About the project

‘Pockets and Cities – Investigating the networked city through design’ is the PhD project of Einar Sneve Martinussen. It is situated between interaction design and urbanism and explores how interaction design can be used to gather insights and generate new meaning in the meeting between new technologies and urban life.

The last 10 years we have seen the emergence of networked city life. Digital technologies, the Web and mobile devices have become an interwoven part of urban life. This thesis investigates and explores how design can be used to reveal, contextualise and discuss the emergence of the networked city.

This project comes out of an interest in how technologies like mobile devices, location applications, sensors and web services becomes a part of life in cities, and how the design of these technologies have an impact on the use, experience and understanding of both our surroundings and the technology itself. The goal of the project is to investigate how the interactional, social and experiential qualities of these technologies can be shaped and understood through design.

The project works within the context of interaction design in everyday urban life and explores the roles of design in how the networked city takes place, both spatially and culturally. The thesis studies the technical and cultural phenomena of the networked city through design-explorations, and specifically brings together practical and conceptual perspectives on interaction design, media and materials.

Central research questions: How can interaction design be used in shaping how emerging urban technologies are experienced and understood? What are the design materials of the networked city, and what are their characteristics? How does the networked city take place as material and spatial phenomena, and how does this shape how the city is used and understood culturally?

Analytical frames: Technology and everyday life, interaction design, cultural studies.

Funding: AHO

Supervisor: Andrew Morrison