DOI: 10.1145/3148000 COPYRIGHT HELD BY AUTHOR

internal process, supporting activity in the studio.

My aim was to use the image of the workbook to bring to RTD an issue that I haven’t yet resolved: I had taken the workbook to a meeting with one of our demand-reduction groups. It was unusual for us to show a workbook to respondents, though given the extended timescales of our research in relation to the schedule of this group, I thought it would be interesting to take along a document showing our research activity.

However, looking through the book
together was a slightly odd situation,
like taking an early draft of fiction to
people who recognize themselves in the
characters or dialogue. For example, a
page titled “The Champions” depicting
a rosette was a reflection on competition
and reward as a recurring feature of
sustainability programs. Elsewhere,
“Futures Tourism” reimagined wind-
turbine farms, with their associated
planning issues, as a future tourist
destination, represented here by
electricity-pylon spotters. The situation
was odd in several ways, partly tied to
anxiety about assuming authorship
of others’ accounts, partly due to the
seemingly insubstantial way in which
the images depicted deeply held beliefs
(though they were brought about by
anticipating the responses from these
unplanned readers). Though I would
argue, with conviction, for the rigor and
earnestness of our research approaches,
the depictions in workbooks necessarily
reduce the richness of our data to
support the accretion of detail into
design elements.

So why did I hope a retelling of this awkward episode would be useful?

While taking studio process into the
settings on which they were based
was somewhat uncomfortable, it was
also productive. First and foremost,
it supported me as a researcher in
thinking through the tensions of
treating the commitments of others
speculatively. This episode also
helped me consider how our practices
have rhythms where the action of
practice shifts, between letting others
provide accounts of their situations
and transformations of those accounts
into artifacts that speak for others.

And, I wonder, is there scope within our analytical accounts of practice to attend to these moments when our articulations come under pressure?

Tobie Kerridge is a lecturer and researcher based in the Department of Design at Goldsmiths, University of London.

→ [e-mail]
INTERACTIONS.ACM.ORG NOVEMBER–DECEMBER 2017 INTERACTIONS 7