We examine a vocabulary of affective language, borrowed from Roland Barthes’ “A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments,” and its applicability to discourse describing smartphone attachment. This vocabulary, adopted from four of Barthes’ terms, waiting, dependency, anxiety, and absence, is used as a discursive lens to illustrate some of the many ways people understand and engage with their relationships to their smartphones. Based on this, a survey is conducted, and a speculative technology probe is created in the form of an instrumented pillow for people to lock away their smartphones during the night. The pillow is deployed in a diary study in which five people sleep with their phone locked away for multiple nights. The self-reported and observed behaviours are presented in a selection of vignettes. The results support the proposed discursive lens and suggest future interdisciplinary strategies to investigate how people relate to interactive technology, using a combined approach of literary theory and a technology probe supported by survey and study data.

Summary form only given, as follows. The complete presentation was not made available for publication as part of the conference proceedings. If the hellish events of 2020-2021 have left you feeling like the first stirrings of apocalypse are at long last come upon us, you clearly aren’t alone. But just what do we do with ourselves, here at the end of all things? What happens to us— psychically, emotionally, socially, politically—when we accept and internalize that events capable of ending human civilization as we’ve known it have already taken place, and that all we’re doing now is waiting for them to unfold in their fullest consequence? We’ll be touring some of the most common responses to this understanding—including the turn toward reactionary blood-and-soil nativism, the false comfort of left accelerationism, and the newly hegemonic rhetoric of “resilience”—before exploring what qualities might actually serve us best, as individuals and collectivities, as the epoch on which we’ve predicated our entire sense of being draws to its inevitable close. By developing the notion that there are capacities to which we have permanent recourse, no matter what else happens, this conversation will hopefully leave you feeling able to face the gathering darkness with grace and equanimity. And, hey, if the apocalypse fails to arrive on time, at least you’ll have a bunch of clever new things to say at parties.

Summary form only given, as follows. A complete record of the panel discussion was not made available for publication as part of the conference proceedings. Design theorist Matt Malpas suggests that critical design is “less about problem solving and more about problem finding.” Rather than offering solutions or efficiencies, critical designers develop projects that provide time and space to reflect on specific issues, most often problems related to technological progress. This creative practice can be integrated into the design workflow as a way of exploring and mitigating the potential social and environmental impacts of technological innovations. In this 90-minute workshop, participants will be introduced to critical design methods and apply them in small group projects to create speculative scenarios and objects-to-think-with that promote reflection on key topics in responsible innovation. The workshop will provide participants with skills that can be applied in their own research, design and innovation contexts.