and the way in which they are presented as things of use”. This decoupling of appearance and function reflects the complex assemblages created through networkification of human and non-human actants who simultaneously operate both independently, and interdependently. Reflecting on the nature of, and resulting impact of, such assemblages demands that a plurality of perspectives be acknowledged within the design process. Such plurality is often incompatible with hubristic interpretations of HCD, which in turn has led a number of design researchers to challenge the primacy of HCD and propose More-Than-Human Design approaches. The More-Than-Human stance requires new perspectives and building blocks for how to consider Design and the Future, in the remainder of this chapter it is those perspectives and building blocks which we explore, before concluding with examples of how such approaches might b

As the global consumption of electronic devices continues to grow, so too does the volume of electronic waste (e-waste) that reaches landfill sites, which by 2030, is expected to reach 74.7M tonnes worldwide. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that across Europe less than 40% of e-waste is subject to sustainable recovery and further reinforced by the planned obsolescence of devices. An increasing amount of e-waste can be characterised as so-called ‘smart’ Internet of Things (IoT) devices. This paper firstly describes how our research engaged with industry and community stakeholders to explore their perceptions and behaviours relating to electronic devices, specifically their understanding relating to the repairability, maintenance, and longevity of IoT devices. Secondly, we describe the key workshop findings, revealing the current attitudes and behaviours towards IoT repairability and the participants future expectations for repairable IoT. Thirdly, we introduce a mobile experiential research platform and describe how this has previously been used to introduce stakeholders to the notion of Human Data Interaction (HDI) and the highly detrimental impacts of IoT-AI data generation on the environment. We conclude by describing the creation of a new interactive physical-digital experience for the platform which is based on insights synthesized from our explorative workshops and highlights how we have embedded a rhetoric of repair and maintenance of smart devices and IoT systems to encourage the development /resurgence of repair cultures to reduce the production of IoT e-waste.

This practice led PhD thesis proposes the method of Interleaving Practices as an approach to interdisciplinary work around art and science. In my art practice, artists work alongside science and other disciplines; they try to do what scientists do, copying their practice, re-empractising. Disciplines are not bridged seamlessly as if epistemologically flat, no impossible consensus is arrived at or antagonistic borders erased. Interleaving is supported by what I call ‘Critical Kits’ a term developed with art collective Re-Dock. Making these kits fold-in electronic components, documentation and raw materials, but also things normally unacknowledged, historical material traces, care, social relations, model organisms, supply chains, games and feelings. They also fold-in exclusions, externalities and political commitments. These kits are not art objects but by-products convivial to novel coalitions. Making critical kits as participant observers reveals how diverse practices stick together but stay separate; that interact, but without synthesis; they interleave with each other without erasing difference. Like the multi-species collaborative labour of leavening bread Interleaving Practices is a generous strategic method for art and science work in precarious worlds. Interleaving Practices responds to calls for slower methods of knowledge production that consider the politics of affect and care. It contributes to critique and praxis in technoscientific making in the fields of art, ‘art-science’, social science, and science and technology studies (STS). Making as Interleaving Practitioners, means research participants, artists, makers and scientists get their hands dirty, sticky and wet and reveal how their practices offer already existing critical spaces with rich opportunities for learning. Interleaving Practices not only contribute to interdisciplinary collaboration and inventive social science, but challenge practitioners in these fields to include and be transformed by