Pascal Béguin

Design as a mutual learning process between users and designers

In the instrument-mediated activity approach, it is argued that artifacts are far from being finished when the final technical specifications leave the research and design office. It is up to the user, in and through its use, to turn the artifact into an instrument. If the design process continues as the artifact is being used in real situations, then how can we conceptualize the design process? This article proposes an understanding of project management as a mutual learning process that takes place during exchanges of activity. After discussing how such activity exchanges can be extended to mutual learning among users and designers, a concrete case is presented to illustrate the approach: designing an alarm system to guard against chemical runaways in chemical plants.

In Search of a Unit of Analysis for Designing Instruments

A welcome topic of the new journal Artifact is to promote as a distinct academic field the transdisciplinary approaches centered on design research. One of the conditions for such a transdisciplinary approach is that the different actors recognize the specificity of the contributions of other actors and the complementary nature of their respective productions. In this essay, I will argue that the different contributions of experts in design must be completed by users’ constructive activity. More particularly, my focus is to search for a unit of analysis that helps to build shared references between users and designers. I will proceed in two steps. In the first, I will suggest that an instrument cannot be confused with an artifact, and that it is the user or the worker who gives to an artifact the status of an instrument. In a second step I will describe the design process as a dialogical process in the Bakhtinien sense. I will conclude with comments on “ what is an artifact? ”

Conception et santé : quelques remarques sur le statut de l’activité de travail dans la conception des systèmes de production

Resume L’objectif de cet article est de discuter le statut de l’activite de travail pour la conception des systemes de productions. Apres avoir indique les enjeux de la prise en compte de l’activite de travail dans la conception au regard de la sante des travailleurs, on distingue trois approches. On peut modeliser l’activite pour l’anticiper durant la conception. On peut favoriser la conception de dispositifs plastiques, qui orientent l’action in situ. On peut enfin chercher a saisir et articuler dans un meme mouvement le developpement des situations de travail et le developpement de l’activite des operateurs. Pour chacune de ces orientations, on indique des pistes de recherches, tant au plan des methodes que des modeles.

From the past to the future: Integrating work experience into the design process

BACKGROUND Integrating work activity issues into design process is a broadly discussed theme in ergonomics. Participation is presented as the main means for such integration. However, a late participation can limit the development of both project solutions and future work activity. OBJECTIVE This article presents the concept of construction of experience aiming at the articulated development of future activities and project solutions. It is a non-teleological approach where the initial concepts will be transformed by the experience built up throughout the design process. METHODS The method applied was a case study of an ergonomic participation during the design of a new laboratory complex for biotechnology research. Data was obtained through analysis of records in a simulation process using a Lego scale model and interviews with project participants. RESULTS The simulation process allowed for developing new ways of working and generating changes in the initial design solutions, which enable workers to adopt their own developed strategies for conducting work more safely and efficiently in the future work system. CONCLUSIONS Each project decision either opens or closes a window of opportunities for developing a future activity. Construction of experience in a non-teleological design process allows for understanding the consequences of project solutions for future work.

Work and Sustainable Development

The aim of the six papers published in this section “Work and Sustainable Development” is to document investigation or research addressing work activities in relation to sustainability. Previous special issues on ergonomics [1–3], and previous papers published in this journal [4, 5] have reflected how sustainability and sustained development impact the field of ergonomics and human factors. However, human work has tended to be overshadowed by the environmental and economic dimensions, and one could argue that work is the great forgotten dimension of sustainable development. From that point of view, it is pertinent to recall briefly how the notion of sustainable development first appeared. Ideas about sustainable development stemmed from a critique of the concept of development, primarily understood as “economic growth”, where economic development was to a large extent believed to consist of progressive and necessary stages [6]. Yet at the beginning of the 1960s, some doubts began to arise. They emphasized the importance of taking into account both social change and institutional requirements (in addition to the growth of production and income). The role of education, “human capital”, and policies for basic sanitation became legitimate issues at the United Nations and its financial institution, the World Bank. In this context, there was talk of “integrated development”, aimed at articulating economic development to social and local/regional planning. During the 1970s, ecological concerns appeared: development in the South was having severe environmental consequences (degradation of resources,