Interactions - March/April 2012

alignments in the life cycle of a device, and every object of design eventually has to become part of already existing ecologies of devices (in people’s already ongoing life worlds), be they digital, like computer applications and databases, or physical, like buildings, furniture, doors, books, tools, and vehicles. Hence, the beginning and end of a designed device are open and hardly ever constrained by the limits of the project. This points at the importance of understanding how design in a project is related to user/ stakeholder appreciation and appropriation, be it as adoption or redesign, and how users make it part of their life worlds and evolving ecologies of devices. Design might be thought of as constrained to a specific project with given objects of design, resources, timelines and specified outcomes, but since the final embodiment of the object of design is a thing, this thing opens up for unforeseen appropriation in use in already existing, evolving ecologies of devices.

Hence, strategies and tactics of design for use must also be open to appropriation or appreciation in use, after a project is finished, and treat this appropriation as a potential, specific kind of design. Krippendorff’s notion also implies that in design for use we should focus on the before of the project, the “procurement” process of aligning actants in a design project, and how objects of concern become a specific object of design. This may involve making explicit the often hidden performative “protocols of design,” initially setting the stage for design things and establishing the object of design [ 10, 12].

tism of John Dewey and the “thing politics” of Bruno Latour have been cornerstones for reflecting upon design as participation in collectives of humans and non-humans. Dewey’s position on controversial things and the public makes the project of drawing things together even more challenging. He argued that in fact the public is characterized by heterogeneity and conflict [ 13, 14]. It may be challenging enough to design for, by, and together with collectives of humans and non-humans in which common social objectives are already established, institutionalized, or at least within reasonable reach— socio-material things supported by relatively stable infrastructures. But the really demanding challenge is to design where no such thing seems to be within immediate reach, where no social community exists— in short, where a political community, a public characterized by heterogeneity and difference with no shared object of design, is in need of a platform or infrastructure. It’s not necessary to solve conflicts, but rather to constructively deal with disagreements—public controversies where heterogeneous design things can unfold and actors engage in alignments of their conflicting objects of design. Participation in the making of such things, and the relation between professional design and design activism, stands out as the ultimate challenge when we gather and collaborate in and around design things. This, we believe, is a major challenge to design thinking in general, as well as to more specific participative and user-centered approaches to drawing things together.

In Networks of Design: Proc. of the 2008 Annual International Conference, F. Hackney and J. Glynne, eds. VIV Minton, 2009. 2. Ehn, P., Agger Eriksen, M., Binder, T., Linde, P., Peterson, B., Niedenthal, S., Jacucci, G., Kuutti, K., De Michelis, G., Rumpfhuber, A., and Wagner, I. Opening the digital box for design work: Supporting performative interactions, using inspirational materials and configuring of place. In The Disappearing Computer, N. Streitz, A. Kameas, and I. Mavrommati, eds. Springer Verlag, 2007, 50-76. 3. Telier, A., Binder, T., De Michelis, G., Ehn, P., Linde, P., Jacucci, G., and Wagner, I. Design Things. MI T Press, Cambridge, MA, 2011. 4. Latour, B., and Weibel, P., eds. Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy (Catalog of the Exhibition at ZKM Karlsruhe). MI T Press, Cambridge, MA, 2005. 5. Schön, D. A. The Reflective Practitioner. Basic Books, New York, 1983. 6. Schön, D. A. Educating The Reflective Practitioner. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA, 1987. 7. Dewey, J. Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. Henry Holt, New York, 1969 [1938]. 8. Dewey, J. Art as Experience. Berkeley Publishing Group, New York, 1980 [1934]. 9. Simon, H. A. The Sciences of the Artificial. MI T Press, Cambridge, MA, 1976. 10. Pedersen, J. Protocols of research and design. Ph.D. thesis. Copenhagen: I T University, 2007. 11. Krippendorff, K. The Semantic Turn: A New Foundation for Design. Taylor & Francis Group, Boca Raton, FL, 2006. 12. Clark, B. Design as Sociopolitical Navigation. Ph.D. thesis. Odense: University of Southern Denmark, 2007. 13. Dewey, J. The Public and Its Problems. Henry Holt, New York, 1927. 14. Marres, N. Issues spark a public into being. In Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy (Catalog of the Exhibition at ZKM—Center for Art and Media—Karlsruhe, Mar. 20–Oct. 30, 2005), B. Latour and P. Weibel, eds. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2005, 208–217.

Controversial Things In our approach to drawing things together, the philosophical pragma-

ENDNOTES:

1. Latour, B. A cautious promethea? A few steps toward a philosophy of design (with special attention to Peter Sloterdijk). Keynote lecture.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR While A. Telier has been doing intensive research on interaction design and related areas for 20 years, the name is not known in the research community. Probably from a strong case of shyness, or some other form of psychological fragility, A. Telier has hidden behind a variety of pseudonyms. We know he has widely published and has frequently appeared in Aarhus and Malmö as Pelle Ehn; in Copenhagen he has also gone by the name of Thomas Binder. In Italy he is well known as Giorgio De Michelis, while in Wien he has adopted a feminine pseudonym: Ina Wagner. Moreover, in recent years he has augmented the confusion by creating new, younger aliases: In Sweden he has appeared as Per Linde, while between Finland and Italy he goes by Giulio Jacucci. This list is not complete, but it illustrates a behavior whose deep reasons merit attention. It seems A. Telier needs a multiplicity of personalities to deal with a complex subject like design by investigating and practicing it, as well as proposing different viewpoints on it, without being able to take a consistently uniform point of view.