Clarissa Ai Ling Lee, Emmanuel Tsekleves, Lau Sian Lun, Sabir Giga, Hwang Jung Shan, and Yong Min Hooi
Sydney 2018: Issues, people and publics
This presentation covers the three modes ascribed to the Making and Doing Session: Methods Practice; Issues, People and Publics; and Performance and Affect. For the first mode, we are applying speculative design/design fiction to a data collection process on an important STS issue, which is aging (here, we are using a method of interest to STS to consider an object that is also very much a part of STS’s epistemic engagement); for the second mode involving data collection, we intend to empower the subjects of our investigation, being the senior citizens located in Malaysia, to participate as co-designers of their plausible futures. They will have a role in envisioning the prototypes that best capture their concerns regarding healthy aging. Although this project intends to expand beyond the urban setting, the presentation for this session will be focussed on the work we are doing with senior citizens in an urban setting. The act of co-designing is also a form of interdisciplinary STS communication that bridges the usual disconnect between the researcher and subject of research by un-blackboxing the research process to non-expert stakeholders and research subjects. For the third mode, the prototypes to be produced will have an affective engagement through their ability to produce an immersive multi-modal experience that aims to capture and portray the affective and creative labour of the participants involved in co-designing futures for themselves and the next generation of senior citizens. A poster explaining our research process leading to the product will also be included.