You’re invited! My PhD is being examined in a few days (June 25th at 11am to be exact) – here’s the details and a quick abstract
Where: RMIT Building 9. Level 3, studio 4B
When: 11:00 am, 25 June 2012
The Forensic Wall: how ambiguity and affinity are enacted to perform interaction design
Through a methodology incorporating design practice, studies and exploration (Fallman 2008), this research has examined the emergent field of interaction design.
Integrating discourse and literature from both academic and professional arenas with critical reflection on two projects for clients and one self-initiated project, I propose a model of how interaction designers work with artifacts, spaces and people to design for the intangible material of experience.
I bring together theories of perception and experience (Dewey 1934, Merleau Ponty 1945/1962), enaction and distributed cognition (Hutchins 2005, 2011), design practice (Schön 1983, Löwgren & Stolterman 2008), and performativity (Austin 1962) to reframe interaction design as a set of practices that draw on the designer’s ability to perform ambiguity and perceive affinity between different elements and stages of a design process.
This research contributes to the understanding of interaction design practice in the following ways:
- I bring professional and academic perspectives together to present a interaction design practice as being made up of pragmatic, critical, and enterprising approaches toperformative ambiguity.
- I illustrate how interaction designers modulate their ability to percieve similarities: seeking,spotting and making affinity between elements in a design situation.
- I identify and name a key site and method for this performance of design: the Forensic Wall.
- Finally, I reflect on these discoveries and propose that designers perform design by choosing to excise or exercise ambiguity in the situation of concern.
the designer’s choice: and their tools
