Pace Layer Prototyping

Abstract

(audio jack, control wheel, buttons, and screen) was unchanged. Research products often seek to both endure daily life in the wild and be open to emergent opportunities [4,5]. To these ends, pace layer prototyping is a way to design layers of a prototype with different material (and immaterial) affordances to change, while maintaining a necessary degree of stability. Each layer requires different kinds of work and tools to make change, which can be manipulated by design. The Router of All Evil is a commercial Linksys router that has been hacked open, then relaid out and made stable on an acrylic backplate. The design principally has two pliable layers: The pegboard at the top presents the possibility of changing the hardware of the router, where components and panels can be easily reconfigured with the guidance of Bill Gaver and Andy Boucher. This was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Design Star Centre for Doctoral Training.