Expressive Iteration: Designing for Meaningful Routines

Iteration is an integral part of daily routines, such as sleep-wake cycles, commuting, workouts, chores, or practising an instrument. While many iterations just monotonously repeat, others can lead to progression or evolution. With subtle variations among iterations, we can create meaning out of repetitive acts, forging narratives from them and thus making them meaningful to us. Chow draws on rhetoric, psychology, narratology, and design-thinking to show both in theory and in practice how we can innovate the design of mundane and routine activities to give them meaning and expression. He does so by examining Asian and European-originated examples, across a range of domains including visual arts, literature, digital art, video games, and mobile applications.