Design as a thing: how designers make up design as an object in human-centred design practices

Design as a thing: how designers make up design as an object in human-centred design practice

Rethinking design: from the methodology of innovation to the object of design

The design literature theorizes design as the methodology of innovation, supposedly required for mediating the world’s separate entities, such as theory and practice, the human and the material, and subjective and objective knowing, coming “naturally” with the designer’s ways of knowing. But instead of taking such naturalizations for granted, we argue that through such positioning of design the specifics of design activity are obscured, along with the locations designers take within them. We propose that “design as a methodology” is an object produced by design. Investigating this object of design, and how it is made, will make visible what design activity is, and what locations the designers take within them.<br

Tracing the tensions surrounding understandings of agency and knowledge in technology design

The literature suggests that prevailing understandings of the makeup of design knowledge and agency in producing design knowledge in technology is not helpful for design processes and its practitioners. Tensions arise within processes of designing, when design knowledge is understood as objective, whilst subjectivity is experienced in the research methods employed. In the same time, knowledge production is pursued in an individualist manner, where the situated nature of knowing as an interplay of factors, likely reaching beyond personal traits and human intention, is not acknowledged. In this way, design processes are currently working against their inherent potential with likely effects on designers and subsequently design outcomes. The arising tensions cause issues for practitioners, who are stuck in between an objectivity demand and experienced subjectivity, without an alternative conception of their work. Practice-oriented conceptualisations of social dynamics, how things are, and come to be, as well as existing research in consumption practices and sustainable design, have shown that agency and knowing conceptualised as emerging from practice might reconcile this tension. It is therefore that we argue for a reconceptualization of the makeup of knowledge and agency in knowledge production, so that these advancements in conceptualising practices can be of service to the technology design discipline

Highlighting issues in current conceptions of user experience design through bringing together ideas from HCI and social practice theory

A socio-technical reconceptualisation of use, and the active roles of the material and users in design prompt us to question professional designers’ roles and agencies within the wider realm of social (re)production. This paper focuses on bringing together key concepts of UX design and theories of practice, and pointing out some challenges that lie ahead of professional designers in the conception of their work. Theories used in HCI and historical legacies of production models may limit a full conception of ‘experience’ – or a locating of the social ‘motor’– that can bring change about, as well as ‘hide’ other factors that make up professional design. We argue that there are limitations with current theories underlying design practice, and that the commonly conceived concept of agency in design and use, and the ontological place allocations of the professional designer and the user in the mechanisms of social (re)production need to be revisited. An investigation of professional designing as a social practice can serve the purpose to illustrate alternative conceptions of agency in professional designing, and help designers to be more aware of the social dynamics in their work