In accordance with the practices of Digital Culture, Chrononaut Canyon is an interactive art experience that demonstrates how digital design practices can influence change, and innovative solutions to global problems. Digital Culture is defined as the arts, tools, customs, and values of the digital world and how they interact and…
In accordance with the practices of Digital Culture, Chrononaut Canyon is an interactive art experience that demonstrates how digital design practices can influence change, and innovative solutions to global problems. Digital Culture is defined as the arts, tools, customs, and values of the digital world and how they interact and overlap with the physical world. As computerization and technological innovations rapidly increase and permeate into everyday life and the physical world, the need to understand the role of digital tools becomes imperative in designing solutions to global problems. This includes using digital technology and design as communication tools to aid in the awareness of global problems, such as climate change and environmental degradation, in order to create sustainable solutions whilst embracing the twenty-first century’s digital culture.
Within the field of Human-Computer Interaction, researchers and designers have increasingly focused on collaborating with users across the design process. Researchers have explored various approaches to stakeholder engagement such as providing feedback on design concepts, need finding, envisioning, and prototype evaluation. Collaborative design as a method brings together individuals from…
Within the field of Human-Computer Interaction, researchers and designers have increasingly focused on collaborating with users across the design process. Researchers have explored various approaches to stakeholder engagement such as providing feedback on design concepts, need finding, envisioning, and prototype evaluation. Collaborative design as a method brings together individuals from various disciplines, backgrounds, and areas of expertise to co-create and ideate on current and developing technologies or experiences. These insights from community members are essential in creating and effectively implementing designs in different contexts and communities. This dissertation aims to expand the current scope of collaborative design methods within the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) by implementing design fiction techniques to inspire future-oriented ideation. By integrating storytelling and crowd-driven ideation within collaborative design methods, participants can ideate beyond what is currently feasible and communicate their desires and needs within their community. This research also utilizes two online platforms to support my collaborative design methods: Dream Drone and The Dream Collective. These platforms, inspired by creativity support tools, enable stakeholders to envision, re-mix, and iterate upon future products, spaces, and services at a larger scale.
I present my research focusing on using and expanding collaborative design methodologies within two different time frames. The first examines different methods to collaborate with local communities through workshops that aim to inspire actionable design interventions within shorter time frames (e.g., iteration over the course of a year). The second explores incorporating design fiction methods within co-design to inspire participants, both in person and online at scale, to envision future designs and their potential applications in the upcoming 5-20 years. Through these explorations I highlight the broader implications of utilizing collaborative design methodologies, augmented by design fiction, and online creativity support tools, to inform design.
