Design anthropologist.
Urban digitalization, emerging technologies, participatory and speculative approaches to design.
About
I’m Johanna Ylipulli, an interdisciplinary scholar at University of Vaasa, where I’m working as an associate professor of communication studies. My focus area is digital media, digital economy and green transition. At the core of my work is the question of how critically oriented anthropological thinking – with its capability to challenge normative structures and self-evident “truths” – can be successfully combined with design research and technology development. I’m driven by the view that ethnography and anthropology provide perspectives which can help us to create more sustainable, diverse, and socially inclusive urban futures.
The roots of my research and teaching work lie in humanities and social sciences as I’m trained as cultural anthropologist with a focus on media. Since 2010, I have extended my expertise towards design and human-computer interaction (HCI), becoming a disciplinary hybrid and a specialist in design anthropology and third wave HCI. I’m specialized in emerging technologies and urban contexts and have extensively studied how technologically augmented urban environments and digital city services are designed and managed, and how they shape our lives. Further, I have contributed to participatory and speculative design approaches by combining anthropological perspectives with design in empirical and theoretical work.
Currently I act as a leader of DISC project, funded by the Research Council of Finland, and co-leader in Trust-M project, funded by the Strategic Research Council of Finland. I teach courses such as interaction design and supervise students on all study levels.
DISC-project
The project studies urban digitalization and smart city development with the concept of digital inequalities, referring here to disparities in citizens’ digital capability including access, use and understanding. The project is executed in collaboration with Helsinki and Espoo, the two largest cities of Finland. It is based on design anthropological approach meaning that it produces new knowledge but also new ideas, concepts, and applications.
The project produces new knowledge on how city inhabitants experience digital inequality in cities that are executing urban digitalization intensively and are building smart city districts. Secondly, it explores profound ways to enhance digital equality; i.e. it searches for new ways and principles for creating smart cities.
What’s new
