In conversation with ghosts: towards a hauntological approach to decolonial design for/with AI practices

This is a critique of how designers deal with temporality in design to speculate about socio-technical futures. The paper unpacks how embedded definitions and assumptions of temporality in current design tools contribute to coloniality in designed futures. Based on this critique, we reject the notion that it is only AI that needs fixing, as design practice becomes implicated in how oppression extends from physical systems to global digital platforms. To make these issues visible, we dissect the Futures Cone model used in speculative design. As an alternative, the paper then presents hauntology as a vocabulary that can aid designers in accommodating pluriversal histories in anticipatory futures and reorienting their speculative tools. To illustrate the benefits of the proposed metaphors, the paper highlights examples of coloniality in digital spaces and emphasizes the failure of speculative design to decolonize future imaginaries. Using points of reference from hauntology, ones that engage with states of lingering or spectrality, and notions of nostalgia, absence, and anticipation, the paper contributes to rethinking the role that design tools play in colonizing future imaginaries, especially those pertaining to potentially disruptive technologies

The design with intent method: A design tool for influencing user behaviour

The official published version can be found at the link below.Using product and system design to influence user behaviour offers potential for improving performance and reducing user error, yet little guidance is available at the concept generation stage for design teams briefed with influencing user behaviour. This article presents the Design with Intent Method, an innovation tool for designers working in this area, illustrated via application to an everyday human–technology interaction problem: reducing the likelihood of a customer leaving his or her card in an automatic teller machine. The example application results in a range of feasible design concepts which are comparable to existing developments in ATM design, demonstrating that the method has potential for development and application as part of a user-centred design process

Affordances, constraints and information flows as ‘leverage points’ in design for sustainable behaviour

Copyright @ 2012 Social Science Electronic PublishingTwo of Donella Meadows' 'leverage points' for intervening in systems (1999) seem particularly pertinent to design for sustainable behaviour, in the sense that designers may have the scope to implement them in (re-)designing everyday products and services. The 'rules of the system' -- interpreted here to refer to affordances and constraints -- and the structure of information flows both offer a range of opportunities for design interventions to in fluence behaviour change, and in this paper, some of the implications and possibilities are discussed with reference to parallel concepts from within design, HCI and relevant areas of psychology

Unmaking-with AI : Tactics for Decentering through Design

This article explores the intersections and resonances between unmaking and more-than-human design. We begin by aligning unmaking with decentering, a fundamental practice in more-than-human design, through their shared movement and materiality. Using Lindström and Ståhl’s notion of the double movement in un/making, we analyze a series of workshops focused on designing with AI, annotating what was un/made and de/centered during the workshops’ activities. Through this analysis, we introduce two key contributions that highlight some opportunities in the diffractive alignment between unmaking and more-than-human design: firstly, the notion of ‘unmaking-with’ as an emergent concept to describe a posthumanist unmaking practice, and secondly, three decentering tactics–situating, materializing, and enacting–that instantiate this practice through design. Finally, we discuss how unmaking can enrich more-than-human design and, conversely, how more-than-human design can help define the epistemological scope of unmaking

A History of the Outplacement Industry 1960-1997 from Job Search Counseling to Career Management: A New Curriculum of Adult Learning

This study traced the history of the outplacement industry from 1960 to 1997 through the stories of seven outplacement firms, the three organizations that emerged from the industry and the changes that occurred in the design and delivery of outplacement services. The history was studied in the context of the changes that occurred in the social and economic environment that formed the American workplace between 1960 and 1997 and the subsequent impact those changes had on corporations, their employees and the outplacement industry. Outplacement has its roots in the job search counseling service designed and delivered by Bernard Haldane following WW II to assist veterans with their reentry into the post war workplace. In the 1960s, entrepreneurs expanded Haldane's service to include consulting with corporate managers on how to terminate employees, remove them from corporate payrolls and support their job search efforts until they found new positions. They called this service outplacement. The primary data for this study came from personal interviews with industry founders, leaders and practitioners, the archives of the AOCFI, industry newsletters and published materials. The study traced the changes that occurred in the reasons corporations purchased outplacement services and the affect those changes had on the way corporations bought and distributed outplacement services for their terminated employees. The study traced modifications outplacement firms made to their services in response to corporate demands and the affect those changes had on the future of the industry. The study traced the evolution of outplacement services from a personal consulting service to a new curriculum of learning resources from which corporate buyers of outplacement services selected services to meet the diverse learning needs of terminated employees. The study traced the growth and decline of the industry, the subsequent impact on the industry's trade, professional member and certification organizations and the difficulties those organizations experienced as they attempted to respond to their members changing needs. This study traces a history of the industry from the collected stories of industry founders, leaders, practitioners and industry archives and relates those stories to the rise and decline of the outplacement industry.Ed. D