The Aesthetics of Beauty in Digital Innovation: Toward a New Design Theory

• Digital artefacts are designed for swift and easy consumption, highlighting aspects such as intuition-of-use, efficiency and efficacy. We posit that this dominating design paradigm in essence subjugates the users into a pattern of use that is corrosive, infantilizing, and sub-optimal given the increasing scope of the digital. If digital is increasingly pervasive, there is a need for a more nuanced design theory. This conceptual study analyzes the dominating design paradigm from the perspective of beauty, highlighting direct deviations and offering novel design principles chosen to counter-act an existing paradigm of utility and ushering in a new. We identify the design principles of veiling, injury and disaster as a basis for a new design theory of digital innovation and discuss this from the perspective of future research and existing theory.

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Data- och informationsvetenskap -- Systemvetenskap, informationssystem och informatik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Computer and Information Sciences -- Information Systems (hsv//eng)

Keyword

digital innovation

design

beauty

aesthetics

Publication and Content Type

vet (subject category)

kon (subject category)