Title: ECCO Seminars: Adaptation by Product Hacking

Please distribute to others who may be interested...

AND PLEASE NOTE THAT
THIS SEMINAR STARTS AT 13:30 (30 MINUTES EARLIER THAN NORMAL)

You are hereby invited to a seminar in our twelfth interdisciplinary series
on Evolution, Complexity and Cognition <http://ecco.vub.ac.be/?q=node/108>
(ECCO 2016-2017)


Time: Friday December 16, 13:30h-15h
Place: room D.1.07, building D, VUB




Adaptation by Product Hacking:
A cybernetic design perspective on the
co-construction of Do-It-Yourself assistive technology

Lieven De Couvreur
https://scholar.google.nl/citations?user=oY5-hd0AAAAJ&hl=en

Howest, Industrial Design Center
 http://designforeveryone.howest.be/


Abstract:

Whatever you may have heard about product hackers, the truth is they do something really, really well.  In short: "hackers build things, crackers break them."  Through their experiential and social approach product hackers discover new possibilities in a frugal manner with the local resources and skills at hand.  Within the context of design for disability this perspective opens-up a complementary alternative to universal design. Today there are a lot of people with disabilities whose assistive devices have not yet come about, due to unique needs and challenges.  A new generation of makers and occupational therapists are seizing this opportunity by producing one of a kind product adaptations in people's homes, sheltered workshops and rehabilitation centers.

This talk explores the role of professional designers within this new design context.  In general the research focus is on the epistemic dynamics of hacking behaviour within the pursuit of making a tailored product adaptation for a single user.  Generally speaking collaborative hacking activities are a form of self-organizing co-design activities driven by participatory prototyping-interactions.  For this reason, the starting point of this work was the question: "How do specific prototyping-interactions influence general adaptation within participatory hacking behaviour?"  To answer this question we propose a framework which illustrates hacking entities as a self-regulating systems.  A cybernetic design approach was chosen to develop a framework to explain the circular causality and relationships within local hacking ecologies.

We list the minimum conditions and elements of an autonomous hacking entity in order for it to be able to adapt to changing circumstances and 'to get what it wants'.  With his holistic thinking, it integrates the surroundings as part of a self-regulating system by means of two adaptation types, namely single and double-loop adaptation.  Both loops enact respectively as an (1) active (agents actively change their environments through external adaptation) and (2) passive (agents compulsory change their internal construction of the environment through internal adaptation) component of adaptation.  Although both type of adaptations are strongly intertwined we tried to illustrated them through the variety of data from living lab practices and illustrate how they self-organize the hacking process.




Upcoming Seminars

*HAPPY HOLIDAYS!  The seminar series will resume in 2017.*

See also the ECCO/GBI calendar
<https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src="" >5OGt2ZzliOGdAZ3JvdXAuY2FsZW5kYXIuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbQ>
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More info about the ECCO seminar program: http://ecco.vub.ac.be/?q=node/108
<http://ecco.vub.ac.be/?q=node/108>
--
Cadell

ECCO Group (VUB) <http://ecco.vub.ac.be/?q=node/1>
Email:  [email protected]
Website: https://cadelllast.com

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