This paper introduces the design principle of legibility as means to examine the epistemic and ethical conditions of sensing technologies. Emerging sensing technologies create new possibilities regarding what to measure, as well as how to analyze, interpret, and communicate said measurements. In doing so, they create ethical challenges for designers to navigate, specifically how the interpretation and communication of complex data affect moral values such as (user) autonomy. Contemporary sensing technologies require layers of mediation and exposition to render what they sense as intelligible and constructive to the end user, which is a value-laden design act. Legibility is positioned as both an evaluative lens and a design criterion, making it complimentary to existing frameworks such as value sensitive design. To concretize the notion of legibility, and understand how it could be utilized in both evaluative and anticipatory contexts, the case study of a vest embedded with sensors and an accompanying app for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is analyzed.
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Smart speakers are heralded to make everyday life more convenient in households around the world. These voice-activated devices have become part of intimate domestic contexts in which users interact with platforms.This chapter presents a dualstudy investigating the privacy perceptions of smart speaker users and non-users. Data collected in in-depth interviews and focus groups with Dutch users and non-users show that they make sense of privacy risks through imagined sociotechnical affordances. Imagined affordances emerge with the interplay between user expectations, technologies, and designer intentions. Affordances like controllability, assistance, conversation, linkability, recordability, and locatability are associated with privacy considerations. Viewing this observation in the light of privacy calculus theory, we provide insights into how users’ positive experiences of the control over and assistance in the home offered by smart speakers outweighs privacy concerns. On the contrary, non-users reject the devices because of fears that recordability and locatability would breach the privacy of their homes by tapping data to platform companies. Our findings emphasize the dynamic nature of privacy calculus considerations and how these interact with imagined affordances; establishing a contrast between rational and emotional responses relating to smart speaker use.Emotions play a pivotal role in adoption considerations whereby respondents balance fears of unknown malicious actors against trust in platform companies.This study paves the way for further research that examines how surveillance in the home is becoming increasingly normalized by smart technologies.
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This paper reports about preparatory work for future standardization that is carried out through an EU coordination and support action titled IM-SAFE. It focuses on applied digital technologies for monitoring and safety, including predictive maintenance of bridges and tunnels. Amidst the improved affordability of digitalization technologies and techniques, the biggest challenge in monitoring and maintenance of bridges and tunnels is no longer about collecting data as much as possible, but about obtaining and exploiting meaningful data throughout the lifecycle of the built assets. An effective and efficient data-driven approach is important to al-low both human experts and computers to make accurate diagnostics, predictions, and decisions. Further standardization is seen as an important part to reach that goal. The work in IM-SAFE related to ICT standardization focuses on the following topics: (1) the general requirements and preconditions for high quality and cost-effective acquisition, transmission, storage and processing of monitoring datasets to ensure the data is fully accessible and machine-interpretable; (2) the relations between the future standards in structural engineering with the open ICT standards for interoperability, especially on Internet of Things (IoT), Building Information Model (BIM), Geographical Information System (GIS), and Semantic Linked Data (LD); (3) a common design of IT platforms to manage monitoring and asset management data of transport infrastructures; (4) the ways to facilitate data analytics technologies, including AI, to be applied for monitoring and asset management of transport infrastructures, and to assess the added value of data-driven approach next to physics-based modelling. With regard to these topics, this paper reports the outcomes from the expert and stakeholder consultations that recently took place within the IM-SAFE pan-European Community of Practice.
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This article analyses four of the most prominent city discourses and introduces the lens of urban vitalism as an overarching interdisciplinary concept of cities as places of transformation and change. We demonstrate the value of using urban vitalism as a lens to conceptualize and critically discuss different notions on smart, inclusive, resilient and sustainable just cities. Urban vitalism offers a process-based lens which enables us to understand cities as places of transformation and change, with people and other living beings at its core. The aim of the article is to explore how the lens of vitalism can help us understand and connect ongoing interdisciplinary academic debates about urban development and vice versa, and how these ongoing debates inform our understanding of urban vitalism.
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De dissertatie "Probing Futures, Acting Today" van Caroline Maessen onderzoekt hoe organisaties alternatieve toekomsten kunnen verbeelden om dagelijkse toekomstvormende praktijken te veranderen teneinde complexe maatschappelijke uitdagingen aan te pakken. Organisaties hebben de neiging door lineair denken hun verbeeldingsvermogen te beperken tot conventionele toekomsten, wat effectieve reacties op problemen zoals klimaatverandering en sociale ongelijkheid belemmert. Het gevolg is dat na de zoveelste heisessie voor visieontwikkeling, er nog steeds niets fundamenteel verandert. Hoe de toekomst zich ontvouwt, tegen de achtergrond van maatschappelijke complexe problemen, gaat vaak voorbij onze collectieve verbeeldingskracht. Organisaties hebben moeite om zich te verbinden met onconventionele toekomsten en acties in het heden daarop af te stemmen. Voor betekenisvolle verandering moeten organisaties navigeren tussen de aantrekkingskracht van inspirerende onconventionele toekomsten en de behoefte aan stabiliteit en controle. Maessen heeft in twee (semi) publieke organisaties onderzocht waarom dit zo lastig is en hoe organisaties daarin ondersteund kunnen worden.
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Introduction: Hip and knee osteoarthritis are associated with functional limitations, pain and restrictions in quality of life and the ability to work. Furthermore, with growing prevalence, osteoarthritis is increasingly causing (in)direct costs. Guidelines recommend exercise therapy and education as primary treatment strategies. Available options for treatment based on physical activity promotion and lifestyle change are often insufficiently provided and used. In addition, the quality of current exercise programmes often does not meet the changing care needs of older people with comorbidities and exercise adherence is a challenge beyond personal physiotherapy. The main objective of this study is to investigate the short- and long-term (cost-)effectiveness of the SmArt-E programme in people with hip and/or knee osteoarthritis in terms of pain and physical functioning compared to usual care. Methods: This study is designed as a multicentre randomized controlled trial with a target sample size of 330 patients. The intervention is based on the e-Exercise intervention from the Netherlands, consists of a training and education programme and is conducted as a blended care intervention over 12 months. We use an app to support independent training and the development of self-management skills. The primary and secondary hypotheses are that participants in the SmArt-E intervention will have less pain (numerical rating scale) and better physical functioning (Hip Disability and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score, Knee Injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score) compared to participants in the usual care group after 12 and 3 months. Other secondary outcomes are based on domains of the Osteoarthritis Research Society International (OARSI). The study will be accompanied by a process evaluation. Discussion: After a positive evaluation, SmArt-E can be offered in usual care, flexibly addressing different care situations. The desired sustainability and the support of the participants' behavioural change are initiated via the app through audio-visual contact with their physiotherapists. Furthermore, the app supports the repetition and consolidation of learned training and educational content. For people with osteoarthritis, the new form of care with proven effectiveness can lead to a reduction in underuse and misuse of care as well as contribute to a reduction in (in)direct costs.
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Physical activity (PA) can have a substantial benefit in the prevention, treatment andrehabilitation of (breast) cancer. Wearable devices offer possibilities to monitor PA,to provide feedback and to set targets. Although the market for PA related wearabledevices is booming, the impact of these wearables is questionable. One of the mainconcerns is the limitations to address individual needs of users, among which specificgroups such as women with breast cancer. Through design, we see opportunities tostimulate for self-enhancement while encouraging PA after cancer treatment.Following a constructive design research approach, Aymée was designed. Aymée is asmart bra that changes its pattern based on the amount of PA. Through thisinteraction, Aymée aims to reinforce women recovering from breast cancer to feelgood about themselves and to be (more) active. In this paper, we describe both thedesign approach in co-creation with former breast-cancer patients, as well as firstresults. We also discuss implications for designing intelligent systems that address PAencouragement.
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What do a grandmaster Jedi and a grandfather have in common? The answer will become clear in this story of two sisters who used the Career Writing method to identify career questions, life themes, and tapped into the wisdom of their childhood heroes. Lengelle, R., Haggerty, E. (2022). Career Writing and the Tale of Two Sisters: The Family Project, Heroic Drive, and How No Sibling Has the Same Parents. In: Schreiber, M. (ed) Narrative Ansätze in Beratung und Coaching (pp. 163-172). Springer, Wiesbaden.
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This paper describes a concept where products are equipped with agents that will assist in recycling and repairing the product. These so-called product agents represent the product in cyberspace and are capable to negotiate with other products in case of recycling or repair. Some product agents of broken products will offer spare parts, other agents will look for spare parts to repair a broken product. On the average this will enlarge the lifetime of a product and in some cases prevent wasting resources. Apart from reuse of spare parts these agents will also help to locate rare elements in a device, so these elements can be recycled more easily.
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Digital technologies permeate and transform organisational practices. As a society, we need means to explore the uncharted terrain that lies ahead and the desirability and consequences of possible courses of action to move forward. We investigate a design approach, called ‘future probing’, to envision and critically analyse possible futures around digital technologies. We first reconstruct our journey and describe related insights on the process, content and context level. Reflecting on the journey, we then extract a key insight revolving around the challenge for participants to link back from exploring the future to their present practice. In a first attempt at theorizing these difficulties, we see future probing as a practice that opens up adaptive space (Uhl-Bien & Arena, 2017) in which people from different backgrounds engage in dialogue about possible futures of digital technologies. We found that adaptive processes, like semi structuring, temporary decentralisation, and collaboration (Uhl-Bien & Arena, 2018) were supported by the future probing practices and seemed to create space for employees to engage in exploration. There was still a lack of compelling acts of brokering and network cohesion (Uhl-Bien & Arena, 2018). This may indicate why linking back to daily practice is challenging. We assume that organising for adaptability requires a deliberate act of connecting far future explorations with present action, and propose that besides explorative skills, ‘adaptive anticipating’ action is needed to make the connection and that linking back through near future experiments might be a way to achieve this.
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