The Repair Shop 2049: Co-Designing Sustainable and Equitable Transitions for Smart Device Repair with and for Local Communities

Stead, Michael and Pilling, Matthew and Macpherson-Pope, Thomas and Coulton, Paul (2023) The Repair Shop 2049: Co-Designing Sustainable and Equitable Transitions for Smart Device Repair with and for Local Communities. In: 5th Product Lifetimes And The Environment Conference Proceedings : PLATE 2023. UNSPECIFIED, FIN.

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Abstract

The Repair Shop 2049 was a pilot research project which explored the limitations of current Right-to-Repair legislation which does not account for the repair of ‘smart’ Internet of Things (IoT) devices. It is estimated that by 2030, there will be over 30 billion ‘smart’ Internet of Things devices in active use worldwide. Unfortunately, with their lifespans designed to be short, most current IoT devices will end up in landfill in the form of electronic waste. Using the notion of a future high street ‘Repair Shop’ as its lens, the project team collaborated with partner The Making Rooms, Blackburn’s community digital fabrication lab, to bring together key stakeholders, including repairers/makers, civic leaders, device end-users and manufacturing representatives, to collectively envision pathways for developing new localised, sustainable IoT device repair ecosystems and circular economies. This paper outlines how the project used novel design research approaches co-design and speculative design to better understand how citizens’ might be empowered to increase IoT device Right-to-Repair within their local communities. We conclude by presenting elements of our findings including an initial vision for a Localised IoT Device Circularity framework as co-created with research participants, and a wider Socio-technical Imaginary for a IoT Repair ecosystem which illustrates the independent and interdependent relations between bottom-up and top-down stakeholders that must be negotiated to improve IoT device repair.