Fixing the Future : Cultivating a Capacity to Repair IoT Devices through Experiential Futures

Pilling, Matthew and Stead, Michael and Coulton, Paul and MacPherson-Pope, Thomas (2023) Fixing the Future : Cultivating a Capacity to Repair IoT Devices through Experiential Futures. In: International Association of Societies of Design Research Congress : Life-Changing Design. Design Research Society.

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Abstract

As the global consumption of electronic devices continues to grow, so too does the volume of electronic waste (e-waste) that reaches landfill sites, which by 2030, is expected to reach 74.7M tonnes worldwide. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that across Europe less than 40% of e-waste is subject to sustainable recovery and further reinforced by the planned obsolescence of devices. An increasing amount of e-waste can be characterised as so-called ‘smart’ Internet of Things (IoT) devices. This paper firstly describes how our research engaged with industry and community stakeholders to explore their perceptions and behaviours relating to electronic devices, specifically their understanding relating to the repairability, maintenance, and longevity of IoT devices. Secondly, we describe the key workshop findings, revealing the current attitudes and behaviours towards IoT repairability and the participants future expectations for repairable IoT. Thirdly, we introduce a mobile experiential research platform and describe how this has previously been used to introduce stakeholders to the notion of Human Data Interaction (HDI) and the highly detrimental impacts of IoT-AI data generation on the environment. We conclude by describing the creation of a new interactive physical-digital experience for the platform which is based on insights synthesized from our explorative workshops and highlights how we have embedded a rhetoric of repair and maintenance of smart devices and IoT systems to encourage the development /resurgence of repair cultures to reduce the production of IoT e-waste.