Who Designs our
(digital)(next)(uncanny)(interfacing)
Lifeworlds?
Praxis↭theory Seminars at the Hildesheim Faculty of Design Examine Current Interface Cultures and their Opaque Spheres of Production
Qualitative Design Research and Critical Design Praxistheory at the Nexus of Culture, Interfaces, and Strategy at the M.A. Gestaltung program Faculty of Design, HAWK University of Applied Sciences and Arts (Hildesheim, Germany)
Lea Kutschke & Geraldine Kutschke: „Sun Protection Behavior: Adolescence and Young Adults – A methodological Examination of Cultural Probes“ [German Design Graduate Award]
This MA thesis investigates adolescents’ and young adults’ sun-protection practices through design-ethnographic, exploratory research centered on Cultural Probes. Positioned within research through design, the project treats design not merely as an output but as an epistemic instrument: the researchers themselves intervene in the field by conceiving, designing, and iteratively adapting probe materials to elicit participants’ subjective experiences, moods, routines, and risk perceptions.
Methodologically, the study develops a qualitative cross-sectional design in which 25 vocational-school students received carefully crafted probe packages containing multiple creative tasks. These were explicitly not standardized instruments but open, fluid artefacts tailored to the research question, extending the classic Cultural-Probes repertoire. The approach aligns with participatory design and design ethnography, foregrounding ambiguity, surprise, and affect rather than representativeness, in order to surface latent motivations and everyday logics that conventional health research often overlooks.
Analysis follows a framework-analysis strategy, comparing cases and themes to translate ethnographic insights into design knowledge. Instead of producing a finished campaign, the project performs a deliberate transfer from research into design: visualizations and conceptual mappings synthesize behavioural determinants and barriers, positioning the findings as groundwork for future interventions and as a methodological contribution to probe-based design research itself.
Lea Kutschke & Geraldine Kutschke: Sonnenschutzverhalten: Adoleszenz und junge Erwachsenen – eine methodische Auseinandersetzung mit Cultural-Probes
This master’s thesis investigates how content strategies on TikTok can contribute to the visibility of artistic practice in jazz. Situating TikTok within the broader digital transformation of music cultures, the study examines how platform logics, algorithmic structures, and short-form video aesthetics reshape the conditions under which jazz musicians can present their work. Rather than focusing […]
This master’s thesis investigates how design can function as a research practice that makes knowledge in intercultural contexts visible and experientially accessible. Based on the project Concepts Trouvés, which examined English-language terms found in Beijing’s urban commercial landscape, the work reflects on how design ethnography and Research through Design can explicate implicit knowledge embedded in […]
This master’s thesis investigates how patriarchal structures and gender stereotypes are embedded in everyday products, spatial environments, and professional design processes. Combining feminist theory, sociological concepts such as Doing Gender, and contemporary design research, the project analyzes historical genealogies of gendered form, materiality, and usability while grounding these perspectives in an empirical user survey. The […]
