Open Lecture by Bianca: Digital Justice. Feminist Futures

Design, arts, culture, media, and science are eagerly trying to categorize the latest developments in digital technology. Affirmative voices praise especially GenAI and its potentials, critical voices are expressing concerns about the developments in digital technologies and especially AI, and their eco-social consequences. Under the conditions of complex structural crises, technology-induced transformation processes and uncertain futures, new understandings of research and knowledge production might play a decisive role.

How can we shape digitalization processes in the interest of a fairer future for people and the environment? To what extent can practice-integrating research be understood as transformative research?

Bianca’s open lecture “Digital Justice. Feminist Futures” will take place at  at Estonian Academy of Arts (Room A501, Põhja pst 7, Tallinn) on December 10 at 16:00. Her lecture is hosted by the Design Open Lecture series 2024, which is part of the Design Issues course taught by Sandra Nuut and Ruth-Helene Melioranski.

Visit the event’s website.

Mindful Design: Isabelle to Teach at the NID’s Open Elective 2024

Isabelle Dechamps and S. Guru Prasad are selected to give a course at this year’s Open Elective on Cultures of Care, which is designed for undergraduate and postgraduate students across the three campuses and all disciplines of National Institute of Design (NID).

Their course, “Mindful Design: Co-Creating Cultures of Care,” invites participants to experience, explore and reflect on a mindful design process. Mindful design facilitates a process of conscious decision-making by creating self-awareness and shifting the focus from an external to an internal locus of control through mindful reflection. Over two weeks, students will work in interdisciplinary teams at the NID in Ahmedabad to develop ‘cultures of care’ for a self-defined context within the university environment, testing a new paradigm for design methods and a holistic approach to design.

Isabelle and Guru will share discoveries from their research within the joint PhD programme in Eco-Social Innovation by Design, and invite students to contribute to their research process as co-researchers.
Their research questions for the workshop are:
– How can design tools and mindsets be transformed into mindful design tools and mindsets?
– How does a mindful framing change people’s design approach and its outcomes?

Answers and insights from the course will be available here soon!
Read more about the Open Elective here.

Book Chapter by Dagmar

We are pleased to announce that Dagmar Steffen has contributed a chapter to the book ‘Vision & Verantwortung. Zur Gründung der HfG Offenbach,’ offering valuable insights into the influence of the Offenbach School’s Product Design department.

The book examines the extent to which the vision that founding rector Dieter Döpfner had for the Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG) Offenbach, Germany, could be realized after its founding in 1970. Dagmar’s essay “Die HfG Offenbach: mehr als die Summe ihrer Teile,” she reflects in particular on the influence that research and teaching at the Offenbach School’s Product Design department had on design discourse and design practice in Germany and abroad.

The launch of the book will be at the HfG on 20 November 2024, at 18:00. Details can be found here.

You can read more about the book here as well as on our Publications page.

CC DM goes to Swiss Design Network Symposium

Join us at this year’s Swiss Design Network Symposium at ECAL University of Art and Design Lausanne on December 4 & 5. Three members of our research group are participating at this year’s symposium.

Aysun Aytaç is joining the panel “(Machine) Learning through Design. Collective Modes of Engaging New Technologies,” sharing the research-through-design approach of the VA-PEPR research project alongside the interactive provotypes developed throughout the project. Andreas Unteidig is moderating the panel “Physicalizing Research,” where research approaches in participatory environments are compared. Guillermina Noel is participating with her workshop “Moving on Design and Design Research on”.

This year’s symposium questions the status of design within the academic system and examines how knowledge is produced by design disciplines. It aims to provide examples of virtuous practices and create an arena for a discussion on the relevance of design research as a framework in the medium and long terms.
– Which experiences and practices are exemplary?
– Which possibilities does research through design unfold?
– What can we learn from them, and how can we further implement design research into research projects and activities?

Practice- and theory-based contributions anchored in design disciplines (Industrial and Product Design, Interior Design, Fashion Design, Interaction and Service Design, Graphic and Type Design, Photography) as well as cross- or transdisciplinary approach (Social Design, Technology and Design) are invited to the symposium that present examples of research through design, discuss methodological and epistemological issues, and offer novel ways of approaching practice-based research.

We look forward to the keynotes, panels, exhibitions and discussions! Admission is FREE, but capacity is limited. Please register here.

Bianca Co-authors “Design als Haltung” – Inspiring Designers to Go beyond Commercial Interests

Congrats Bianca Herlo! Our research group head, Bianca, has co-authored a book titled Design als Haltung: Handlungsfelder jenseits des Kommerziellen (Design as an Attitude: Fields of Action beyond the Commercial). This book encourages designers to explore new fields of action beyond commercial interests.

Bianca and Ulrike Brückner highlight design’s potential to foster a more livable environment and society. They emphasize that design is much more than mere aesthetics or advertising; it can be a powerful tool for social change, influencing how we interact and behave within our communities. So true! We look forward to reading it!

Check out the book here.

New Projects! 

The team is excited to kick off four new interdisciplinary project collaborations, three of which are funded by the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts Interdisciplinary Clusters scheme.

Aysun Aytaç and Andreas Unteidig are co-leading the project Eco-Social Design for Urban Sustainability Transitions, collaborating with Beatrice Durrer Eggerschwiler from the Lucerne School of Social Work. Their project will map collaborations between local authorities and the social innovation ecosystem in Lucerne.

Guillermina Noël is collaborating with Paula Krüger from the Lucerne School of Social Work on a project focused on raising awareness about domestic violence. This collaboration aims to shed light on the pervasive issue of domestic violence and empower individuals and communities to take action.

Dagmar Steffen and Isabelle Dechamps will be contributing with practice based design research to the VoDiS Project about diversity on foundation boards in Switzerland (VoDiS stands for Voraussetzung für Diversität in Stiftungsräten). The project will analyse the recruitment mechanisms behind new appointments in foundation boards and aims to co-develop strategies to promote diversity. The project is led by Kaisa Ruoranen from the research group Public and Nonprofit Management, HSLU – Lucerne School of Business.

Last but not least, our recently joined team member, Andreas Unteidig, along with his colleague Karin Fink, will be leading the project Collaborative Exploration in Eco-Social Design: Fostering Cross-Cultural Insights, in collaboration with Shilpa Das (National Institute of Design – NID) and her colleagues.

The project examines design curricula focused on socio-ecological transformation. Through comparative analyses and collaborative curriculum development, the team aims to strengthen knowledge exchange between Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts and the National Institute of Design (NID) in India. The project is funded within the Swiss Bilateral Science and Technology Programme with South Asia and Iran. Since 2017, ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences has been mandated by the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) as the Leading House for this programme.

Congratulations to everyone involved!

Welcome aboard, Andreas!

It’s our pleasure to introduce you to our newest team member, Dr. Andreas Unteidig. Andreas is a design researcher focused on socio-ecological transitions. He co-leads the MA Eco-Social Design program at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts alongside Karin Fink, is the co-director of the international Social Design Network, and serves on the board of the German Society for Design Theory and Research / Deutsche Gesellschaft für Designtheorie und -forschung (DGTF).

We are so excited to work with you, Andreas, and look forward to all the great contributions you’ll make to our research centre. We warmly welcome you on board!

Exciting Leadership Announcement!

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Bianca Herlo has joined us as the new head of our research group.

With extensive experience in addressing inequalities and promoting social and digital participation, Bianca has led impactful research at the Weizenbaum Institute and the Berlin University of the Arts, collaborating with diverse stakeholders to drive structural change.

Bianca is also a founding member of the Social Design Network and chair of the German Society for Design Theory and Research / Deutsche Gesellschaft für Designtheorie und -forschung (DGTF).

Additionally, she co-hosts the podcast “Purple Code,” focusing on feminist perspectives in digital societies.

We are so excited to work with you, Bianca, and look forward to your leadership that will inspire and shape our research group. We warmly welcome you on board!

Stay tuned for more exciting news on the horizon!

Invitation to «Hochschule Digital 2024» Conference

Join our interim head, Prof. Dr. Dagmar Steffen, at this timely conference! Her interdisciplinary research project, “Analog_Digital: Digitisation Opportunities in Mandatory Presence Formats in the Teaching of Design, Music, and Engineering,” will be presented alongside 17 innovative sub-projects from three universities.

This conference marks the culmination of the cooperation project Digitale Lehre – Digitale Präsenz – Digitales Studium (Digital Teaching – Digital Presence – Digital Studies), which was carried out from 2021 to 2024 as part of swissuniversities’ P-8 programme to strengthen digital digital skills in teaching.

Dagmar’s project explores whether and how teaching can be made digital which until the COVID-19 Pandemic has been largely or completely and compulsorily tied to the presence of students and teaching staff in the workshops, studios, and practice rooms of the three university departments involved. Due to the pandemic, in the recent semesters distant learning formats have been pushed and the university lecturers in all departments developed initial concepts for complete or partly digitisation of teaching content and practical exercises. With her research, Dagmar and her colleagues anlayse the strengths and weaknesses of the various concepts and settings, and the teaching units will be further developed and documented.

Date: Friday, August 30, 2024
Time: 09:00 – 15:30
Location: Pädagogische Hochschule Luzern, Frohburgstrasse 3, 6003 Lucerne

The event is open to the public, but registration is required.

For more information about Dagmar’s project, visit the project blog (Available in German).

Guillermina Noël co-organizes Event on Healthcare Design Challenges with Lucerne Cantonal Hospital

As the head of the Design Management, International bachelor’s program and an established design researcher in the healthcare field, Guillermina Noël co-organized an event linking design and healthcare, titled “Enhancing Patients and Clinicians’ Capacity through Design,” in collaboration with Lucerne Cantonal Hospital, on 12 July 2024.

 

The event started with the talks from the two leaders in healthcare innovation, Dr. Thomas Zeltner and Dr. Ian Hargraves, who addressed the pressing healthcare issues.

Dr. Zeltner’s talk focused on design for better teamwork, design for improved work-life balance and career development, and design for increased job satisfaction and the prevention of burnout. On the other hand, Dr. Hargraves talked about Shared Decision Making (SDM) as co-design and emphasized the need to adapt SDM to each patient’s problems.

After the presentation, a panel discussion moderated by Guillermina took place, featuring Dr. Thomas Zeltner, Dr. Ian Hargraves and Dr. Balthasar Hug.

For the full recording of the event and speaker bios, visit the HSLU YouTube channel.

Aysun Aytaç speaks at By Design and By Disaster Conference

Aysun Aytaç, together with Dr. Serkan Bayraktaroglu from Istanbul University, will deliver a 7-minute talk at the Power in Transformation – By Design and By Disaster Conference in July 2024, hosted at BASIS in South Tyrol, Italy.

The annual conference, organized by the Master in Eco-Social Design at the Faculty of Design and Art of the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, has been focusing on social-ecological transformations and what design and art can contribute, along with partners and allies since 2013.

Aysun and Serkan’s talk, titled “What Would it Take to Take Care? Speculating our Relationships with Products for Future Repair Scenarios,” will explore how repair rights and autonomy unveil power dynamics in society and ecosystems. They will use speculative sketches as props to engage the audience in speculating, re-imagining, and sketching out ideas about future repair scenarios for the things that shape our everyday lives.

Farewell to Sabine Junginger

A big Thank You and Farewell to our colleague and former head of our research group Prof. Dr. Sabine Junginger. We want to express our heartfelt appreciation for her exceptional leadership and significant contributions during the last 7 years at the Lucerne School of Design, Film and Art. Sabine played a pivotal role as the leader of our research group, pushing the boundaries of design research. Her dedication and inspiring work have made a lasting impact on each and every one of us.

Her recent transition to Northumbria University’s School of Design as a Full Professor in Communication Design and Vice Chancellor’s Fellow marks an exciting new chapter in her career. We congratulate her on this well-deserved opportunity and wish her all the best as she embarks on this exciting journey.

Farewell to Minh-Nguyet Le

We bid a fond farewell to our dear colleague Minh-Nguyet Le. We are grateful for her contribution to the VA-PEPR Research Project. Wishing Minh all the best as she embarks on her PhD chapter!

VA-PEPR Project Concludes with ‘Talking AI’

Unveiling the Potential of Artificial Intelligence
The VA-PEPR project team successfully hosted the two-day Talking AI event and shared insights from their research on voice technologies. The event was open to anyone interested in how these technologies are shaping our future. Many international experts joined the events contributing to the academic workshops and discussions.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become an integral part of our lives, revolutionizing the way we live, work, and interact. To delve into the ever-evolving world of AI, VA-PEPR project team organized the Talking AI event. This two-day international gathering provided a platform for experts, researchers, and industry professionals to explore the capabilities, challenges, and opportunities presented by AI.

Workshops and Engaging Discussions

The Talking AI event kicked off with a series of workshops that covered diverse topics such as policy, design, data privacy, and more. Participants had the opportunity to immerse themselves in thought-provoking discussions conducted in both English and German. These workshops facilitated knowledge exchange, allowing attendees to gain insights into the latest developments in AI and its impact on society.

Presentations and Keynote

One of the highlights of the event was the series of presentations on the VA-PEPR Research Project, which focused on the project methods and the research outcomes, such as the impact of voice assistants on people’s everyday lives, their practices, and routines in the Swiss context. Among the presentations, Prof. Dr. Sabine Junginger delivered a talk titled “Learning from experiences, people, practices and routines to shape how we want to live with new technologies: People, product and policy”, while Dr. Aysun Aytaç shared team’s methodological insights in her talk “Conducting in-home studies involving new technologies”. The presentations shed light on the ethical considerations related to voice assistants and AI and sparked conversations on how we can shape our future in harmony with technological advancements. Additionally, attendees learned from the experiences of individuals participated in the in-home studies with this technology.

The keynote speech by Lajla Fetic, a Tech Governance and Digital Policy Expert, explored the role of governance and design in the digital age. Her insightful talk highlighted the importance of responsible AI implementation and emphasized inclusivity in designing AI systems for the future.

Panel Discussion

The Talking AI event featured a captivating panel discussion on the outlook of AI, moderated by Prof. Dr. Sabine Junginger. The panel brought together esteemed experts from various fields, such as tech governance, academia, and design. They engaged in thought-provoking conversations on the future of AI, its impact on society, and the ethical considerations surrounding its implementation. The panel discussion provided attendees with a comprehensive understanding of the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.

Interactive Exhibition and Networking

The event also featured an interactive exhibition which showcased the provotypes (provocative prototypes) developed throughout the project and the Voice Matter installation, offering a glimpse into the potential future of AI. It provided a unique opportunity for participants to debate about and speculate our futures with these technologies, connect with like-minded individuals and exchange ideas on AI-related topics.

The Talking AI event provided a platform for experts, researchers, and industry professionals to explore the vast potential of AI. Through workshops, presentations, keynotes, and panel discussions, attendees gained valuable insights into the latest advancements, challenges, and ethical considerations in the field of AI. The event fostered collaboration, knowledge exchange, and networking, setting the stage for a future where AI positively impacts our lives and society as a whole.

For the results of the VA-PEPR project and access to academic publications, the team invites you to visit the project website. Furthermore, the project team has published two comprehensive workbooks that provide an in-depth overview of the entire project. These workbooks offer a top-level understanding of the project while also delving into granular details. They effectively showcase the collaboration of researchers from diverse backgrounds who contributed to the project’s success.
VA-PEPR Workbook One
VA-PEPR Workbook Two

Space to Digest – Workshop by Isabelle Dechamps

During her recent research trip to India, Isabelle Dechamps, our newest team member, had the incredible opportunity to share her expertise at the Pune Design Festival, organized by the Association of Designers of India ✨

Isabelle conducted an insightful workshop titled “Space to Digest,” which aimed to create a nurturing environment for participants to process their conference experiences. This transformative workshop incorporated co-design exercises and mindfulness practices, allowing attendees to delve deeper into their thoughts and emotions.

As a social designer pursuing her PhD, Isabelle is passionate about exploring how practices that enhance our awareness and consciousness can foster co-creation for social transformation. In our fast-paced world, where information overload and complexity often cloud our reality, it’s crucial to reconnect with our core and embrace our interconnectedness with everything around us.

Through her workshop, Isabelle fostered a beautiful synergy between the design community and mindfulness, encouraging meaningful interactions and introspection. The result? A powerful experience that left participants feeling inspired, rejuvenated, and ready to make a positive impact through their creative endeavours. Stay tuned for more updates on Isabelle’s work in the field of eco-social design! ✨

Register at the Talking AI

Everyone is talking AI – but do you actually know what it is capable of?

Talking AI – Registration open!

How do virtual assistants and ChatGPT change our daily lives today? What services may we use tomorrow? What challenges and opportunities emerge? Find out through the workshops, panel talks and interactive exhibition part of the Swiss National Science Foundation project VA-PEPR: Voice Assistants: People, Experiences, Practices and Routines.

Register here for free and secure your spot!
Date: 7-8 March 2024
Place: Lucerne School of Design, Film and Art, Emmenbrücke, Lucerne

Guillermina Noël presents at Research Symposium Health Lucerne 2024

Our team member, Guillermina Noël -who is also the head of the bachelor’s program Design Management, International (DMI)- contributed to the Research Symposium Health Lucerne 2024 with two alumni from the program.

They participated with three contributions:
– Enhancing Interactions and Capabilities through Design in Healthcare Settings by Guillermina Noël
– Exploring the Role of Caregivers in Promoting Mental Health among Young People in Switzerland by DMI alumni Michelle Arocha;
– Accompanying Support for Family Caregivers of People with Alzheimer’s: A systemic design approach by DMI alumni Tamara Jeggli.

Their work highlights the ongoing need to enhance healthcare through design.

Save the Date!

Save the Date!  for the “Talking AI” public events March 7th & 8th Workshops, Panel Talks and Interactive Exhibition. Send the VA-PEPR project team an email if you want to stay updated >> email hidden; JavaScript is required

Design, Policy & AI Workshop

Research by the VA-PEPR team points to an ever-closer interrelation of the design of policies and services for everyday use driven by new technologies like AI. Funded by the interdisciplinary Swiss National Science Foundation SINERGIA program, on 16 January 2024, the team hosted a high-level interdisciplinary workshop on the topic. We thank Sameer Pujari and Jose Diaz Mendoza from the World Health Organization’s Global Initiative on AI for Health (GI-AI4H) and European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) Pierre Deceuninck (Directorate F – Innovation in Life and Health Sciences) and Marco Inchingolo, PhD (Directorate S – Innovation in Science and Policymaking) for their inputs from the policy side.

A stellar group of interdisciplinary experts at the cross section of policy, design and AI fearlessly engaged with the provotypes developed by the VA-PEPR team (specifically ‘Voice Matters’ and ‘Überblick’) to explore their relevance and use in the policy innovation context.

A significant concept emerged that will now be taken forward and developed further. Stay tuned – and mark your calendar for the two upcoming events on March 7 (Workshops) and March 8 (Final Project Event)!  Send VA-PEPR team an email to stay updated > email hidden; JavaScript is required <

Photos by: Carolin Röckelein and Aysun Aytac

Annual Vision Emmen 2024

As HSLU School of Design, Film and Art and CCDM (the official partner of Gemeinde Emmen in Digital Transformation), we hosted the annual Vision Emmen 2024 meeting of Municipality Emmen on 15 January 2024.

This was a great opportunity for the VA-PEPR research team to engage with the public sector and discuss how AI-based technologies and services will shape our lives.

Prof. Dr. Sabine Junginger, Prof. Michael Doerk, Dr. Uwe Riss, Dr. Michael Shorter, Melanie Rickenmann, Dr. Aysun Aytac, Minuette Le and Michelle Murri presented and shared insights from the research project. The Voice Matters interactive installation, the Überblick, and other provotypes (PROVOcative protoTYPES) were the highlights as they showcased the potential of voice-driven experiences. Around 250 people from the municipality engaged with and explored the capabilities of voice-based AI.

Visit the VA-PEPR website to learn more about how Voice Matters work.
Stay tuned for more updates from the VA-PEPR project!
Photos by: Carolin Röckelein and Aysun Aytac

New Team Member

It’s our pleasure to introduce you to our newest team member Isabelle Dechamps Isabelle is enrolled in the PhD Programme Eco-Social Innovation by Design. Her research is about conscious co-creation for social transformation. She is exploring how mindfulness practice can support participatory design processes in eco-social communities.

We are so exited to work with you Isabelle and look forward to all the great contributions you’ll make to our research centre. We warmly welcome you on board

Happy New Year!

Dear friends, colleagues and collaborators,

Another eventful and turbulent year ends. Thank you for the amazing generosity you have provided us throughout the year – be that as project partner and participant, co-author and collaborator, or as a trusted critical friend. Together, we have been able to forge new design-led paths into the public sector and policies and local government. It was a year where our strategic objectives to bridge new technologies with sustainability and human-centred design have gained new salience with the rise of ChatGPT. Our concern for how we relate to each other and to our environment has offered many new avenues for research and study.

It has been a full year for us with highlights that include participating in the Digital Design Week/London Design Week with our project installation Voice Matters at the Victoria and Albert Museum and re:publica, a workshop on designing policies and technologies simultaneously at the CHI conference in Hamburg, and the Mozilla Festival in Amsterdam.

In 2024, we will focus on the closing events for our SNSF Sinergia project VA-PEPR. In January and March, we will be ‘Talking AI’ in a series of exciting events:

On January 15, we will share our work and its implications with the Municipality Emmen – a highlight of HSLU’s role as their official partner for digital transformation. The next day, we are honoured to host representatives of the World Health Organization and the EU Joint Research Centre for a workshop on Policy, Design & AI. We will be joined by a select group of international experts to explore innovation in policy-making and implementation relevant to new technologies.

On March 7, we host a series of academic workshops on the topics that emerged through VA-PEPR. If you are interested in data-intermediaries, interactive installations, the rcc application, digital off-boarding, or policy implications, please mark your calendars!

Our final event on March 8 includes an interactive exhibition, and brings together participants and partners but also those interested in ‘Talking AI’ and making the ‘invisible’ visible, and accessible to everyday people.

The new year also brings some changes to our research group. Senior research associate Dr. Paola Perri will be moving on to a professorship in Social Design at the HKB Institute of Design Research at the Bern University of the Arts, while research assistant Aurelio Todisco will be applying his amazing talents in a professional architect’s studio setting. Prof. Dr. Sabine Junginger already stepped down as the head of our research group in September to dedicate herself to the final months of the VA-PEPR project. She will be taking up her new position as a full professor and Vice Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Northumbria in the UK in the spring. Prof. Dr. Dagmar Steffen will serve as the interim lead the research group.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and a healthy start to the New Year!

Aysun Aytaç, Sabine Junginger, Minh-Nguyet Le, Guillermina Noël, Paola Pierri, Dagmar Steffen & Aurelio Todisco

Coming Soon: Distant Learning for Classes in Studios, Practice Rooms, and Labs by Dagmar Steffen

Big congratulations to Dagmar for her contribution to the Learn X Design 2023 Proceedings, under the general theme of Futures of Design Education.

Dagmar’s work is based on the research project “analog_digital: Digitisation opportunities in mandatory presence formats in the teaching of design, music and engineering“. This project was funded by the ‘Strengthening digital skills in teaching’  P-8 program of Swissuniversities. In her work, Dagmar presents and analyzes five case studies from the three departments at HSLU: Art & Design, Engineering & Architecture, and Music.

The proceedings will be available in January 2024 in the DRS Digital Library.

Sabine Junginger’s Presentation at the Age Strategy Conference 2023, Zurich

The third Aging Strategy Conference, organized by the Department of Health and Environment of the City of Zurich, took place on November 7, 2023, bringing together 70 stakeholders in aging work. The conference provided an opportunity for participants to reflect on their achievements and discuss ways to further address the needs of the city’s aging population. Notably, the conference highlighted the success of the aging strategy, showcasing concrete results such as the creation of SAW apartments (Stiftung Alterswohnungen der Stadt Zürich) and the implementation of age-friendly benches.

As an invited speaker, Sabine delivered a presentation focusing on the importance of human-centeredness in service design. She emphasized the benefits of creating services together with people, rather than just for them, and highlighted the need for regular review and development to meet the changing needs and preferences of the population. The subsequent workshop allowed for meaningful discussions and the exchange of ideas and solutions among experts from various fields, fostering collaboration and inspiration between the public sector and private organizations.

Click  here to download Sabine’s presentation (in German).
Further information about the conference can be found here (in German).

Sabine Junginger participated in IASDR 2023, the 10th Congress of the International Association of Societies of Design Research

Emma: Piece of the Puzzle in Emmen City

We are proud to introduce Emma, the critical puzzle piece that gives the local population in Emmen a voice and invites them to communicate their ideas and concerns.

Emma is the result of HSLU master’s students’ exploration of public participation with the Gemeinde Emmen (Municipality Emmen) during last semester’s Connect Project. Under the guidance of Sabine Junginger, nine master’s students from Service Design, Digital Ideation, Eco-Social Design and Design engaged with residents and workers in Emmen to understand their views on local government and voting. Municipal President Ramona Gut-Rogger provided an informative introduction to the issues, while Ivo Müller, Stefano Costa, and Michael Kost from the Digital Transformation Team supported the students throughout the investigative and creative process (Read more about the process on the municipal website).

During the project, the students interviewed numerous locals in Emmen, who generously shared their experiences in various languages, including Portuguese, Farsi, Spanish, Tamil, English, and Swiss German. On April 21, 2023, the students presented their project results at HSLU to their peers, lecturers and representatives from the Gemeinde Emmen. The project and Emma received such positive feedback that Emma has now become a chatbot on the municipal website, making it easier for visitors to find the services and documents they need. This is just the first step in implementing the project, as the municipality plans to further utilize Emma in other projects to enhance the membership experience for Emmen inhabitants and increase participation in the municipality. To learn more about the project results and municipality’s plans regarding the implementation of Emma, click here.

We congratulate Sabine and the students for their incredible work! A special thanks goes out to Ramona Gut-Rogger, Ivo Müller, Stefano Costa, Michael Kost, Manuel Amstein from the Jugendbüro Emmen and Petra Mauro who is active for the Ludothek Emmen, the Gemeinnütziger Frauenverein and the Mix Up Choir, and Aurelio Todisco!

London’s Victoria and Albert Museum showcased VA-PEPR project

VA-PEPR project team had the privilege to participate in the Digital Design Weekend on 23-24 September at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, as part of the London Design Festival

The team showcased “Voice Matters” which is a thought-provoking installation exploring the fascinating intersection of AI and human interaction. The installation delved into the power of AI to listen, understand, and interpret our conversations Participants from all ages experienced firsthand how much of our daily conversations can be comprehended and summarized by the smart devices that surround us.

Big congratulations to Aurelio, Aysun and Sabine as well as to the researchers on the wider team; Michael Shorter, Jon Rogers, Melanie Rickenmann, and Edith Maier!

Read more on the VA-PEPR project website!

Photo © Hydar Dewachi