Critical design and critical theory: the challenge of designing for provocation (original) (raw)
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Critical design and critical theory
Proceedings of the Designing Interactive Systems Conference on - DIS '12, 2012
Constructive design research is a form of research where design activity is a central research activity. One type of constructive design research is critical design, which seeks to disrupt or transgress social and cultural norms. Critical design's advocates have turned to critical theory as an intellectual resource to support their approach. Interestingly, critical design processes remain under-articulated in the growing design research literature. In this paper, we first explain why critical design is so hard to describe as a design practice or process. We then describe two critical design case studies we undertook and the effects we observed them having when place in the field. After sharing our breakdowns and breakthroughs along the way, we offer reflections on designing for provocativeness, the value of deep relationships between researchers and research participants, and the need to plan for and go with a fluid and emergent research plan-with the goal of helping clarify critical design as an approach.
Critical Design as critique of the design status quo
2013 DEFSA Conference Proceedings, 2013
Contemporary design practice (and theory) is growing up. There is evidence to support the emergence of a new breed of designer who is able to reflect on her or his role in society, and to be critical of what they make and what the resultant consequences of that may be. Design is often used as a vehicle to criticise and comment on issues, highlight problems and shortcomings in society, and present views and perspectives. This suggests that design is at a distance and impartial, but the truth is otherwise. Design is ideological and an expression of the values mediated by the designer and commissioned by others. This is the status quo: affirmative design. When design steps away from this position and critiques itself, critical design is the result. Presenting alternative perspectives and reflecting on the role of design is its purpose. This paper will address this emerging phenomenon that originated in product design, and the discourse extant to the work of Dunne and Raby. By identifying the characteristics of critical design and visualising the pathways, processes and consequences that distinguish it from affirmative design, the paper will argue that design practices, other than product design, can be scrutinised according to this model. Furthermore the virtues of the designer’s authorial voice will be extolled as reflexive of this and necessary to establishing a culture of design critique, and to positioning critical design as an integral, important and necessary part of design discourse.
Critical design ethnography: Designing for change
Anthropology & …, 2004
This article describes critical design ethnography, an ethnographic process involving participatory design work aimed at transforming a local context while producing an instructional design that can be used in multiple contexts. Here, we reflect on the opportunities and challenges that emerged as we built local critiques then reified them into a designed artifact that has been implemented in classrooms all over the world. [critical ethnography, participatory design, action research, instructional design]
A comparative review of Critical Design and its relation to mass-market products
MA Curating Contemporary Design 2 "The job of critical designers is to be thorns in the side of politicians and industrialists, as well as partners for scientists or consumer advocates, while stimulating discussion and debate about the social, cultural and ethical future implications of decisions about technology made today." 1 Critical design applies to objects that, as evidence in new methodologies and 'new' values, are so articulate that they effect real changes in the way people think and behave. It focuses on studying the impact and possible consequences of new technologies and policies, of worldwide social and environmental trends, as well as outlining new goals and areas of interest for designers. It attacks the philosophies of contemporary consumer culture and undermines the default notion of design as an affirmative, commercially-oriented practice. As a discipline is extends the cultural agencies of product design and has, within this context, been prominent in the evolution of critical applications within product design. This essay aims to identify the different spectrums of critical design practice and discuss the relationship between these practices and the mass market of product design. Firstly it will look at recent and forthcoming events, exhibitions, and institutional practices which are currently happening in the realms of design in order to establish where critical design has positioned itself in 2012. Secondly, it will identify with the design firm Dunne & Raby and designer Jurgen Bey exploring their use of the term critical design in relation to their practice and the mass market of product design.
Difficult Forms: Critical practices of research and design
Proceedings of the IASDR Conference on Design Research, 2007
As a kind of 'criticism from within', conceptual and critical design inquire into what design is about – how the market operates, what is considered 'good design', and how the design and development of technology typically works. Tracing relations of conceptual and critical design to (post-)critical architecture and anti-design, we discuss a series of issues related to the operational and intellectual basis for 'critical practice', and how these might open up for a new kind of development of the conceptual and theoretical frameworks of design. Rather than prescribing a practice on the basis of theoretical considerations, these critical practices seem to build an intellectual basis for design on the basis of its own modes of operation, a kind of theoretical development that happens through, and from within, design practice and not by means of external descriptions or analyses of its practices and products.
Design and Dissensus: Framing and Staging Participation in Design Research
Design Philosophy Papers, 2013
A range of alternative formulations of design, such as ‘social’, ‘activist’, ‘critical’, ‘relational’, ‘humanitarian’ design, are amassing.[1] Instead of focusing on form and function, such formulations typically focus on what design produces. At stake in the social turn within design is reconsideration of what design is about – not in terms of its objects but, and perhaps even more fundamentally, its subjects. Further, contemporary design oriented toward the public realm in multiple contexts involves a diversity of possible subjects and political subjectivities. ‘Participation’ has been an approach to addressing social questions in design. Participation has been linked, for example, to “a mindset and attitude about people” [2] and a kind of ‘design humanism’ aimed at reducing domination,[3] which meets the human ideal of mutual support for altruism, a ‘collective instinct of humanity’.[4] In a range of associated projects and practices in recent years, methodologies have been applied to involve more or different people directly in product development processes. Indeed, participation may itself be seen as the objective of design processes.[5] Concern, however, often tends towards methods for improving design objects, with certain questions about its subjects left under-examined or posed in overly general and loaded terms that might be further interrogated. In this paper, we query participation in design in order to discuss some of the problematics of relating to ‘others’ in practices of design and design research. We argue, as do other design thinkers, for practices involving “micro-political participation in the production of space”,[6] in which design frames and stages the (re)production of social as well as spatial relations. We argue for increased reflexivity about how others participate in design and the political implications. Here, ‘the political’ refers to the issue of who is identified and represented as a subject in studies and practices of design. Concerned with the social organization of everyday life, the design role is always engaged with “confrontation of power relations and influence by the identification of new terms and themes for contestation and new trajectories for action”.[7]
Libro de Actas - Systems & Design: Beyond Processes and Thinking (IFDP - SD2016), 2016
Historically the imaginary and the hegemonic thinking, in the Western globe north, has been marked by the epistemology and capitalists archetypes. Notwithstanding the design seem as a practice and discipline shielded on a simplistic discourse of functional / communicative efficiency, wandering through by multiple aestheticism apparently neutral in relation to the symbolic, but in fact they never are, because what really hapens is that the aesthetic appearance of the generated forms will always be a review of the powers ruling. We start from the understanding that the act of creating an aesthetic artifact, will also be a movement of inscription in a discursive platform (that precedes it), is in itself an narrative act and that fact represent a certain take place in relation to certain symbolic reality. On reflection shown if it sees design as a discipline and / or an instrument of action, whose operational relevance tends to question and simultaneously rehearsing a response, in which more than why interests answer to why. Apparently the design is a content mediator, but also, it is structure, is body, is idea. We think a design praxis as discipline and enrollment tool of critical thought and social transformation. For guiding research in this text, we propose the following question: Can the Design want for themselves an engagement with the symbolic in order to be an active part in the production of critical thinking in the place where it belongs? Methodologically our argument will be present in two differents moments: 1. a first, exploratory nature where we rescue the draw issues in the practice of design and 2. a second analytical nature concerning the subject issues (graphic and / or utility) design and how it incorporates formal rites, political events and social practices of contemporary everyday life. We consider the praxis of design as a discipline and critical thinking enrollment tool as agents of social transformation. With this study we seek for contribute phenomenology design by studying the artifacts of configuration as well as the possible messages they convey and what impact they may have on the social network.
Thinking about Design: Critical Theory of Technology and the Design Process
In this chapter we offer a framework for thinking about the design of technology. Our approach draws on critical perspectives from both social theory and science and technology studies (STS). We understand design to be the process of consciously shaping an artifact to adapt it to specific goals and environments. Our framework conceptualizes design as a process whereby technical and social considerations converge to produce concrete devices that fit specific contexts. How this happens – and the possibility that it might happen differently – is a crucial point for philosophers and other students of technology to consider. To date, design studies have been focused predominantly on the work of what we might call proximate designers, while work in the field of STS has focused on the role of non-designers such as clients, stakeholders, and other socially relevant groups. However, little attention has been paid to ways in which historical choices and cultural assumptions about technology shape the design process. Our goal is to address this oversight. We begin by posing a seemingly simple question: is design intentional? A review of the literature draws our attention to at least three possible levels of analysis: that of proximate designers, the immediate design environment, and broader society. We then present a critical theory of technology that provides a non-deterministic, non-essentialist approach to the study of technology. We argue that critical theory, with its emphasis on examining taken-for-granted assumptions, offers a theoretical space for thinking differently about design. Finally, we discuss the possibilities opened up by critical theory and some of the obstacles that stand in the way of realizing a richer world of design.
What is "Critical" About Critical Design?
Critical design is a research through design methodology that foregrounds the ethics of design practice, reveals potentially hidden agendas and values, and explores alternative design values. While it seems to be a timely fit for today's socially, aesthetically, and ethically oriented approaches to HCI, its adoption seems surprisingly limited. We argue that its central concepts and methods are unclear and difficult to adopt. Rather than merely attempting to decode the intentions of its originators, Dunne and Raby, we instead turn to traditions of critical thought in the past 150 years to explore a range of critical ideas and their practical uses. We then suggest ways that these ideas and uses can be leveraged as practical resources for HCI researchers interested in critical design. We also offer readings of two designs, which are not billed as critical designs, but which we argue are critical using a broader formulation of the concept than the one found in the current literature.