Digital Materialities Design and Anthropology

As the distinction between the digital and the material world becomes increasingly blurred, the ways in which we think about design are also shifting and evolving. How can the human, digital and material be brought together to intervene in the world? What constitutes our digital-material environments? How can we engage with digital technologies to make sustainable, healthy and meaningful decisions, both now and in the future?

Digital Materialities presents twelve chapters by scholars and practitioners working at the intersection between design and digital research in the UK, Spain, Australia and the USA. By incorporating in-depth understandings of the digital-material world from both the social sciences and design, the book considers how this combined knowledge might advance our capacity to design for the future. Divided into three parts, the focus of the book moves from the theoretical to the practical: how different digital materialities are imagined and emerge, through software emulation, urban sensors and smart homes; how new digital designs are sparked through collaborations between social scientists and designers; and finally, how digital design emerges from the insider work of everyday designers.

A fascinating, ground-breaking book for students and scholars of digital anthropology, media and communication, and anyone interested in the future of digital design.

Sarah Pink is Professor of Media and Communication at RMIT University, Australia.

Elisenda Ardèvol is Senior Lecturer of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies at the Open University of Catalonia, Spain.

Dèbora Lanzeni is Researcher at the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute at the Open University of Catalonia, Spain.

Chapter 1. Editor's Introduction: Bringing social and design disciplines together in a digital-material world
Part 1: Platforms
Chapter 2. Rematerializing the Platform through Emulation
Chapter 3. Designing a Digital Archive
Part 2: Localities
Chapter 4. Materiality and experience in the Smart Future-Present of urban design
Chapter 5. Affordances of Mixed Reality Interventions
Chapter 6. Digital Interventions in Declining Regions
Part 3: Homes
Chapter 7. Reimagining the smart home
Chapter 8. Transforming energy demand through digital design
Chapter 9. Speculative Method and Babble of Design
Part 4: Bodies
Chapter 10. Designing digital experiences for the active human body
Chapter 11: Ethnography and (co)designing for a Mixed Reality Interactive Slide
Part 5: Final thoughts
Chapter 12: Afterword
Index

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