Marie Skłodowska-Curie PhD fellow of DCODE Network working towards designing eco-social contracts as alternatives for the Terms of Service.
I am a PhD candidate of DCODE Network, an EU Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network, exploring design's response to digitalization. My PhD project 'designing alternatives for the Terms of Service (ToS)' falls within work package 4 'Democratic data governance'.
Following a research through design approach, I have been exploring how we can imagine alternative forms of relating with(in) planetary computing through 'designerly ways of reading' Terms of Service agreements. The design experiments I conducted through dialogue with feminist, posthuman, and decolonial theories form my design research program 'Relating design and/for/against Terms of Service'. My work is characterized with conceptual and metaphorical plays, materiality, embodiment, spatiality, temporality, and participation.
I have exhibited several explorations of my PhD research at international design venues such as Dutch Design Week and Southern Sweden Design Days. My PhD research has been published in Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, DRS Conference (2022, 2024), Nordes Conference (2023, 2025), Aarhus Decennial (2025), RSD Symposium (2024), and Hurricanes and Scaffoldings Artistic Research Symposium (2024).
I am supervised by Prof. Dr. Ylva Fernaeus (Umeå Institute of Design, UmArts, KTH), Prof. Dr. Johan Redström (University of Gothenburg - Academy of Art and Design), and Associate Professor Dr. Larissa Pschetz (University of Edinburgh - Design Informatics). During my PhD, I have completed secondments at University of Edinburgh (UK), Advanced Care Research Center (UK), Politecnico di Milano (ITA), and tuDelf (NL) and collaborated with Open Future (NL) and AMS (NL) together with several DCODE PhD fellows.
Background
I hold MSc. in entrepreneurship from Lund University (SE)(2010), and MSc. and Bachelor in industrial design from Middle East Technical University (TR) (2008, 2005). I have previously worked as a design entrepreneur (DK), lecturer in design (TR), and industrial designer (TR). I speak English, Danish, Turkish, and can read Swedish and Norwegian. I hold various national awards in Türkiye, including Design Turkey Good Design Award 2010.
Talk to me about
At UID, I haven't had any teaching responsibilities due to my grant agreement. However, between 2018-2021, I worked as a part-time lecturer across three design schools in Türkiye, METU, TOBB ETU, and TEDU. I taught the following courses:
Service Design
As part of my positions at METU and TOBB ETU, I developed one of the first courses in service design for industrial design students running for 12-14 weeks. Offered as an elective, the course combined theory with practice. The project work exploring UN's Sustainabile Development Goals in local contexts (such as sustainability issues and female experience at the university campus, and online education during COVID19) fostered peer learning through its collaborative design studio setup based on carefully constructed team structures. The courses were higly preferred and received appreciative feedback from participants.
Basic Design
I was part of the course responsible team at METU (4 lecturers, 4 research assistants) for the basic design studio offered to 1st year students that explored composition, form, and their relation to material in 2D, 2,5D, and 3D scales. We used materials like paper, carton, cardboard, clay, wire, and soap blocs (during COVID19).
Industrial design
I was part of the course responsible team at TEDU (2 lecturers) for this 3rd year design studio course where we explored product design with focus on interaction dynamics, scenario-building, personas / mindsets, as well as more complex systems issues.