Researching ways to promote social inclusion by exploring alternative ways to represent time beyond marginalising narratives of time.

I embarked on this research to explore the marginalising effects of time implementations within western society. With social science contributing varying literature around time and society, during literature research on design, time and marginalisation only a few research mentions where found. For this reason, the research focuses on designing and filling the literature gap on the marginalising effects created by social time implementations. With forefront conversation around potential employment implications due to advancements in artificial intelligence, re-thinking how society implements time and social inclusion beyond fast and slow and linear temporality is arguably more important than ever, especially to designers creating products and services that incorporate time practises within the design. Due to disciplines such as human-computer interaction (HCI) at the forefront of how people interact with products, interfaces and devices commonly implemented into society, this research embeds its research methods within this field.
The research aims to contribute to the literature gap in design, time and marginalisation while creating intervention methods that add to literature within HCI and design methodologies that incorporate time within the design process. The aim of this is to empower diverse, inclusive design solutions that think about time beyond the dominant theories of time, such as acceleration and time squeeze conundrums. These time theories can oppress social groups and the creativity within designing for social temporal organisation. The next aim of this research is to work with communities marginalised by current temporal narratives to speak about the social complexities of temporal organisation. It is aiming to inform further research on potential present designs that can push time beyond the dominant theories mentioned prior and inform inclusive future social implemented designs. Further objectives are to implement the temporal designs back into the communities to gather research on whether the designs helped create more socially inclusive temporal interventions and social organisations. Hoping this will inform and push the boundaries of knowledge in re-thinking about time within the field of HCI and the various design disciplines.
A multi mixed methodological approach will guide the research process incorporating ethnography, Human-computer interaction and temporal design methods. The ethnography study allows for observational research methods to research the impact on communities marginalised by time narratives as well as working with designers to understand further how time currently informs their designs. Using this method will inform how temporal designs can be used to create more socially inclusive human-computer interaction designs. Once the designs formulate, they will be implemented back into the community, then focus groups will be run to gather the data summarising if these designs helped in their goal of re-thinking about design, time and marginalisation.
This research provides a platform for designers, social scientists and any discipline that incorporates technology, social interaction or reforms to think beyond current dominant theories of time and society. Without thinking beyond these dominant theories how we design, interact, decide and implement social technologies will be bound with restrictive and marginalising effects on society and social organisation. The aims mentioned prior will add innovative and empowering designs, concepts and intervention systems to push the restrictive dominant theories of time beyond there potentially social oppressive concepts and creative restrictions.