slow design

by victoria.bremer - 30. November 202531. January 2026

Impulse #3 – a book!

This impulse comes from a book I was reading: “Beschleunigung und Entfremdung” by Hartmut Rosa, a German sociologist whose work revolves around the concept of social acceleration. According to Rosa, advancements in communication, transport, and production have made things increasingly fast, creating expectations of efficiency and speed in almost every area of life. This ongoing acceleration, he argues, ultimately leads to alienation, distancing us from the world rather than connecting us to it.
In the book, he raises two key questions: What constitutes a good life? And why is it that we so often fail to lead one? Since the first is almost impossible to answer universally, he focuses on the second. Rosa says that both our individual and collective ways of living are in need of reform. He identifies time as the central issue, claiming that modern society is governed, coordinated, and controlled by an “intense and rigid regime of time.”

This phenomenon isn’t entirely new. Others have written about similar concerns (James Gleick, Peter Conrad, Douglas Coupland), but Rosa examines the idea more structurally. He asks whether we should talk about “social acceleration” (singular) or rather a sequence of accelerations occurring across various areas: sports, fashion cycles, video editing speeds, transportation, job markets, and so on. Fast food, speed dating, power naps, drive-through culture all show how speed has become a central part of every day activities and aspects of life.

Rosa categorises acceleration into three types:  
Technological acceleration: the intentional increase of speed in transport, communication, and production processes, reinforced by new types of organisation and administration. Our perception of space and time has been reshaped. With space and time, space used to take precedence (due to our senses like sight, gravitation, etc.) this has now switched with „shapeless“ places like the internet taking over, shrinking space down or eliminating it entirely. For example the distance between London and New York, has shrunk to a fraction within the timespan of sailboats to the invention of planes, reinforcing the sense that time conquers space.  
Acceleration of social change: not just the processes, but society itself speeds up: values, lifestyles, relationships, group dynamics, habits, even our social language. In the past, sons followed their fathers professions across multiple generations. Later, choosing their own career path for life became the norm. Now, it’s common for people to change professions several times within a single lifetime.  
Acceleration of the pace of life: this one is paradoxical. Technical acceleration should, in theory, free up time. Yet people in western cultures increasingly report the feeling that time is slipping away. Time is perceived as a resource. What actually happens is that the quantity of tasks and experiences per unit of time rises. Instead of using speed and technological advance to create space, we fill the newly freed time with more activity.

All in all, this is a really complex topic and definitely too broad to tackle in its entirety. From a design perspective, I think it becomes important to set a small framework and pick one very specific aspect to focus on, whether that’s something like food, relationships, mobility, or another everyday field. I’ve briefly looked into Slow Design before, and I feel like it could offer an interesting approach to this idea of acceleration. Not in the sense of rejecting technology altogether, but more as a way of rethinking how we work with it (considering timing, intention and presence as design qualities). I think that could be an exciting angle to explore further.

Book: https://books.google.de/books?hl=de&lr=&id=QLY7CgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT4&dq=hartmut+rosa+theorie&ots=PVM4doUUVA&sig=A1RGw7OgClYj0LTPHh_Jais49ew&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=hartmut%20rosa%20theorie&f=false

Disclaimer: I used AI to translate this since the book and my notes on it are in german.

by victoria.bremer - 31. October 2025

Evaluation Masters Thesis – Task 3

The Masters Thesis „Exploring Slow Technology in the Home“ by Martin Krogh from from the Interaction Design Program at Malmö University (2015) is a new approach to interaction design in the context of (smart) technology in homes. The work is divided into two parts consisting of a first theoretical research, ending with research questions and a methodological chapter and a second practical part including field work, design making, user testing, reflections and a conclusion.

Overall presentation quality
Besides very few and minor formatting issues the thesis is is laid-out nicely with a clear, logical and comprehensible structure. Text is nicely supported with sketches and images especially in the practical part.

Degree of innovation
The thesis generally explores an under-researched and relatively new topic that hasn’t been studied much. Therefor it raises interesting new questions and aims to explore them in a playful, curious way while considering the little research and prevailing ideas that do exist in the field. It even introduces a semi-new methodology of slow provotyping. Although nothing entirely new is discovered or innovated, the design experiments that are conducted are very thought-provoking and offer a new perspective on current design approaches.

Independence
The underlying motivation for the thesis clearly has a strong tie to the authors own life and personal experience. Besides a literature research to better understand the current state of research on the topic ideas, interviews experiments and user-testings were entirely unique to the thesis and conducted by the author himself.

Structure and Organization
The thesis follows a very clear and logical structure which is especially well done considering how messy an explorative a design process such as this one can be. Dividing the work into two parts (theoretical and practical) makes it easy to follow the thought-process and understand how the ideas and findings came to be.

Communication
The writing is personal and engaging as well as academic and professional, which makes for an informative read, which at the same time doesn’t feel boring or dry. The visual documentation perfectly supports the practical part and makes the experimental ideas and somewhat abstract concepts understandable. I feel like even someone who isn’t well-versed in the design world could follow the thought-process of the experiments.

Scope
The scope of the masters thesis seems appropriate and well balanced in terms of research and practical experiments. Creating three prototypes is quite a lot, which makes up for the fact that there is no „final Product“. Given that this is an experimental project that aimed to explore, rather than develop, this fits the scope and fulfills the goal of the thesis.

Accuracy and attention to detail
The language is easy to understand, mostly correct, conscience, clear and scientifically accurate. The experiments are nicely described and supported with photos and sketches. As already mentioned the structure is logical and detailed but not repetitive.

Literature
The thesis uses a good amount and range of literature aas well as own research and seems to be cited fairly correctly with clickable links which make deeper research more easy.

Overall I really enjoyed reading this thesis. It was interesting as well as informative and really nicely thought out. Especially considering that this is an under explored field the theoretical research felt thorough and gave a good understanding of the current state of research. Also considering this was written in 2015 it is quite impressive how well the situation and development of future smart technology was assessed. It also had a clear goal leading through the thesis despite being explorative and experimental.

by victoria.bremer - 29. June 2025

Blogpost #4.1 – Material Engagement

In the following blogpost I want to further discuss some research I did on the other two topics I find interesting.

The first one is going to be material engagement and making. Just a few days ago I was once again reminded how enriching and important crafting, creating and working with your hands can be. While out with a friends w spontaneously stumbled upon someone who asked us if we wanted to learn pottery because he was just about to get out all the supplies and work on some pottery. We proceeded to do this most of the afternoon, and had a great time, this being one of the most relaxing and at the same time energizing and creative afternoons in a long time. It made me reflect about the creative process in general (not just pottery) especially In the sense of valuing process over product, attitudes towards learning new things and patience. While I obviously cant generalize this for everyone I thinks safe to say that this brings joy to a lot of people and can be beneficial in many ways. Science also backs this: A study from 2017 found, that engagement in making and diy activities was associated with subjective well-being. [1]

For this topic I think it would be interesting to explore how physical making (manual skill, tactile engagement) can support well-being, and how interaction design can encourage these practices in an increasingly digital-first world. This world has become all about efficiency, frictionlessness, optimization and convenience. Physical craft offers a stark contrast to this, often being messy, slow, and unpredictable. But I would argue that with this comes creativity and exploration that the efficiency of the modern, digital world doesn’t allow.
Physical craft demands patience, intention, and a tolerance for imperfection. But maybe that’s exactly what makes it so rewarding. Slowness here isn’t a flaw, it’s a feature. It invites reflection, presence, and exploration. This mindset of embracing friction and resisting hyper-efficiency is a insight for interaction design. What would it mean to design interfaces that don’t streamline everything, but instead encourage focus, mindfulness, or even a bit of struggle? Could intentional “inconvenience” become a tool for supporting well-being?

A project that explored a slow approach and the physicality of things was the „photobox“. Taking pictures has to be one of the most intensely transformed things over the past few years. We have gone from being restricted to only a few photos per film, having to physically develop them, taking days or weeks to see results, to being able to take thousands of photos any where any time. Photobox is a“slow technology” prototype that regularly prints small batches of randomized Flickr photos over several months and provides them in a physical form, rather that a digital archive:

„Our study provided a glimpse into how long term deployments of slow technologies can open unique opportunities to explore designing for anticipation, mindfulness and reflection. It has clear links to ongoing initiatives exploring how more enduring forms of technology can be designed and how this might shape people’s (or future generations’) experience over time. On a broader level, we see our study as a case building on and expanding prior research, articulating how embracing values alternative to the more dominant focus of efficiency and usability can critically nurture and expand future research in the HCI.“ [3]

This example discussed the role of materiality, however this was in a passive way. Another aspect that can be considered her is the „making“. Research in embodied making* shows that physical engagement with materials activates emotional memory and supports decision-making. This means that crafting isn’t just therapeutic, it’s a cognitive and emotional part of the design process. For interaction design, this this can be a new view on how we design experiences and interfaces (not prioritizing speed or efficiency, but inviting people to engage physically and emotionally with the process) [2, 4].

*Embodied making refers to the idea that thinking, learning, and understanding happen through the body—not just the brain. In the context of craft or design, it means that we think with our hands just as much as with our heads.

[1] Kaimal, Girija, Kelsey Ray, and Juan Muniz. 2017. “Cultural Efficacy and Subjective Well-Being: A Mixed Methods Study with Participants of a Community-Based Arts Program.” Journal of Happiness Studies 19 (6): 1783–1801. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-017-9866-x.

[2] Rosner, Daniela K., and Kimiko Ryokai. 2012. “ReCrafting Craft: Craftsmanship, Computing and Culture.” In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’12), 1233–42. https://doi.org/10.1145/2399016.2399115.

[3] Odom, William, Ron Wakkary, and Youn-kyung Lim. 2014. “Designing for Slowness, Anticipation and Re-Visitation: A Long-Term Field Study of the Photobox.” Proceedings of the 32nd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1961–70. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266655557.

[4] Nimkulrat, Nithikul. 2012. “Hands-On Intellect: Integrating Craft Practice into Design Research.” Doctoral diss., Aalto University. https://aaltodoc.aalto.fi/server/api/core/bitstreams/72d9699a-7c47-4fa1-a89f-0babdf951c25/content.

Blogpost #4.2 – Communication

The second topic I want to look at is the future of communication. I’ve often found myself overwhelmed by the pace and text-heavy nature of digital interaction. Whether it’s the pressure to respond instantly or the amount of notifications, modern communication has become hyper-efficient and fast paced, often at the cost of emotional well-being. Instead of creating meaningful connection, our tools tend to cause distraction and fatigue.

This made me wonder: what would communication feel or look like if it wasn’t optimized for speed and visibility, but for quality, presence, and emotional interaction? Could we design communication tools that are more ambient, multisensory, and respectful of our attention and natural rhythms (nobody can have a conversation with 14 people at once, yet thats pretty much what we’re doing online)? Future interaction design concepts should integrate emotion, movement, and sensation, not just visual and verbal information. This means alternative communication models that go beyond the screen and keyboard [1].

A project that explores this idea is „Ambient Telephony“, a system designed to enhance social presence in the home through subtle audio-visual cues. Instead of rings or buzzers, they used ambient lighting changes and soft audio (no screen, no intrusive alert) to indicate incoming calls. The goal was to foster a gentle awareness of loved ones trying to reach out, without demanding immediate reaction or forceful attention. [2]

In the same way physical crafting can make us to slow down and engage more, communication technologies can be reimagined to encourage reflection, empathy, and presence.

[1] Borkowski, Stanislaw, Thibaud Flury, Anne Gerodolle, and Gilles Privat. 2008. “Ambient Communication and Context-Aware Presence Management.” In Constructing Ambient Intelligence, edited by Max Mühlhäuser, Alois Ferscha, and Erwin Aitenbichler, 391–396. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol. 11. Berlin: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-85379-4_44

[2] Härmä, Aki, Pavan Dadlani, Boris de Ruyter, and Jorge Peregrin Emparanza. 2009. “Ambient Telephony: Designing a Communication System for Enhancing Social Presence in Home Mediated Communication.” Proceedings of CHI 2009, 899–908. https://doi.org/10.1145/1518701.1518884