I’m thinking of the presentation I’m giving in a week or so at
uxaustralia titled “A (very) short history of ambiguity”. Its related
to my PhD, and I need to be careful to hit the right tone as its not
an academic conference or audience.
ambiguity, as described in his book Communities of Practice. Rather
than talk about that now (and send you all away to the other talks
I wanted to muse on another big concept in Wenger’s theory:
reification. Wenger says that “in reification we project ourselves into the world,
and not having to recognize ourselves in those projections, we
attribute to our meanings an independent existence” (p58) This sounds like a good description of what happens when designers use
sketching to visualize the relationships between elements of a design.
Ive been looking for ways to frame this lately, and I think
reification would be a good start. Particularly as it compliments the
other half of Wenger’s duality (reification, participation) Note to self: examine projects in the phd through this frame… What
artifacts emerge as critical?
