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- Frögård, Maja, 1985-
(författare)
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Negotiating Tensions : Designers’ responsibilities in democratic entanglements
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis concerns the roles and responsibilities of designers when we design workshops with democratic ambitions. Reflecting on my experiences from making co-design workshops for citizen participation to support sustainable urban development in municipal planning processes, I inquire into designers’ societal entanglements and explore these from democratic, social, political and designerly perspectives. Designing workshops in municipal planning processes made me curious about the diverse interpretations and practices of democracy. Seeking to make sense of my role in relation to these, I trace intertwinements between design and democracy. I reflect on how industrial designers’ roles are historically entangled with market-driven relations, formed by production and consumption. I also look at how political theory and philosophy articulate tensions within democracy, and criticise neoliberal political rationality for erasing the tension between democracy and capitalism. As designers are entangled in past and present relations affecting our roles and practices, we are affected by, but also influence, what we engage with. Designers who engage with democratic concerns navigate these tensions and thus affect how democracy is practiced. My inquiry into these perspectives led me to argue for designers’ responsibilities and for the need to reorient our practices to respond to democratic issues. Responsibilities need to be articulated in relation to tensions, as well as from within our practices; tensions can help us consider how we orient our practices – in relation to whom, what and where we design. As our relations also form our response-abilities, these reorientations also reshape our abilities to respond in practice, critically and carefully. I propose three concerns to support designers, design students and design researchers in orienting their practices, arguing that it is important to reflect on the concerns of entanglements, tensions, and responsibilities. These concerns focus on designers’ potential of making, on tentatively engaging with and curiously proposing things. My contribution and making of theory are thus for designers to make sense of and take responsibility for in relations shaped through our own particular practices.
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| 2. |
- Westerlund, Bo, 1951-
(författare)
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Design Space Exploration : co-operative creation of proposals for desired interactions with future artefacts
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis critically reflects on co-operative design workshops that I have conducted. The basic method used in these workshops draws on the participants’ embodied knowing. In the over twenty workshops that are analysed here a wide range of participants have been involved: family members, employees, persons with disabilities, and other stakeholders like manufacturers, service providers and civil servants. The topics have varied, but they have mostly been related to ICT products and services. Most of the workshops were conducted within various research projects. In order to analyse this diverse range of workshops I use several different theories and concepts. I articulate and analyse the design aspects of the activities by using established design theories and concepts. The conceptual tool design space, meaning all possible design proposals, is used for understanding the design process. I also use theories from other fields in order to analyse three different aspects of the workshops: the participants’ activities, the designers’ responsibility, and the process. To analyse the way that the participants co-operatively create knowledge, theories of interpersonal actions are used; to analyse the work done by the designer/conductor, theories of frames are used; and to analyse the process, the theory of actualisation and realisation is used. During the workshops the participants co-operatively make scenarios, props and video prototypes in order to create proposals for desired interactions with future artefacts. Contributions include accounts of critical situations during the workshops and suggested strategies for dealing with them. Some implications are relevant to the design field in general, for example the importance of a process where the participants trust each other, learn from each other and work effectively with difficult issues by creating multiple proposals that facilitate understanding of the design space. I also offer arguments about why it is better to see activities, props and prototypes as mainly constitutive rather than as only representative. Video prototypes on DVD and seven publications are included in the thesis.
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