Making Tactful Objects for Sensitive Settings: A Research through Design Process

• This contribution illustrates the Research through Design process of Mr.V the Spaceman, a tactful object meant to support families of children with cancer maintain a healthy domestic life during stressful times. By recounting insights from the field and unfolding changes to the original artifact over a period of two years, the paper illuminates how an understanding of tactfulness has emerged and developed into a key design quality for this work. This complex and entangled process of making is surfaced and illustrated by a rich and scrupulous annotation of the artisanal craft and technological explorations that led from the original Mr.V prototype to what is now Mr.V the Spaceman.

Subject headings

HUMANIORA  -- Konst -- Design (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Arts -- Design (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Childhood Cancer

Objects with Intent

Research Through Design

Sensitive Settings

Tactful Objects

Tactfulness

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)