Heather Wiltse

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I am currently Assistant Professor at Umeå Institute of Design, Umeå University (Sweden). My interdisciplinary research centers around trying to understand and critique the role of (digital) things in experience and society in ways that can inform design, and it sits at the intersection of design studies, philosophy of technology, and critical technology studies. I have published and/or presented refereed work in philosophy of technology, science and technology studies, human-computer interaction (HCI), and design research.

My recent book Changing Things: The Future of Objects in a Digital World is published by Bloomsbury in September 2018. It investigates and articulates what has become of things as computational processes, dynamic networks, and contextual customisation now emerge as factors as important as form, function, and material were for designing, using, and understanding objects in an industrial age.

Selected Recent Publications

Johan Redström and Heather Wiltse. 2019. Changing Things: The Future of Objects in a Digital World. London: Bloomsbury. https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/changing-things-9781350004351/

Heather Wiltse. 2017. Mediating (infra)structures: Technology, media, environment. In Postphenomenology and Media: Essays on Human-Media-World Relations. Ed. Yoni Van Den Eede, Stacey Irwin, and Galit Wellner. Lexington Books (an imprint of Rowman and Littlefield).

Heekyoung Jung, Heather Wiltse, Mikael Wiberg, and Erik Stolterman. 2017. Metaphors, Materialities, and Affordances: Hybrid Morphologies in the Design of Interactive Artifacts. Design Studies 53: 24–46. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2017.06.004.

Diane P. Michelfelder, Galit Wellner, and Heather Wiltse. 2017. Designing differently: Toward a methodology for an ethics of feminist technology design. In The Ethics of Technology: Methods and Approaches. Ed. Sven Ove Hansson. London: Rowman and Littlefield.

Heather Wiltse, Monica Lindh Karlsson, Kristina Lindström, Aditya Pawar, and Åsa Ståhl. 2016. Non-local situations: Speculating about future response-abilities of postindustrial design (research). Conversation presented at DRS 2016. https://www.drs2016.org/538

Johan Redström and Heather Wiltse. 2015. Press Play: Acts of defining (in) fluid assemblages. In Proceedings of Nordes 2015: Design Ecologies. http://www.nordes.org/opj/index.php/n13/article/view/432/407

Heather Wiltse. 2015. On being turned inside out. Interactions 22 (3): 20-21. http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=2767137.2744710

Heather Wiltse, Erik Stolterman, and Johan Redström. 2015. Wicked interactions: (On the necessity of) reframing the ‘computer’ in philosophy and design. Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 19 (1): 26-49.
http://dx.doi.org/10.5840/techne201531926

Lorenzo Davoli, Heather Wiltse, and Johan Redström. 2015. Trojans & drones: Materializing possibilities for transforming industrial infrastructures. In Proceedings of the 2nd Biennial Research Through Design Conference, 25-27 March 2015, Cambridge, UK, Article 29. http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1328010

Heather Wiltse. 2014. Unpacking digital material mediation. Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 18 (3): 154-182.
http://dx.doi.org/10.5840/techne201411322