The students based their work on contacts with a set of public service initiatives interested in developing their understanding of service design, Förnyelselabbet, Midnight Football, and Samordningsförbundet Centrala Östergötland. The task for each group was to find some aspect of the work of the public service initiative, where nomadic as a norm could lead to new service solutions. Field work, insights, concepts later led to four service prototyping sessions in each group.
One of the explorations was LocalEyez by Evan Palangio, where old cellphones are reused for refugees, through a designated organisation that adds certain software and apps giving refugees possibility to share information with each other. See LocalEyez — Service Design For Nomadic Refugees for a longer description. Another exploration was the Analogue Meeting Board by Gustav Thorslund.
The students also worked with a group of students at Beijing Institute of Technology together with associate professor Qi Luo, exchanging bits and pieces of understanding of the differences between expectations on societal systems, and structures of nomadism.
Storytelling about a nomadic issue
In parallel the students worked in pairs with storytelling about a nomadic issue they had found fascinating or interesting;
Sarah Glassner and Hanna Nordenö explored contrasts of interpretation of situations in their twitter Stories of Unsettlement @StoriesofN.
Malin Müller and Meike Remiger presents their storytelling in the following way “Beginning our research with two NGO-projects targeted to kids from segregated areas, we encountered pretty early a discrepancy in what the government is focusing on and what those kids need, in order to live "the good life“. The country is focusing on ensuring food, shelter, medical care and education, but listening to the perspectives of the NGOs it got clear, that what they saw, is missing: friendship, familiarity and belongingness.”
In their video you can also see part of an interactive textile used for prototyping. They want us to look beyond just existence and survival and focus on living, thriving and giving.
What makes a good life? | TouchTee from Meike Remiger on Vimeo.
Other student work from the service design course on nomadic welfare can be found here;
Caspar Reuterswärd and Yin He, The Darkness
Gustav Thorslund and Natasha Azam, collected stories from young migrants showcasing how they experienced welfare systems in Sweden.
Storytelling Project Website UI Wireframes Prototyping from Natasha azam on Vimeo.
Menno van Jarwaarde and Ola Karlsson: Digital Nomadism: Fairy Tale or Nightmare.
