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Crafting a Healthier Internet: People, Things and our Digital Society

Lead Research Organisation: Northumbria University
Department Name: Fac of Arts, Design and Social Sciences

Abstract

The aim for this project is to explore how we can define and foster a healthy relationship between people, the internet and things using the ethos and practices of craft, informed by knowledge within the humanities, augmented with technical know-how and leveraging citizen engagement/collaboration.

The internet is a powerful force in society. Since the inception of the World Wide Web, the internet was held up as a place of wonder, creativity and opportunity. Yet it is currently in a very problematic position: fake news, centralisation of power, the dominant control of a select number of technology giants, disinformation, the weaponization of social media, the undermining of democratic processes, mass manipulation of citizens, cyber crimes and abuse of personal data are internationally recognised as areas of significant concern. As more and more everyday objects become internet-connected, become part of the Internet of Things (IoT), these questions of trust, privacy, security and abuse of data will become more pressing, as anxieties over the eavesdropping capabilities of smart speakers such as Alexa demonstrate. Furthermore, it is widely recognised, and even promoted, that industrial design has led to a step-change in the way that digital technology companies are able to significantly amplify the reach of their products (Apple being the most obvious example). Yet this has led to a wholly unsustainable, homogeneous, global culture of two-year life-cycle devices and an internet that is being 'colonised' by a handful of US and Chinese companies. These issues are not ones that can be addressed exclusively with technological innovation and instrumental solutions. They require initiatives that consider the social and ethical implications and consequences (intended or not) of the underlying ethos and structure on which internet businesses are founded.

We will be partnering with Mozilla, and inspired by their Internet Health Report, we are challenging existing 'unhealthy' ways in which the IoT is being conceptualised and implemented (i.e. privileging economic business models over user agency, lacking openness, transparency and legibility) and provide an alternative 'healthier' trajectory for IoT development.

While design often aspires to ubiquity and standardisation, craft thrives on specificity and bespokeness, which is often rooted in localism, and embodies the values of authenticity, provenance and care. Through working at a local level, in terms of both consideration and production, we seek to bring new perspectives and methods for conceptualizing and creating forms of IoT, embodying our craft ethos. As such we will create compelling examples of context specific, meaningful and trusted forms IoT in order to explore and understand the ways that we can change current trajectories across the sector.

Based in the North East of England, this project will work closely with local groups, businesses, organisations and individuals, alongside experts from design, craft and the Humanities to critique existing IoT offerings. Craft centred explorations will result in radical reimaginings of what an IoT artifact might be and do, falling outside established IoT tropes (E.g. Amazon Echo, Google Nest, LG's Alexa powered fridge). These will inform participatory co-design activities and the production of a series of new IoT devices that participants will live with over several months. The project will investigate four scales of relationship between individual people, the internet and things: Person + Body, Person + Home, Person + Neighbourhood, Person + Town/Rural region. These contexts of scale will enable the investigation of meaningful and sustainable forms of relationship between an individual and their wider environment at a number of levels, ultimately providing a resource of radical new exemplars of IoT and a roadmap to a healthier digital future (i.e. recommendations for new approaches to, and conceptualisations of IoT).
 
Title Circus Elecam - artefact in residence 
Description In this project we worked with circus groups based in Newcastle. We used a video capture-enabled 'Artefact in Residence' to bring together a circus performer community. While ubiquitous video surveillance tracks people in public spaces, and data surveillance tracks people online, for this project we sought to collect data in ways that did not threaten privacy and, we hoped, unite a diverse group of circus practitioners. This circus community had lost its collective umbrella organisation and had suffered through the consequences of COVID. They were interested in how technology could help them reconnect outside of the standard social media platforms. As a collaborative collective, all parties were keen to connect their practices and share rich, expressive expertise in some way. Through discussions we landed on an idea to capture data (in this case video) about their practice. Ele-cam', as it became known, was crafted in the form of an elephant, and played the role of 'Artefact in Residence'. The elephant was both a significant symbol for the circus and a playful reference to the 'elephant in the room', a reminder of the challenges in the community in the preceding months. The Ele-cam incorporated a camera and raspberry pi that the performers positioned in their studios themselves. It recorded imagery that was then anonymised through digital filtering and the resulting footage used by other groups as an inspiration for new pieces of work that were brought together in a unique public performance that has become the basis for an annual themed collaborative circus events. 
Type Of Art Artefact (including digital) 
Year Produced 2023 
Impact This artefact was exhibited alongside other physical research outcomes in the Learning Centre at the V&A and as part of Digital Design Weekend within the wider 2024 London Design Festival. The final performance in which the Elecam was a central part has become the basis for annual themed collaborative circus events. 
URL https://hicraftnorthumbria.org/craft-investigations/elecam-phil-heslop/
 
Title Fitbit- sitbit 
Description As part of the craft commissions that were instigated to openly explore differing visions for connected things (IoT). Nicola Naismith (commissioned maker) and Jayne Wallace (co-investigator) explored the opportunities and limitations of current 'quantitative self' health and fitness technologies through craft practices as a way to think more deeply about aspects such as wellbeing and authenticity. The aim in this collaborative making project was to integrate qualitative, messier, more human, aspects of human experience with the quantitative statistics from wearable health monitors. Through a selective sharing of data (both quantitative and qualitative) Nicola and Jayne wanted to investigate the potential for creating, a different, and more trusting one-to-one relationship, than the one-to-many model which is currently facilitated by wearable health technologies, such as Fitbits. They both recognised the trust and intimacy that this process encouraged between them and the distinction with the opaque ways in which the data collected by such IoT technologies, is, or could be, leveraged. To do this Nicola and Jayne decided to each wear a Fitbit and to give each other access to each other's data. They individually interpreted aspects of what was shared by creating a series of embroidered artefacts. 
Type Of Art Artwork 
Year Produced 2022 
Impact This artefact was exhibited alongside other physical research outcomes in the Learning Centre at the V&A and as part of Digital Design Weekend within the wider 2024 London Design Festival and used to instigate conversations about trust and authenticity with the visitors to this event. 
URL https://hicraftnorthumbria.org/craft-investigations/fitbit-sitbit-nicola-naismith-and-jayne-wallace/
 
Title Lost & Found Compasess 
Description The digital compasses project arose out of discussions about the ubiquity of location services and the tracking of people (and things) without their explicit knowledge. The right to be lost, and found when you want to be, is an ongoing debate that has been brought into focus with the widening uptake of Apple's AirTag technology. There is an inherent tension in this offer between the value of locating lost things and tracking (not lost) people. Notwithstanding our recognition of this tension, we sought to explore notions of tracking and wayfinding in as simple a way as possible, through creating a pair of personal compasses whose only function is to point to each other. Conventional compasses were the inspiration for this project, but whereas traditional compasses orient the user through the magnetic pull to the earth's north pole, the lost and found compass operates within the localised, bespoke relational network of two users. This design proposition seeks to emphasise physical and material interactions: a moving magnetic arrow influences the patterns of iron filings to indicate direction, you need to shake the device to encourage the iron filings to be attracted to the arrow and so make the direction in which it is pointing properly visible. That makes for a slower and more reflective experience, distinct from the instant and continuous tracking within digital tracking apps. In this way a 'friction' is created through a physical tangible interaction that is missing in the user experience of live location apps. 
Type Of Art Artefact (including digital) 
Year Produced 2023 
Impact This artefact was exhibited alongside other physical research outcomes in the Learning Centre at the V&A and as part of Digital Design Weekend within the wider 2024 London Design Festival. 
URL https://hicraftnorthumbria.org/craft-investigations/bureau-of-lost-and-found-jon-rogers-and-justin-m...
 
Title Perspire 
Description As part of the craft commissions that were instigated to openly explore differing visions for connected things (IoT) Rachael Colley's undertook a highly personal project based on combining her connection to nature and natural materials with her grieving the death of her partner and seeking some form of ongoingness. With consideration for a medical condition that affects her moisture levels, her piece uses connected moisture sensors in two locations; her body through a jewellery artefact worn whilst exercising and the ground on which her partner's ashes are scattered. These sensors seek some form of correspondence between one another - a correlation between moisture levels. When this occurs it triggers a second worn device to gently move creating something akin to goose bumps on the skin. This highly bespoke, emotionally resonant piece challenges assumptions we hold about the role and function of connected things as commercial products with predictable, desirable features. 
Type Of Art Artwork 
Year Produced 2023 
Impact This artefact was exhibited alongside other physical research outcomes in the Learning Centre at the V&A and as part of Digital Design Weekend within the wider 2024 London Design Festival. 
URL https://hicraftnorthumbria.org/craft-investigations/groundedness-and-connectedness-rachael-colley/
 
Title Puzzle Jugs 
Description As part of the craft commissions that were instigated to openly explore differing visions for connected things (IoT) Potter Sean Kingsley created a pair if connected 'Puzzle Jugs' that used conductive lustre on the surface of the jugs, capacitive touch and embedded LEDS as the basis of the digital interaction . One starting point for Sean was consideration of the material of pottery - clay. Historically clay has been expressive of local geology and culture. He contrasted local resources, methods and forms (i.e. local specificity) with the aspirations of global ubiquity and standardisation that are prevalent in the offer from large technology companies. Sean's puzzle jugs, in terms of material, aesthetic and interaction explore what vernacular IoT might look and feel like. His inspiration was also the lack of transparency in some commercial IoT artefacts regarding their role and function. This drew Sean to think of historic puzzle jugs - objects that were designed to deceive. When using a puzzle jug you try to drink from one spout, but in response the jug leaks liquid from another spout. The deceptive aspects of using puzzle jugs have an affinity with the trust we give to our IoT embedded electronic devices - they appear from the user perspective to be doing one thing but are actually doing other things as well; there is a form of trickery going on. This work therefore alludes to IoT products, and the wider internet, that can lure users into a relationship that can turn out to have unexpected and possibly 'messy' consequences! 
Type Of Art Artwork 
Year Produced 2022 
Impact This artefact was exhibited alongside other physical research outcomes in the Learning Centre at the V&A and as part of Digital Design Weekend within the wider 2024 London Design Festival and used to instigate conversations about localism, trust and authenticity with the visitors to this event. 
URL https://hicraftnorthumbria.org/craft-investigations/deceptive-containers-sean-kingsley/
 
Title Tuning Fork 
Description The Tuning Fork is an exploration of the concept of harmony. We asked the question does the current model of IoT and the wider internet always foster healthy connection with other humans? IoT seems to be following the established social media paradigm, that connection = communication, and individuals either directly manage their own social sphere to maintain a feeling of connection, or are prompted to connect via an algorithm designed to maximise the number of interactions with a platform (i.e. click harvesting). The side effect of this kind of process is the creation of silos or social bubbles and algorithms tuned towards anger and antagonism (expressed as more clicks) rather than consensus and empathy. The Tuning Fork project is an exploration of an alternative model of connection; the concept of harmony (meaning things which are complementary, but not necessarily the same). The musical concept of harmony is used as an interaction metaphor, with the physical device resembling the musician's tool and the interaction working in a similar way as a tuning fork - the 'sound' produced by the user measures their 'harmony' with others and the world, through a 'social-able media platform'. The final concept is for a Tuning Fork that captures your current sound (whatever that may be), calculates a 'note' and uses your note as an input into a 'social media platform'. The platform can then show who or what you are currently in harmony with - other individuals, groups, nature (e.g. birdsong) or the universe itself. Through seeing how you harmonise with others and how you fit in the spectrum of everyone, you can experience the ways in which we are all connected, not through being the same, but by being part of a broad ecology that requires harmonious diversity to flourish. 
Type Of Art Artefact (including digital) 
Year Produced 2022 
Impact This artefact was exhibited alongside other physical research outcomes in the Learning Centre at the V&A and as part of Digital Design Weekend within the wider 2024 London Design Festival and used to instigate conversations about authentic healthy digital connection with the visitors to this event. 
URL https://hicraftnorthumbria.org/craft-investigations/tuning-fork/
 
Title hiCams 
Description hiCams as a concept was born out of a discussion about the notion of mirrorness and surveillance - how mirrors can feel like portals, evoking a 'through the looking glass' idea of a place that is the same but different to their own. In thinking about what it would mean for a mirror to be looking back at you, and how this is very much the case with a lot of our digital devices (where third parties can see our data, hear our voices or see our images) we talked about when would someone seeing into your life feel different to surveillance? We wanted to explore a design where the three of them were connected - so bringing something very personal into the project and being able to see each other through connected objects, felt like a very un-surveillance idea and an interesting space to explore. hiCams are a closed network of interconnected cameras, screens and mirrors. A camera on one hiCam sends an image to a screen on another. Within the network each pair provides a one-to-one viewing experience. Connection between them is direct - there is no third party (a server) that mediates the communication. Based on a Raspberry Pi Zero, cheap(ish) open-source components and the home 3D printing of parts, we aspired to make hiCams an accessible open technology, distinct in function, aesthetic and ethos to equivalent commercial offers. HiCams have no audio, use lo-res cameras, have a slow screen refresh rate and do not record content. So in terms of quantitative measures it could be argued that they provide a low quality experience. However, it is through exploring these limitations within a trusted micro social network, that we were able to focus, and reflect on, what it means to digitally connect. Therefore, in qualitative terms the use of hiCams provided a rich and varied set of experiences that we recognised as meaningful and valued. 
Type Of Art Artefact (including digital) 
Year Produced 2023 
Impact These artefacts was exhibited alongside other physical research outcomes in the Learning Centre at the V&A and as part of Digital Design Weekend within the wider 2024 London Design Festival and used to instigate conversations about surveillance, trust and localised personal networks with the visitors to this event. 
URL https://hicraftnorthumbria.org/craft-investigations/hicams/
 
Title pegBits 
Description Motivated by connecting bits and atoms we developed pegBits as an exploration into ways we can craft the relationship between the physical world, made up of atoms and molecules, and the digital world, made up of bits and bytes. We first explored this concept through the hiCams project where we developed a range of hooks, eyelets, brackets and other attachment designs that fixed to the back of the hiCams, so facilitating a range of hanging, propping and securing opportunities. PegBits is a standardised and scalable open source pegboard based system for prototyping open hardware technologies from component to artefact. It works on the international standard for building with electronics based on though-hole Integrated Circuits (ICs). Through-hole ICs are based on a standard hole separation of 0.1" (2.54mm). PegBits are centred around the most commonly available existing standards in electronic and mechanical system design, namely on circuit boards (e.g stripboard), screws, spacers and inserts - all things that are low-priced, scalable and non-proprietary components that are commonly used within the open source electonics community. So pegBits seek to integrate physical computing into the physical world akin to how Meccano or Lego afford adaptation and construction through utilising standardisation and constraints. 
Type Of Art Artefact (including digital) 
Year Produced 2023 
Impact These artefacts was exhibited alongside other physical research outcomes in the Learning Centre at the V&A and as part of Digital Design Weekend within the wider 2024 London Design Festival 
URL https://hicraftnorthumbria.org/craft-investigations/pegbits/
 
Description The overarching aim for this project is to explore how we can define and foster a healthy relationship between people, the internet and things using the ethos and practices of Craft, informed by knowledge within the Humanities, augmented with technical know-how and leveraging citizen engagement/collaboration? Through a range of activities that spanned commissioning makers, practice-based research, extended deployments and reflective practice, citizen collaboration and expert engagements we achieved a deeper our understanding of how differing characteristics within our craft ethos have value and relevance when engaging with the concerns about trust, bias, transparency, privacy, security, legibility and agency within current structure of the internet. These characteristics, the project activities and reflections are comprehensively documented on the project website https://hicraftnorthumbria.org/. The principal achievements and findings from this research are:
• That privacy and security need to be treated separately and distributed between users. Not taken to be a given (almost) compound noun. One person's privacy does not mean another person's security. Particularly when one of the people is maintaining the infrastructure of the connected device's data.
• Identifying a new role of 'community creative technologist' as service provider (like a plumber or electrician) to support the development and sustaining of digital devices and infrastructure within local communities would be vital in building capacity for alternative models for less centralised localised digital networks. And that there is currently no routes or models for training to support such a role.
• Identifying a gap in the current provision of open, accessible and affordable prototyping platforms that coherently link the digital to the physical. We developed pegBits. This prototyping platform is based on a standardised 0.1" hole separation that is found in 2D perfboard and breadboards, we extended this into a modular 3D printable platform into which all electronics can be fitted, while also providing enough flexibility to allow users to simply prototype their own unique devices.
• The concept of 'Mirrorness' is a valuable way to critique and understand our online experience. As such it provides a framing that allows different avenues of development and ways to reconceptualise digital connectedness.
• Many people's visions of an ideal internet/connected experience are not based on quantitative measures of fidelity, speed, efficiency or reach, but on making meaningful qualitative human (and more than human) connections.
• In contrast to the aspiration for universality and ubiquity of most digitally connected products, there is value in the simplicity of 'single' function devices that have a clarity and legibility of function without reducing their veracity and worth. This can be aligned to a common craft aspiration of doing one thing well and appropriately to a specific personal, community or context.
• Combining the recent notion of 'rewilding the internet' with our craft ethos creates a richer and more compelling argument (at a personal, social and ecological level) that there is a need for changes to, or alternatives models of, the internet and how we access.
• Within the context of IoT, and the internet more broadly, care can be expressed at a personal, interpersonal, community and ecological level, but underlying them all is recognition that if value is only obtained and measured at a short-term economic level then the long-term impacts will be detrimental across all these levels.
• We developed and tested two new craft-oriented methods. Firstly, an embroidered badge making activity which was successfully used on three occasions and with a broad range of participants. The physicality and embodied experience of this 'making together' method created a convivial and calm atmosphere which encouraged extended reflective conversations. As such the form of the method (i.e. a craft practice) aligned with the content (i.e. our proposed craft ethos and its relevance to the debates around IoT). Secondly, a 'Care Label' activity. Using the metaphor of the clothing care labels to encourage people think about the relatively unregulated nature of the online world and the lack of succinct, clear and legible information provided by internet companies. It proved to be successful way of engaging a wide range of participants, including children, adults, national and international persons, students, subject experts and the general public when tested as a drop-in activity as part of the V&A Digital Design Weekend. The semi-structured creative making activity and the resulting high quality 'authentic' personalised fabric care labels provided both an engaging experience and meaningful outcome for participants who committed more than expected amount of time and thought in reflecting on what their ideal internet would be like and designing a label that encapsulated their vision. This activity also provides a mechanism for collecting rich data that can be used to gain broad insights into people's views.
Exploitation Route Through the project we have interrogated and evolved our craft ethos (see https://hicraftnorthumbria.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Craft-Ethos-poster_optimised_1.pdf). Now expressed as a 'Landscape of Craft' this set of characteristics will be of value to the craft sector as a foundation which can be built on, and/or critique, and the values behind them leveraged further within other fields, including HCI.

The Pegbits project was borne out of the desire to link the digital to the physical through an 'open platform' that is accessible and affordable, and combines aspects of engineering, craft and design. It takes the standardised 0.1" hole separation found in 2D perfboard and breadboards and extends it to a construction system in 3D, providing a new platform for open hardware prototyping and development that has both the constraints required to make it a work as a universal platform, while also providing opportunities for unconstrained unique (crafted) augmentations (see https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3689050.3705978).
The development work to date will be shortly shared on Github and can be downloaded and 3D printed and/or extended by other users, so building an active community into the future. Further funding applications are also planned on this aspect of the research to extend this platform and to seek links to open hardware producers and suppliers.
Sectors Creative Economy

Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software)
URL https://hicraftnorthumbria.org/
 
Description Create your own 'Healthy Internet' badge workshop 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact As part of the Arts University Plymouth's 'Making Futures:Beyond Objects // materiality at the edge of making' conference we were selected to deliver a 2 hour workshop. We re-ran a shortened version of our day-long workshop held at the TEI 24 conference earlier in the year which involved participants from the HCI community, but this time we worked with a range of creative practitioners and researchers from architecture, textiles and design, so providing an opportunity to engage with a different creative arts audience and discus our research aims and propositions with participants who brought a different set of knowledges and expertise. As with the previous workshop, we used the conviviality of stitching together to discuss their concerns, and/or aspirations, for how we might have a healthier relationship with the internet, while everyone created their own embroidered badge.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2024
URL https://hicraftnorthumbria.org/activities/making-futures-beyond-objects-materiality-at-the-edge-of-m...
 
Description Entangled Threads workshop 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Our 1 day extended 'Entangled Threads' workshop was held at TEI 2024 (Tangible Embedded and Embodied Interaction) conference and took place at the Architecture Factory at Munster University's Bishopstown Campus in Cork. The focus for the workshop was the use of embodied practices to explore the value of bringing a craft ethos to bear on issues associated with the IoT and the internet more broadly, including concerns about privacy, trust, bias etc. During the studio workshop we used embroidery as a communal/social practice to scaffold a discussion around our hiCraft framework of our craft characteristics; subjectivity, bespokeness, localism, embodiment, provenance, authenticity, and care-full-ness. Embroidery created a mindful craft process that served as a background for conversations around participants' experiences of IoT and connection. The research value of the workshop lay beyond the literal objects made, creating space for a deep dive into issues with IoT.
The workshop was made up of three phases. The first 'Landscape of Craft' task involved positioning craft ethos terms within a model scaled landscape. Reflecting on their creative practice or a recent project, participants defined their individual priorities and talked through their perspectives on IoT. The main activity was embroidery. It was principally used as an embodied practice that encouraged a slowing down, reflective and convivial atmosphere that provided a shared space to discuss the main themes of the workshop, while also facilitating the production of personalised embroidered badges that reflected a key message/issue/concern that each participant wanted to communicate. The final session, 'Hopeful visions of IoT', involved an envisioning exercise in which participants used a set of predesigned props to construct their hopeful vision of being connected through IoT by arranging miniaturised physical components to make individual connected networks which formed the basis of group discussions.
The participants were all connected to academia in some way and ranged in age and career stage. The workshop was intended to share and critique our proposed Craft Ethos and whether it brings a useful new lens on concerns within the field of IoT. In addition, it was used to promote the hiCraft project and create networks for future collaborations, which it was successful on both fronts.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2024
URL https://hicraftnorthumbria.org/activities/entangled-threads-studio-tei-2024/
 
Description HiCraft: defining and fostering a healthy relationship between people, the internet, AI and things through an ethos of craft. 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact As part of the Arts University Plymouth's 'Making Futures:Beyond Objects // materiality at the edge of making' conference we were invited to deliver a one and half hour panel discussion. HiCraft joined forces with Creative Technologist Martin Skelly from DJCAD to deliver a panel discussion that focused how we might use the characteristics found in the practices and ethos of craft to speculate on an alternative 'healthier' vision of the Internet of Things (IoT), and the internet more broadly, including the role in of machine learning (AI). This panel discussion drew on work created within the hiCraft project and on the related research projects that Martin Skelly has been involved in incl. 'Decentralising Digital' and 'Our Friends Electric'. The audience at this arts-oriented conference was distinct from the more HCI researchers that dominate the ACM conference series (e.g. TEI, CHI, DIS) and therefore provided an opportunity disseminate project outcomes to a different audience and to discuss with craft subject experts our Craft Ethos proposition and its value.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2024
URL https://hicraftnorthumbria.org/activities/making-futures-beyond-objects-materiality-at-the-edge-of-m...
 
Description Internet 'care' label workshop 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact In this drop-in workshop, based in the Learning Centre at the V&A and as part of Digital Design Weekend within the wider 2024 London Design Festival, we took inspiration from the visual language of clothing labels to allow people to reflect on and visualise some of the current concerns about the way we connect digitally. Participants were invited to design and take away their own personal internet care labels. We used imagery and terminology adapted from well recognised clothes care labelling systems (e.g. clothes size - network size preference, handle fabric with care - handle data with care) printed onto acetate sheets that could be collaged onto prepared care label templates to create personalised visions of what a 'healthier' internet could be like. In addition, a more open template was created to allow participants to take a freer form approach while still focusing on their preferred internet future. The collages were processed, scaled and dye sub printed onto appropriate fabric to create an 'authentic' care label that participants could take away and wear.

The workshop ran for 2.5 days engaged with over 250 people with a broad constituency of participants, including young children, older adults, national and international persons, experts and the general public. This workshop provided a creative mechanism for engaging people in conversations about how they currently use the internet, what concerns they have and in what ways would they like to see changes/alternatives. This varied from very light touch conversations with young children to extended conversations with experts in the field, see some examples here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBcccY8Nrio

To both share physical craft outcomes of the project and to further aid/instigate conversations the workshops were held in conjunction with an exhibition of works created both by commissioned craftspeople (https://hicraftnorthumbria.org/craft-investigations/) and by the investigators (https://hicraftnorthumbria.org/craft-investigations/crafts-investigations-brief/)
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2024
URL https://hicraftnorthumbria.org/activities/va-ddw-recrafting-the-internet-digital-care-label-workshop...
 
Description Recrafting the Internet 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact As part of the Digital Design Weekend 2024 in London we curated two 1hr panel discussions held in the Lydia and Manfred Gorvy, V&A Lecture Theatre and made up of both hiCraft project investigators and invited speakers. This included:
Dr Ame Elliott - Designer & Researcher
Prof Vladan Joler - Artist Researcher
Neha Singh, Director - Quicksand Design Studio, Designer and Researcher
Dr Geke van Dijk - Co-director of Stby & Design Researcher,
Prof Justin Marshall - Digital Craftsperson & Researcher
Prof Andrew Prescott - Historian & Archivist
Prof Jon Rogers - Creative Technologist & Researcher

The two sessions focused on how ecological and craft thinking provide an alternative vision for a healthier internet. Using the recent call to 'rewild' the internet as a starting point, the first session entitled 'Is the Internet a monoculture?' focused on a critique of the 'wall gardens' cultivated by global digital platforms. The second session entitled 'Crafting an Internet for Everyone' explored how craft principles, like localism, provenance, and care, can inspire more humane digital experiences, and present alternative visions for a more empathetic and inclusive internet. The audience was broad and made up of students, experts and the general public across a range of 16+ ages. Short presentations provided critique of current internet culture alongside historical context and examples from other fields of practice that provided the basis for open audience discussions at the end of each session.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2024
URL https://hicraftnorthumbria.org/activities/va-ddw-recrafting-the-internet-digital-care-label-workshop...
 
Description Workshop as part of The national Festival of Making 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact hiCraft's Festival of Making workshop in Blackburn explored IoT through physical making:
Crafting connections: imagining and making your Internet of Things with hiCraft.

Held in July, the Festival of Making provided an opportunity for people to imagine and think about connecting digitally. We did this through physical making and drawing. The tasks offered attendees at the festival a chance to draw how they envision connection and to think about how they would like to be connected to others in their lives. The following text introduced the workshop to the festival audience.

Internet of Things sensors can connect fridges, heating, smart speakers and toys, yet sensors can also invade our privacy and security. How might we differently connect using sensors? What should sensors be used for?

Using everyday craft materials you will explore making physical models that capture narratives of what a fantastical Internet of things might look like. By making invisible networks visible we can imagine inventive ways to connect people and things through sensors.
Workshop activities included:

a drawing exercise in which participants are asked to draw their current experience of connecting digitally;
a badge making exercise (see below right for the template) where participants were invited to draw a response to connection incorporating the hicraft themes of caring, subjective, bespoke, known origin and local; and using pre made stickers (see below left)
an exercise of sharing stimulus images on the idea of connection as a way to have a conversation about connecting.

Our workshop took place in a large shop space occupied by three other fun and diverse workshops, a few of which involved some hammering and drilling. A lot of people took part in the badgemaking activity while the drawing activity was completed by 20+ people.

The afternoon craft physical making workshops were booked out and produced some interesting results. However the busy space wasn't ideal for in depth discussions and focused making. Singularly holding the space was challenging and the topic was a little too complex to convey. The badge making and drawing was a fun activity regardless of a lack of understanding of the complexities. However there were some useful findings and attending the festival was stimulating and relevant overall.

Participant drawings and discussions about the topic generally illustrated a concern about the health of the internet and the impacts of digital connection. Parents of young children particularly felt a responsibility to manage their children's internet use. A number of people in their early twenties showed a good understanding and general concern of the issues. Running the workshop alone and actively making the badges and managing the drawing exercise meant there was limited time to document the artwork on the badges, which of course were a giveaway to the makers/ participants. Distributing the badges helped to spread awareness of the topic.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://hicraftnorthumbria.org/?p=2226