Everyday Electronics is an atelier (aka platform) being run by Chris Hand for final year BDes Product Design students at Napier University in Edinburgh.
The main theme of this atelier is Our Relationships with Electronic Devices in Everyday Life, and how examining and unpicking these might provide us with a territory to explore.
When electronic devices become everyday objects our relationships with them — and through them — develop in subtle and complex ways. Meanwhile the emotional and irrational aspects of being human often contrast sharply, or even conflict with, the functioning of electronic devices and systems.
Our exploration of these themes will combine the practical, critical and contextual.
Practical – A key aspect of working in this group will be thinking through making, in the context of prototyping, hacking, deconstructing and re-purposing electronic objects. Electronics and programming skills will be developed through a series of short intensive workshops throughout the year, but it is essential that you are willing to show initiative and take responsibility for acquiring whatever skills you need, both as a group and as individuals.
Critical – Does being a designer of electronic devices make you complicit in the conspiracies of built-in obsolescence and conspicuous consumption, or are there ways in which you might use design to pose questions and to critique the status quo, rather than simply to sell widgets?
Contextual – Many of the emerging designer-makers working with electronic objects are active in social/political contexts outside of the mainstream: device art, device activism, open source, hacking and so on. The context in which you choose to operate and the values you adopt will contribute to how you define yourself as a designer.
This atelier and blog “Everyday Electronics” has no affiliation or connection with the hobby magazine of the same name, except that I used to read it as a kid and it helped me to start learning about electronics.
