Browsing by Author "Botero, Andrea"

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  • 9 Dimensions for evaluating how art and creative practice stimulate societal transformations
    (2024-03) Vervoort, Joost; Smeenk, Tara; Zamuruieva, Iryna; Reichelt, Lisa L.; van Veldhoven, Mae; Rutting, Lucas; Light, Ann; Houston, Lara; Wolstenholme, Ruth; Dolejšová, Markéta; Jain, Anab; Ardern, Jon; Catlow, Ruth; Vaajakallio, Kirsikka; Falay von Flittner, Zeynep; Putrle Srdic, Jana; Lohmann, Julia; Moossdorff, Carien; Mattelmäki, Tuuli; Ampatzidou, Cristina; Choi, Jaz Hee-jeong; Botero, Andrea; Thompson, Kyle A.; Torrens, Jonas; Lane, Richard; Mangnus, Astrid C.
     A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
    There is an urgent need to engage with deep leverage points in sustainability transformations—fundamental myths, paradigms, and systems of meaning making—to open new collective horizons for action. Art and creative practice are uniquely suited to help facilitate change in these deeper transformational leverage points. However, understandings of how creative practices contribute to sustainability transformations are lacking in practice and fragmented across theory and research. This lack of understanding shapes how creative practices are evaluated and therefore funded and supported, limiting their potential for transformative impact. This paper presents the 9 Dimensions tool, created to support reflective and evaluative dialogues about links between creative practice and sustainability transformations. It was developed in a transdisciplinary process between the potential users of this tool: researchers, creative practitioners, policy makers, and funders. It also brings disciplinary perspectives on societal change from evaluation theory, sociology, anthropology, psychology, and more in connection with each other and with sustainability transformations, opening new possibilities for research. The framework consists of three categories of change, and nine dimensions: changing meanings (embodying, learning, and imagining); changing connections (caring, organizing, and inspiring); and changing power (co-creating, empowering, and subverting). We describe how the 9 Dimensions tool was developed, and describe each dimension and the structure of the tool. We report on an application of the 9 Dimensions tool to 20 creative practice projects across the European project Creative Practices for Transformational Futures (CreaTures). We discuss user reflections on the potential and challenges of the tool, and discuss insights gained from the analysis of the 20 projects. Finally, we discuss how the 9 Dimensions can effectively act as a transdisciplinary research agenda bringing creative practice further in contact with transformation research.
  • Alternative food narratives. Activities towards more sustainable food production and consumption: Dodo’s urban farmers group in Helsinki
    (2017) Ferreira Litowtschenko, María
     School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Master's thesis
    This research-based thesis explores alternative narratives around food developed by grassroots social innovation initiatives in Helsinki. The study is an invitation to look deeper into how they are creating change, particularly how they are doing so through the production of a visual narrative to better understand how interactions amongst themselves and with their surroundings emerge and develop over time. The initiative studied here is one of those working with food issues, towards more sustainable food production and consumption. As a basic biological need, many of the daily decisions that people take are related to food. However, being such constant, routine decisions, their social and environmental implications and consequences are often overlooked (for instance, CO₂ emissions caused by production and distribution). Therefore, from ‘the field’ (production) to ‘the table’ (consumption), citizens and institutions alike are working towards more sustainable behaviours; though some of these efforts coincide, reach and aims generally vary between the bottom-up and the top-down. Grassroots social innovation initiatives propose alternative narratives to the ones developed by the mainstream. They contribute in a modest but tangible way to the modification of behaviours and beliefs on a local level, and help to redefine notions of wellbeing regarding desired quality of life or lifestyles. Some approaches, such as design for social innovation or design activism, enable designers to support and spread the innovative practices originated by citizens in order to disrupt the current status quo. The way citizens get together and why they do so has changed, creating new scenarios for the analysis of social action; as such, designers are exploring the role visualizations can play in disseminating and understanding the knowledge and changes the initiatives generate. In looking at a case study from Helsinki - Dodo’s urban farmers group - this work utilizes visualizations and narrative to present the story of such an initiative, in order to understand their motives, the actors they engage and the activities they propose. The research shows that grassroots social innovation initiatives develop ‘alternative’ and multidimensional narratives, where time and context are fundamental to understanding how they interact with actors and space through the proposal of concrete activities. My conclusions regard the importance that developing narrative-making as a practice could have for grassroots social innovations initiatives; something not only crucial for designers working with social innovation, but also for the initiatives to better understand themselves, helping to visualize what can be developed or reconfigured further. Including information about context contributes to comprehending the initiatives’ interactions with institutions, and clarifies the importance of timing for such collaborations. However, my main purpose within these pages remains the acknowledgment of the work that the initiative has been doing for several years, towards more sustainable food production and consumption in Helsinki.
  • Are the Users Driving, and How Open is Open? Experiences from Living Lab and User Driven Innovation projects
    (2013) Kommonen, Kari-Hans; Botero, Andrea
     A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
    This article reflects on the experiences of three projects in Helsinki, Finland, that aimed to develop organic connections between technology development and local communities of people. Based on the experiences, we argue that although Living Labs present a commendable ideal of “co-creation and user driven open innovation with communities”, the way they are typically set up and designed (focused on supporting enterprises, with very restricted access to the eventual user innovations) makes it hard to realize this ideal. We argue that to turn the ideal into a realisable proposition, developments in three directions should take place: 1) a distinction should be made between “user involvement” and “user driven innovation”, 2) efforts in research and facilitation should be directed more ambitiously from simply realizing the former towards supporting the emergence of the latter, and 3) new terminology and more explicit discussion and policies regarding the “openness” of Living Labs should be put in place. The article concludes with recommendations for future Living Lab activities.
  • The Audiotarium - A Concept for a Public Domain Sound Object Repository
    (2008) Tarkiainen, Tuomo
     School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Master's thesis
    In creative activity, the tools of creative work form the matrix of possibilities. If these tools are not available or if they are not supporting the activity well enough, the threshold of starting to play and to experiment may be too high for most people. The purpose of this work is to understand and develop tools that would enhance everyone's possibilities to play with sounds in the context of the web. Practically the work documents a design and development exploration made by concentrating on three main themes: creativity, the Internet and sound. Creativity is condensed in the idea of "the play", the web refers to the Internet and a sound object is considered to consist of a sound file and of meta data related to it. Based on a series of design objectives - Public Domain to Liberate Sound Objects, The Audiotarium Platform to Lower the Threshold of the Play and The Audiotaruium API to Expand the Element of the Play - the work proposes The Audiotarium concept, a simple, free and open platform for creative sound work on the web. The Audiotarium service offers a possibility to contribute and get access to sounds. The concept is validated through iterative prototyping and preliminary user test of a functional beta version of the service that functions as proof of concept. The prototype uses a combination of Open Source and free tools (WordPress, MySQL and PHP) that exemplifies the main functionality of the concept and serves as a playground for further development. In its basic description the Audiotarium service consists of a public domain repository of sound objects expanded by a standard way to access the repository programmatically (API). Building on both the public domain ideology (the idea of completely free cultural entities) behind the concept and the Audiotarium API (Application Programming Interface that makes it possible for other applications to automatically access the functionality of the Audiotarium) the work proposes a grey area for users and developers to expand the concept and continue the play with sounds.
  • Before Repairing : Pausing and Knotting Discomfort
    (2023-10-22) Pérez-Bustos, Tania; Botero, Andrea
     A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
    In this work, we reflect on a speculative pedagogical exercise in which we recorded, and invited others to record, through and with knots, situations of our daily lives related to forms of containment and entrapment. Accompanying this creative and collaborative work allowed us to materialize situations of vulnerability and unease (as knots), as well as the difficulty of registering these discomforts (through knots). We are interested in presenting this exercise as an embodied design practice. We also want to highlight how the staging of vulnerability and unease―made through material practices― generates contemplative pauses that have the power to make the fragility of life visible, and thus anticipate the need for repair. We argue here that repair, as a practice linked to design, is a making that deserves to be propitiated by contemplation and catharsis, in the face of damage and fragility in capitalist contexts.
  • “Bejay (water) is our sister”: Wearable speculations to entangle collectively.
    (2024-06-23) Botero, Andrea; Sánchez-Aldana, Eliana; Cuarán Jamioy, Alexandra; Chicunque Agreda, Susana Patricia
     A4 Artikkeli konferenssijulkaisussa
    Inspired by the feeling-thinking-making of the tšombiach, a traditional belt or sash woven by the Kamëntŝa people (authors 2023) this paper explores the potential of a collection of wearable speculations to entangle collectively in matters of care (Puig de la Bella Casa 2017) relating to water in a territory. Through five speculative, hand-woven garments we (2 Kamëntŝa and 2 sn̈ená/foreign women) open dialogues on how wrapping/involving, in a tšombiach logic, can be a practice of care: of the body and of the territory. The pieces are speculative in the sense that they are not actual garments, nor are they tšombiachs, instead they are pieces woven to feel-think-make with. Through them we invite each other, and other people, to physically engage with situated stories of bejay -water- our sister; to wear these pieces as a call to care, but also to be involved and entangled in the stories.
  • (Challenges and opportunities of) documentation practices of self-organised urban initiatives
    (2018-10-01) Botero, Andrea; Saad-Sulonen, Joanna
     A3 Kirjan tai muun kokoomateoksen osa
    This chapter discusses the documentation practices of two citizen initiatives in Helsinki and the role of current social media infrastructures and artefact ecologies in supporting them. We point out how social media and other digital technologies are important catalysers in the initial steps of both endeavours, providing seeds for documentation practices to emerge. However, as practices stabilise and more information is accumulated, challenges related to access, effective archiving, reach and reuse, as well as the current business logic of social media platforms, start to appear. The chapter concludes with some implications for social media design and the structuring of participatory design processes, stating that reliance on social media is not enough, and that participatory design, if attuned to the notion of the construction of knowledge commons, offers interesting approaches to support the documentation challenges of self-organised urban initiatives.
  • CreaTures website
    (2020-03-01) Dolejšová, Markéta; Botero, Andrea; Mattelmäki, Tuuli; van Gaalen, Sjef
     Web publication/site
  • Democratic Interfaces - Decision-Making Tools for Online Communities
    (2007) Fatland, Eirik
     School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Master's thesis
    ’Democratic interfaces’ presents a design exploration into mobilizing the potential of the Internet for enabling newand more inclusive forms of democracy. Drawing on online deliberation research, the thesis argues that successful online democracy will need to facilitate open and informed discussion (deliberation) as a prerequisite for democratic decision-making. The potential for deliberative democracy on the Internetis explored through proposed user interface designs for online deliberation software:WebTing, a tool to facilitate democratic assemblies for online communities; and the citizensconstitution.org website, a campaign for a more inclusive constitutional process in the European Union. Further proposals are annotated as a pattern language and documented as they appear in the design process. The outcomes of this thesis work are relevant for the design and study of communtiy-enabling software, and in particular online deliberation and discussion software. Methods used are characteristic of interaction design, including information-gathering, sketching, prototypingand usability evaluation. Particular attention is paid to the challenges of designing community-enabling software, and to the normative influence of user interface design on user behaviour.These considerations suggest a need for new design methods independent of the HCI tradition, focused on user-to-user rather than user-to-system interaction, and on a prescriptive rather than reactive design practice.
  • The Design of Pseudo-Participation
    (2020-06-15) Palacin, Victoria; Nelimarkka, Matti; Reynolds-Cuellar, Pedro; Becker, Christoph
     A3 Kirjan tai muun kokoomateoksen osa
    Participation is key to building an equitable, realistic and democratic future. Yet a lack of agency in decision making and agenda-setting is a growing phenomenon in the design of digital public services. We call this pseudo-participation by and in design. The configuration of digital artifacts and/or processes can provide an illusion of participation but lack supportive processes and affordances to allow meaningful participation to happen. This exploratory paper examines the realm of pseudo-participation in the design of public digital services through two concepts: 1) pseudo-participation by design, digital interfaces, and tools that provide the illusion of participation to the people, 2) pseudo-participation in design, processes in which those affected by the design decisions are marginalized and not given any agency. We contribute to the re-imagination of participatory design in modern societies where the role of politics has become ubiquitous and is yet to be critically scrutinized by designers.
  • Design with Folk - Developing activities and communication of an association based dance club through service design
    (2020) Lepola, Siiri
     School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Master's thesis
    Civic and association activities have a long history in the Nordic countries. Several association based clubs create a diverse range of hobbies. However, as the activities are heavily rooted in volunteer work, there are both opportunities and challenges when such clubs act as service providers. The background research of the thesis indicated a lack of research on the ability of small voluntary sector organisations to utilise collaborative design methods in the development of their activities. This thesis strives to understand the topic through a case study from the perspective of service design. The purpose of the study was to find out how service design can promote the development of the activities and communication of an association based club. This thesis focuses on exploring the experiences and future expectations of the members and employees of a Finnish folk dance club Matit ja Maijat. Semi-structured interviews and a co-design workshop methods elaborated the practicalities, structure, communication needs and community spirit of the case club. The collected data was analysed in the thesis by affinity diagramming, and the findings compared with the background research. The results of the thesis indicate that 1) factors that positively influence the community spirit are central in the development of the activities of association based clubs, as community spirit is one of the most important motives for participating in the activities, 2) the desire to provide more professional services causes growing pains for small association based sports clubs, as the shift towards more organised activities can affect the nature of volunteering. The case study shows how such clubs may need help to map and meet the expectations of employees, volunteers, and members. For this reason, it is necessary to design and develop solutions that support the maintenance of the quality of activities and a positive community spirit in the environment of association based clubs. The results of the study can be used in voluntary organisational activities and to raise discussion about the importance of communication and transparent information sharing. The thesis concludes by assessing the effects and shortcomings of the approach. The integration of service design in association activities should be researched more broadly to understand how much the approach could be utilised in the association context without changing the nature of volunteering, as it is particularly important for the development of more appropriate practices and processes.
  • Design within uncertainty: Gathering, generative process, and unexpected event
    (2023) Mori, Kazuki
     School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Master's thesis
    This thesis aims to explore design within uncertainty. Our worlds are ongoingly formed within an interdependent web of relationships, and thus design cannot intentionally create better futures. Rather, the thesis argues that what is required in design is to engage with uncertainty and thus to foster unexpected events, exploring the way to do so. Reviewing the participatory design context, this thesis clarified two approaches to discussing uncertainty. The first generative approach has involved actors in specific uncertainty like darkness together and elicited unintentional emotions to depict the generative dimension of uncertainty. Second, The emergent approach focuses on everyday settings such as communities. In this approach, design means cultivating environments and relationships, and then, involved actors relate to each other and generate unexpected events. This thesis follows the emergent approach while adopting the methodological attitude of the generative approach. Also, to explore uncertainty, this thesis classified it into three aspects: a gathering, a relationship in which heterogeneous actors flow; generative processes, in which actors encounter and generate something; and unexpected events that emerge from them. Based on it, this thesis questions what a gathering is, how generative processes foster unexpected events, and how design can be involved with uncertainty. In the study, first, I compare ten gatherings to articulate the features of a gathering. Then, I examine one specific gathering, the Shared Houses, to explore generative processes by reconstructing four episodes that occurred, such as a radio and a crowdfunding project. The study revealed multiple aspects of uncertainty. First, in a gathering, heterogeneous actors intricately flow and blur definitions of a gathering. Then, generative processes are those collectively formed among human and non-human actors, and intentions and capabilities are shared in these processes. In addition, behind them, actors surrender their vulnerabilities to others and accept to be transformed, and I argued that this relationship of vulnerability elicits others’ interventions and contributes to the emanation of unexpected events. Finally, I argued design within uncertainty. It consists of four ways: 1) situating uncertainty by blurring a definition of a gathering, 2) inviting heterogeneous actors, 3) surrendering designers’ vulnerabilities and letting go of their intentions, and lastly, 4) ongoingly practicing in uncertainty and reacting to others to encourage generative processes. This design is a mundane, long-term engagement and also requires the ceaseless engagement of other actors. And this thesis claims that this constant engagement with uncertainty can cultivate possibilities of unexpected events.
  • Designing for Transformative Futures: Creative Practice, Social Change and Climate Emergency
    (2021-06-22) Dolejšová, Markéta; Ampatzidou, Cristina; Houston, Lara; Light, Ann; Botero, Andrea; Choi, Jaz; Wilde, Danielle; Altarriba Bertran, Ferran; Davis, Hilary; Gonzales Gil, Felipe; Catlow, Ruth
     A4 Artikkeli konferenssijulkaisussa
    We discuss three cases of transformative creative practice that aim to address large-scale societal issues related to the climate emergency by taking a series of interconnected, small-scale actions. Drawing on our first-hand perspectives, we reflect on how the cases address such issues by proliferating across different social contexts and supporting creative engagements of diverse stakeholders. We offer this empirical reflection at a time of rapid social and ecological change that has affected all life on the planet. Eco-social challenges and structural inequalities caused by shifts in global economic, political and technological power require new approaches and transformative actions to stabilize and restore ecosystems on which life depends. Our research shows that creative practice in art and design has a critical role to play in these processes of transformation. By discussing the opportunities and challenges encountered by our three cases within their transformative efforts and analyzing how they proliferate across diverse scales, we aim to expand the emerging scholarship on the transformative potential of creative practice.
  • Drawing Together, Infrastructuring and Politics for Participatory Design: a visual collection of cases, issues, questions, and relevant literature
    (2019) Botero, Andrea; Karasti, Helena; Saad-Sulonen, Joanna; Geirbo, Hanne Cecilie; Baker, Karen; Parmiggiani, Elena; Marttila, Sanna-Maria
     Commissioned report
    This e-zine documents the discussions and group work done at the ‘Infrastructuring in Participatory Design’ workshop, a full-day event that took place at the Participatory Design Conference 2018 in Hasselt and Genk, Belgium. Participants at the workshop came from a broad range of domains (e.g. Design, Science and Technology Studies, Anthropology, Social Sciences, Information Sciences, Architecture), representing interests in infrastructuring from multiple perspectives. The workshop invited the Participatory Design (PD) community to come together, with their cases or projects, questions and topics of interest in order to take stock of empirical insights and conceptual developments around the notions of infrastructure and infrastructuring, and their relevance to the revitalization of the political agenda of PD. Following a hands-on approach, participants – collectively and critically - mapped issues, disentangled assumptions, identified blind spots, and outlined new research opportunities charting the possibilities and limitations of an infrastructuring approach in Participatory Design at large.
  • The Ecological Underpinnings and Future Contributions of (E)CSCW
    (2023) Light, Ann; Rossitto, Chiara; Lampinen, Airi; Botero, Andrea
     A4 Artikkeli konferenssijulkaisussa
    When times change rapidly, the transformations around us ask us to consider whether our practices of research and scholarship are keeping abreast. Multiple crises are bearing down on us and only a change in Global North lifestyles and values will begin to address the world’s course towards major catastrophe. In this highly interactive panel, we unravel the ecological underpinnings of (E)CSCW to understand how it could contribute more fully to different sustainabilities and alternative futures. We consider (E)CSCW to offer a strength in its practice-oriented roots and its ecological understanding of socio-technical relations. We revisit these qualities in light of the need to embrace interdependence in all aspects of life and invite others to think with us about possible futures and the contributions (E)CSCW scholarship is poised to make in working toward them.
  • Editorial
    (2018) Botero, Andrea; Del Gaudio, Chiara; Gutierrez Borrero, Alfredo
     A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
  • Service design advantages, case freedo.me
    (2014) Holma, Ulla
     School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Master's thesis
  • Emotional Communication - products that connect friends and family
    (2006) Mizutani, Michihito
     School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Master's thesis
    This MA work concentrates on exploring the concept of emotional communication, through the design and prototyping of three communication "tools" for connecting friends and family. This concept was used as a guiding line for the design, and as means of illustration on how common objects and interests, along with subtle ways of communicating; can connect people to each other and even encourage their communication. The strategy used in each prototype is to implement some type of information design into a tangible object. As prototyping is considered a central activity in the development of the concepts, prototyping tools for designers are discussed and documented for the benefit of other interested. The MA work consist of three parts: The present document, in which each tool is described from its concept development, scenario envisioning and prototyping to the first user trials; along with the framework used for their development. The second part is a DVD that contains documentation of the interaction design and functioning of the prototypes in the form of video clips. The third part consists of the prototypes themselves to be exhibited in the MOA exhibition.
  • Enacting Entanglement : CreaTures, Socio-Technical Collaboration and Designing a Transformative Ethos
    (2024) Light, Ann; Choi, Jaz Hee-jeong; Houston, Lara; Botero, Andrea
     A4 Artikkeli konferenssijulkaisussa
    What happens when we try to enact theory in our practices of collaboration? The CreaTures project spent three years exploring the challenges of conceptualising and enacting entanglement in using creative practice to try and change worldviews towards understandings of interdependence. Acknowledging the backdrop to our work as pressing ecological breakdown, we sought to practice the cultural change we hoped to inspire. We discuss what we learnt about the socio-technical aspects of cooperation in managing entangled engagement as a methodological, as well as ontological, position. We centre this on a case study of how digital technology became a factor in both helpful and surprising ways during the project in response to the constraints of the Covid-19 pandemic. The paper concludes with reflections on how taking the spatial metaphor of entanglement, rather than scale, has helped us understand agency in our work. In discussing this transdisciplinary project as part of CSCW scholarship, we hope to open a space for questioning dominant techno-economic values and show how alternative philosophy can be enacted in practice in supporting transformation to a different design ethos.
  • Evolving PD tools through iteration : Analyzing templates used for multiple participatory renewable energy projects
    (2024-08-11) Kuu-Park, Goeun; Botero, Andrea; Kohtala, Cindy
     A4 Artikkeli konferenssijulkaisussa
    The concept that technology should be designed iteratively is a well-established tenet in participatory design. However, iteration has received insufficient attention regarding how and why we should also evolve tools that support participatory processes. Based on empirical material from five participatory renewable energy projects conducted in different school communities, this paper documents how a seemingly mundane participatory design tool, a paper template, evolves through iteration to better scaffold collaborative design work. We show how iteration has implications for the overall direction of the project towards sustainability by surfacing future issues. The templates allowed a collective move from designing a renewable energy generator towards making a school collective for sustainable use, management, and adjustment of the generator they built. The iterations illustrate how participatory design tools can collect mundane things relevant for design decisions and how such things can be translated at higher levels.