Investigating how we can define and foster a healthy relationship between people, the internet and things through the ethos of craft
hiCraft was a 38 month AHRC funded project (completed in Feburary 2025), exploring healthier ways to live with IoT using craft as a methodological and practical lens. hiCraft spoke to concerns about trust, bias and the lack of transparency around data use, focusing on IoT. The investigation seeks to define and foster a healthy relationship between people, the internet and smart technologies using craft approaches.
The central ethos that this research seeks to embody is defined by craft practices and notions of:
Localism & Provenance (Focusing on the locally attuned, not global ubiquity and recognising the value of knowing where things come from)
Personalisation & Bespokeness (Aiming at the particular, rather than the general)
Materiality & Embodiment (The importance of material engagement as a way of knowing and the significance of our somatic/physical/bodily experiences)
Lived experience (Thinking and doing being tethered to lived experience and the insights gained through the physical engagement with something – living with and through things).
Authenticity (Valuing ‘honesty’ in terms of both material expression and explicit function)
Care (Expressed as both careful skilled making and as a political act/position).
Active (Championing active creation over passive consumption).
Sensitive Responsiveness (Recognition of the unpredictability, complexity or messiness of a situation and the potential to improvise, being responsive rather than interventionist.