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By examining mobility in remote Arctic areas, we analyze how challenging environmental conditions, while affecting technology performance, evoke people's creativity and efforts as technology users. Based on historical materials and ethnographic observations of user inventiveness in the transport sector in the Russian North, we define and document a phenomenon of "proximal design" in three different modes: the proximal complementation of "distant design" machines (trucks and military equipment) to ascertain their reliability; the emergence of a new type of homemade all-terrain vehicle called a "karakat," made from salvaged parts to specialize in times and locations where other vehicles turn unreliable; and the traditional craft of sledge-making by nomadic reindeer herders of the Yamal area, where even materials are proximally collected and shaped. Our main argument is that continuous tuning, modification, and redesign of technology carried out by immediate users in situ make it possible for humans and machines to function in extreme settings and that this can lead also to emergence of enduring design principles. We outline key characteristics of proximal design such as constraining environment, inventiveness by necessity, flexible construction, personalization and symbolic meaning, and social embeddedness of making/maintaining practices.

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This chapter discusses the potential of design research and education practice to contribute to Polar/Arctic tourism studies. With the geographical reference to the Russian Far North, it is explored what involves in being a human in severe environmental conditions, and what kind of design, clothing, dwelling, transportation it fosters. As a key argument, a perspective is developing of the arctic tourism as an embodied way of (short-term) living in the extreme environment. The discussion is continued by outlining the design approach to Arctic tourism development and based on existing variety of tourism resources in the Russian North two modes of their representation by design -static and dynamic -are suggested. Each mode is further illustrated with a case study of design projects conducted at the Arctic Design School, Yekaterinburg, Russia. To conclude, this chapter offers new ways of understanding and using design as a tool to respond to challenges and opportunities that today's Arctic uncovers not only for tourism, but also for other sectors of Arctic-based and oriented industry.

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