Dagny Stuedahl

Methods That Matter in Digital Design Research

Theories and analytical perspectives are linked to methods. The discussion of the methods used to capture the complexities of practices with a focus on social, cultural and economic layers (Jordan and Henderson 1994; Wagner 1994; Sjoberg 1996; Newman 1998) represents an important resource for a discussion of designers’ interpretative work with both traditional and new experimental methods. In previous chapters we have described our collaborative and multidisciplinary perspectives that are also mirrored in the methods we use in the exploration of practices. These practices are technical, organizational, knowledge-based and socio-cultural. Our aim is to explore and maintain the complexity in design as a mix of all of these.

Research Practices in Digital Design

In the twenty-first century, we are literally surrounded by digital things and things that turn out to be digital – or have some digital parts or are parts of a larger system in which there are digital elements. We carry around mobile phones and watches; many also have additional music players, PDAs or PCs. We live in houses filled with digital networks and artefacts; we depend on infrastructures that are partly digital and have digital systems attached to them; we use public and private services that are digital, are based on digital infrastructures and have other digital systems attached to them; and we experience embedded, ubiquitous computing as we live in digitally enhanced environments that support our activities with or without our conscious control. The digital layer(s) in the world constitute a real world.

Experimental zones: two cases of exploring frames of participation in a dialogic museum

Abstract A matter of concern for dialogic institutions such as museums is the struggle to find appropriate ways of integrating social media and digital technologies into dialogues with visitors. This paper addresses how co-creation and experimental methods may be applied in a situated, natural environment, exploring how these technologies may be shaped to support museum visitor relations. The concept ‘experimental zone’ is suggested as a format for a collaborative design space where digital media-based dialogues are explored in line with professional practices. This concept is discussed in relation to two design experiments undertaken in collaboration with the Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology.

Researching Digital Design

The emerging field of digital design research is heterogeneous, encompassing a multiplicity of practices, theories and methods. One source of this heterogeneity is that design as a concept takes different meanings in the context of different design practices, be it the design of software, urban spaces, web pages or industrial products; as does ‘the digital’ when integrated within different types of design. Another source of heterogeneity is the variety of research traditions, theories and methodologies that meet in digital design research. This book explores the multiplicity and heterogeneity of ‘digital things’, design practices, and (inter) disciplinary approaches.

Designing things together : intersections of co-design and actor-network theory

This special issue brings together nine papers that explore in different ways the interesting space at the intersection of co-design and actor–network theory. The papers consolidate a tradition of multidisciplinary design research with contributions from science and technology studies (STS) in which design is seen as a social and political activity playing a vital role in the shaping of our societies. Design is becoming less confined to the design studio with well-identified stakeholders. It takes new forms as public interventions and as explorations ‘in the wild’. This means that it becomes more difficult to understand the scope and limits of design interventions and, therefore design research needs new tools to address and reflect these changes. Similarly, actor-network theory (ANT) has moved out of its traditional concern with STS that is critical of modernist separations (such as object/ subject and nature/culture), to a concern with reassembling the social and building a common world, where democratic, ecological and political issues permeate everyday life, and design and technology are an integral part of it. Designing things together has become for us as editors, a label to identify this overlap between co-design and ANT and to support a shared agenda towards technical democracy that helps us to further ‘unpack’ the coin co-design. The papers in this issue look at a series of intersecting topics and, even if they approach and use ANT in different ways, they all contribute to a more systematic exploration of how to design things together. The authors are concerned with the relationship between design and democracy (Binder et al., Storni), participation (Palmas and Von Busch; Andersen et al.), making things public (Schoffelen et al.; Stuedahl and Smørdal), new collective forms of design experiments (Tironi and Laurent; Lindstrom and Stahl), and new ways to look at and talk about codesign (Akama). The papers reaffirm a non-modern way of thinking about co-design that is critical of the idea of the designer as a hero (or user as a king), the idea of participation being unproblematic or taken for granted, the clear-cut opposition between design and use (designer and user, design and research), the idea of design objects as stand-alone outcomes, or that of collaborating entities pre-existing the design process. This special issue opens with two research papers that view ANT as a means of rethinking collaborative design practices towards a design democracy. Binder et al discuss how ANT can reinvigorate participatory design as democratic design experiments between parliament and laboratory. Critical of the obsession with objects dominant in design and of human-centeredness, the authors articulate the idea of designing ‘things’ as socio-material assemblies of public concerns and issues that evolve over time. Addressing Latour’s call for co-habitation, Storni proposes a translation of ANT from an STS tool to produce risky accounts, to a design tool to design things together. In this translation, Storni proposes three turns for design: ontological, methodological and epistemological. The first argues for the design of actor networks. The second suggests designing by means of actor networking in public, and thus calls for a much-needed cartography of co-design. The third suggests moving from the idea of the designer as the prince of a network to the designer as

Matters of becoming, experimental zones for making museums public with social media

Making things public challenges existing matters of concern and, in design, may also be about changing them. This paper advances the concept of translation from early ANT literature and explores it in order to support co-designing for making things public. We elaborate on how translations may be understood as moves and transformations of practices and objects that require both time and learning. We discuss how translations may include the emerging, situated, fluid, enacted, experiential and the material, and suggest co-design to rethink translation as a temporal process of learning and ‘becoming’. Our aim is to demonstrate a mutual theoretical influence between ANT and co-design. Our conceptual reflection is based on a museum design case where museum staff and the authors explore new communicational modes of social media. The project established a longitudinal ‘experimental zone’ as space and time for design in the everyday practice of the museum. The paper reflects upon the value of ANT as a framework for rethinking the design–use divide using concepts of learning and translations to bring awareness of co-design as temporal, fluid and emerging processes of becoming.

Designing for Sustainable Ways of Living with Technologies

Digital media have placed a focus on sustainability sustainability in terms of long-term digital preservation of societal memories and cultural heritage. There is also discussion about technological issues, such as flexible infrastructures, standards and formats sustainability in digital design standards, formats, practices, which are explored in relation to how to build sustainable systems (Braa et al. 2004; Byrne 2005; Byrne and Sahay 2007). Further, while there already exists a body of knowledge about standards, classification, and category work (e.g. Star 1991; Bowker and Star 1999; Verran et al. 2007), it is also important to relate these standards, formats and routines sustainability in digital design standards, formats, practices in digital design to social sustainability in digital design social and cultural sustainability in digital design cultural sustainability, and not just durability.

Involving the Crowd in Future Museum Experience Design

A general trend of museums and cultural heritage institutions besides digitizing their collections is to involve the public more and at various levels. Technology plays an increasingly important role in this involvement. Developments we have observed in museum experience design, include trends towards 1) dialogical engagement of the public; 2) addressing crowds as audiences; 3) the use of Internet of Things (IoT) and Do-It-Yourself (DIY) technology in museums; and 4) designing for museum systems and institutional ecologies instead of for individual museums only. In this one-day workshop we especially focus on exploring the implications of museums reaching out to crowds beyond their local communities, and of museums increasingly becoming part of connected museum systems and large institutional ecosystems. By means of a tangible game we will brainstorm about future opportunities and challenges, cluster and evaluate them, and suggest future work.

Re-considering participation in social media designs

This short paper reports from a museum innovation project using small-scale design experiments with mobile and social technologies to explore the participative museum along the Akerselva River in Oslo. We reflect upon what insights social media requires for design to engage people in participation in public and urban settings. The paper focuses on the micro-level of engagement in these media, and asks how a focus on language, semiotic and social practices may represent new possibilities for PD processes, using these media as design tools. It suggests that perspectives from cultural studies can be adapted to stage social media-based participatory design processes to reach communities that are dispersed over time and space.

Temporalities and Spaces for Youth Engagement in Co-Creative Activities

Creating innovative, participatory and collaborative, interactive spaces that invite, engage and include urban youth is a challenge, particularly in the setting of research and participatory culture projects. Youth is involved in their ways and activities of own making. It is often challenging for researchers to get them involved in cultural or civic activities that are part of research projects. On the other hand, access to youth cultures and subcultures can be difficult for researchers. Thus, in this workshop, we would like to discuss research approaches and methods of engaging youth in civic and participatory culture projects. Aiming towards a methodology to guide research in this area, the workshop explores diverse methods that are presently used in conjunction with participatory models and forms of cultural and civic engagement and new technologies of participation. Of particular interest are temporality (duration of engagement), outcomes (short and long-term, for researchers and youth) and the roles of digital means to scaffold participation, co-creation, or artifacts resulting from such participatory activities.