Dr Michael Stead, Professor Paul Coulton, Violet Owen, Tom Macpherson-Pope 

The ‘Fixing the Future’ project is investigating the limitations of the Right-to-Repair legislation which does not account for the repair of ‘smart’ Internet of Things (IoT) devices whose unsustainable disposal actively contributes to electronic waste and material scarcity. A collaboration between researchers from Design (Imagination), Technology Law (Edinburgh) and Computing (Nottingham and Edinburgh Napier), the 2 year £1.2M project examines how IoT devices lack of repairability impacts environmental sustainability, social inclusion and cybersecurity across communities.  

Using the notion of a future high street ‘Repair Shop 2049’ as its lens, the Imagination team has been working with project partner The Making Rooms, Blackburn’s community digital fabrication lab, to run Co-design workshops with citizen, policy and industry stakeholders. The insights have been embodied into a range of Speculative Design artefacts and frameworks which highlight the need localised IoT repair ecosystems.