Tracing Design(ed) Authority in Critical Modes of Making
1Marisa
1
Department of
Informatics
University of
California, Irvine
Irvine, CA 927673440 USA
{lindtner,
mlcohn}@ics.uci
.com
Cohn, 2Tobie Kerridge, 3Ann Light, 1Silvia Lindtner, 4Matt Ratto
2
Interaction
Research Studio,
Goldsmiths,
University of
London, New Cross,
London, SE14
6NW, UK
tobie@mac.com
ABSTRACT
We employ the lens of design(ed) authority to explore
reflective and critical engagement with material production
in design. The goals of this workshop are twofold. First, we
aim to bring together people from various areas of research
(e.g. HCI, Interaction Design, Ubicomp, STS, CSCW,
Participatory Design) who identify the theme of critical
design practice in their work and to engage comparatively
and reflexively with processes and the outcomes of critical
theory and critical making. Second, we mean to employ the
concept of design(ed) authority as a lens for reflective
comparison of different modes of critical making. The
workshop will consider the distributed nature of design(ed)
authority, its relationship to modes of critical production,
and trace this using hands-on design techniques. Through
these activities, participants will locate authority in their
own practices.
Keywords
Critical design, designer-user relations, design morality,
materiality and agency, methods, inscription practices,
reflective design, personas, Critical Theory, STS.
INTRODUCTION
Lucy Suchman called for forms of accountability and
responsibility in design practice [23] . She invited designers
to identify their role in the production and use of
technologies, and to take responsibility for this role. Being
accountable for one’s engagement in designing, she
suggested, required a move from a “design from nowhere”
to located accountability, and the acknowledgement that our
vision of the world is always a vision from somewhere. As
such, Suchman’s concerns have been in line with
researchers engaged in critical technical practice, reflective
design, critical making and critical theory [3, 4, 6, 11, 20,
22].
3
Communication
and Computing
Research Centre,
Sheffield Hallam
University,
Sheffield, S1 1WB
a.light@shu.ac.uk
4
Faculty of
Information
University of
Toronto
140 St. George St.
Toronto, Ontario
matt.ratto@utoronto
.ca
Two dominant threads developed across these efforts. First,
the traditional use-design dichotomy was challenged by
efforts in technology appropriation, articulation work, and
participatory design [2, 5, 24]. These efforts shared an
interest in extending design into use on the one hand, and to
support appropriation and re-making by the user on the
other. Second, several approaches began to tackle issues
such as the politics of design. For example, Sengers and
colleagues, building on an Agre’s account of critical
technical practice, show how reflective design might
identify unconscious values and assumptions that contribute
to the ways in which we conceive of design problems [1,
22]. Elsewhere, Light and Miskelly explore the relation of
the designer to their materials in making social change [15],
and Ratto has explored how material engagement
encourages a sense of personal investment in the critical
issues being studied [19, 20].
In common with Muller’s overview of Participatory Design
[17], these efforts take emphasis away from the
authoritarian role of the designer. However, little in-depth
exploration has been undertaken as to how authority is
configured as interactive systems become increasingly
complex, and embedded within ecologies of social practices
[8, 16, 18, 12]. The aim of this workshop then, is to build
on these accounts and to take design authority seriously on
its own terms. We aim to explore questions such as:
-
What might it entail not only to decenter the
designer’s role in the design process, but to
acknowledge one’s position and authority?
-
How is authority enacted across multiple sites and
practices, e.g. institutions, conceptual work,
material production, semiotic and articulation
work?
-
What is different about designing when the play of
distributed authority is foregrounded?
By design(ed) authority, we mean to follow Suchman’s call
for action and locate accountability in our design practice,
values and preferences for certain kinds of methods over
others. Design(ed) authority speaks to the conceptual and
the material – how authority is enacted across and through a
range of sites, through the material artefact (and the values
embedded within it) as much as through conceptual work,
articulation work, collaborations and alliances.
WORKSHOP AIMS
The workshop theme of Design(ed) Authority provides a
framework to bring together people who are at the
intersection of methodological commitments, and to bring
various
design
techniques
into
conversation.
Methodological orientations such as critical technical
practice, reflective design, seamful interweaving, and
critical computing all explore critical making and the
relationship between designers and users. They address
some of the issues of politics and morality in design.
However they have not previously been compared through
this lens of design(ed) authority. We believe that this
framework will be productive for considering how these
various methods can be brought into conversation.
The purpose of the workshop is to think critically and
comparatively about different modes of critical production;
to explore the critical making/thinking intersection
(acknowledging that thinking and making are both kinds of
production); to trace and follow forms of authority through
the critical production process, from the creation of this
workshop proposal through the production of position
papers to the engagements with material making in the
workshop itself.
WORKSHOP THEMES
This workshop reflects on the positioning [10] of the
designer as we move through a design process and how we
orientate towards the different aspects that make up
designing, such as materials, potential users, clients and so
on. To do so, it acknowledges the extent to which reflection
takes place during the making of artefacts [21] and that
many designers’ first choice of critical response is through
action not language.
critical modes of production have explored the ways in
which design can bring different objects and actors into
relation. Different critical modes of production tend to
locate authority more or less in the designer or the user or
the material artifacts or the process itself. For instance Light
and Anderson explore how attempts to resist taking an
authoritative position in negotiating a design to be used
across different cultural and economic contexts led to
difficulties in synthesizing perspectives [14].
There are thus many forms of authority in design: the
authority of the designer, the user, the materiality, the
authority of process and technique. But this issue of
authority has not been addressed carefully in the ways that
openness, participation, and reflection have in design
practice. For example methodological concerns with
openness, participation, authentic engagement of users, etc,
can lead to problems of “design miasma” [14], begging the
question what happens when the authority of the designer,
design process, or the designed object falls away, where
accountability is no longer clear and no one is taking
responsibility?
Authority is a lens that provides an analytical framework to
explore how critical making and critical thinking intersect,
and the ways that actors, practices and methods come
together. The relationship of the scientific author to method
and knowledge production has been explored through the
figure of the “modest witness” [9]. It suggests that all forms
of production are achieved through the kinds of metaphors
that we use to relate actors and objects. In this case,
scientists produce facts through a special relationship to
method that provisions them with the authority to speak on
behalf of nature, without creating an immodest exposure of
nature’s secrets.
In this context, we consider authority through design.
Authority can be understood in many ways: the absolute
authority of an institution; the informed authority of an
expert, or the negotiated authority of a leader or facilitator.
We suggest three initial framings for developing themes of
authority through design.
The concept of design(ed) authority challenges us to
consider how the author function is carried out in design
practice. It draws attention to the ways in which different
design methods generate forms of intimacy, distance, and
othering of users, process, and artifacts. A gracious
designerly authority is common in which the designer aims
to let the users and materials speak for themselves. This
framework asks us to critically reflect on these various
modes of design(ed) authority and how they craft a
particular morality for the design practice.
Design(ed) Authority
Critical Making
Bruno Latour heralds design as the little verb that is taking
over the political and ethical space of our relationships with
objects and action [12]. He does so in part by representing
the designer as a “cautious Prometheus”, emphasizing
design as a modest, flexible, and provisionary authority.
This points to the way that the designer’s authority is subtle
and nuanced in comparison to the authority of a policy
maker or CEO. However it does not address the ways in
which authority is distributed throughout the design
practice. Work in critical technical practice, reflective
design, seamful design, participatory design and other
One of our claims is that modes of critical making shape
and are shaped by modes of design(ed) authority. Authority
is distributed throughout the design process through
inscription practices and ways of working collaboratively
with other actors or technically and materially with objects.
Many boundary objects are authored in the design process.
Many moves are made to establish authoritatively the sets
of actors and objects that are relevant. The aim of this
workshop is to consider how our various modes of critical
making craft a design(ed) authority or what forms of
design(ed) authority might guide or shape modes of critical
making.
to explore design(ed) authority as an analytical framework
and to put this framework into practice.
This framework problematizes critical production by
mapping critical scholarship and design within the same
space. It does not separate knowledge production from
material production. When we compare various design
methods and techniques we tend to privilege a
methodological or linguistic frame in which some design
practices achieve a better method for attaining a goal such
as openness, authentic participation or engagement; or that
are more ideal in terms of enabling the expressive capacity
of design and materiality [20]. Authority takes a step back
from methods, by proposing that methods themselves are
rhetorical and figurative and not limiting analysis to
linguistic analogy. It can and has been applied equally to
the construction of facts, objects, concerns, and expressions
in literary theory, film studies, and science studies.
Goals
Just as authority has been applied to the scientific method,
it can be applied to the various techniques and inscription
practices in our methodological toolkits. It allows us to
compare across these different methods and techniques.
Locating Distributed Authorship
We have called the theme design(ed) authority explicitly to
draw attention to the fact that authority can be located only
precariously in the designer him/herself. Authority may be
granted to particular actors at the outset of a design project,
but it is also redistributed as the design process unfolds.
The workshop asks us to reflect on our roles as designers,
design researchers, social scientists, etc. in the design
process and to examine our methods, rhetoric, prescriptions
and analyses for the ways in which we craft authority.
For example, we might construct a designerly authority by
taking on a rhetoric of aesthetic superiority, or might shift
authority towards the design process as a way to be more or
less accountable. We might emphasize the ways in which
we confront authority of users or objects. Additionally, It is
not only the final design product but also many forms of
inscriptions, prototypes, boundary objects, technical writing
and scholarly reports that we craft. These are all part of
design’s authority.
Tracing the distributed nature of authority throughout the
design process is not a clear and easy task. The workshop
asks its participants to consider the relationship between
critical modes of making and design(ed) authority but
especially to think about ways of tracing this authority
through the design process.
WORKSHOP ACTIVITIES AND GOALS
In this workshop we propose to take on this notion of
design(ed) authority seriously through conversation and
hands-on workshop activites. The notion of design(ed)
authority allows us to trace our positions and
responsibilities in design proceses that are becoming
increasingly wide-spread, spanning various sites of social
and political practice. The goal of the workshop is two-fold:
The primary goal of this workshop is to explore these
themes of design(ed) authority, critical making, and
distributed authorship as they relate to features of design
practice.
The workshop will achieve these goals by bringing together
an interdisciplinary set of people working at the intersection
of critical making and thinking. From the writing of
position papers through to the completion of the workshop
activities, the workshop will explore the distributed and
situated nature of authority in design.
Workshop Plan
1 Call for Participation
To solicit participation for the workshop, we will circulate
the call to an interdisciplinary set of mailing lists (e.g. HCI,
Ubicomp, STS, Humanities) and set-up a website to post
information about the workshop and the CFP. We will
invite short position papers from workshop participants (see
folllowing section).
Participants will share these papers with the group ahead of
time through an online platform that the workshop
organizers will provide.
2 Position Papers
The position papers will be a site of critical production. In
addition to asking participants to respond to the workshop
themes, they will be given the opportunity to craft a critical
design persona as a figure of design(ed) authority. They
will be asked to generate a persona like the “cautious
Prometheus” or “modest witness” but one that embodies
their critical mode of making and methodological toolkits.
The position paper will address questions such as:
-
What are the modes of making, inscription practices,
and methodological toolkits that you are committed to
or engaged in?
-
How does authority flow through and into these
practices and techniques?
-
How do you craft your own authority as a part of your
mode of making?
-
How does authority manifest within your situation,
through the role you have within certain institutions,
projects, and commitments?
-
What character/figure would you associate with your
mode of making?
The position paper is thus an opportunity to respond to the
workshop themes but also to take on a particular position,
whether it is realistic, critical, parodying, etc. The personas
that participants craft, and the techniques and practices they
share, will be drawn into the day’s activities.
3 Workshop Activities
Our starting premise is that design(ed) authority is
generated through practice. Our workshop therefore will
include activities for generating sketches, concepts and
models. This activity will be structured as three different
sessions; story telling, critique and materiality.
The workshop concludes with a discussion session at the
end of the day, to reflect upon the questions initially raised
in the position papers (as well as others that might emerge
through the workshop), and to discuss further opportunities.
09:00 – 10:00
Initial introduction and discussion
10:00 – 10:15
coffee break
10:15 – 11:00
Arrangement of participants in split-off
sessions
11:00 – 12:00
Session I: Design(ed) authority and story
telling (design-fiction, personas)
12:00 – 01:00
lunch break
13:00 – 14:00
Session II: Design(ed) authority and
critique (critical technical practice, usercentered design)
14:00 – 15:00 Session III: Design(ed) authority and
materiality (diagetic prototypes)
15:00 – 15:15
coffee break
15:15 – 17:00
Final discussion of methods, materials,
and personas of design authority.
Discussion of next steps, e.g. special
issue, extending discussion into online
portal
Timeline to be amended in line with the conference
schedule.
WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS
Marisa Cohn is a PhD candidate in the Department of
Informatics at UC Irvine conducting research in critical
informatics and sociotechnical systems design combining
approaches from organizational studies, media studies and
Human-Computer Interaction. Her main research project is
a sociocultural and historical study of software development
practice and discourse with a focus on narrative techniques
for software design, architecture and iterativity, design and
performativity. She has a BA in Anthropology and her
methods draw on ethnography and critical feminist theory.
She has studied software from a variety of perspectives
from ethnographic studies of virtual worlds and industrial
development sites, to close readings of programming tools
and languages.
Tobie Kerridge is a PhD candidate in the Department of
Design at Goldsmiths, University of London. He has
worked as a researcher on projects supported by the
EPSRC, France Telecom, Intel and Philips Design. His
thesis reflects upon the novel contributions of speculative
design as a method for public engagement with science and
technology, in projects including Biojewellery and Material
Beliefs. These projects have been exhibited internationally,
including MoMA, New York and the Science Gallery,
Dublin. Tobie graduated from Interaction Design MA at the
Royal College of Art in 2003, and previously read English
literature and Fine Art at Oxford Brookes University. He is
a visiting lecturer at Goldsmiths and the Royal College of
Art, and an honorary Research Fellow at Edinburgh College
of Art.
Ann Light is a Reader in the Culture, Communication and
Computing Research Institute at Sheffield Hallam
University, UK, and visiting researcher at the University of
Sussex, and Queen Mary, University of London ,where she
worked in the Drama department. Her interests include the
social impact of technology and the politics of participation
in design, explored in a range of projects including
Democratising Technology, Practical Design for Social
Action and Fair Tracing. She publishes upon HCI, crosscultural methodology, interactive media and design, with an
interdisciplinary focus on meaning-making and experience
of technology, begun in studies of websites and online
discussion in 1995 and now turned upon mobile and
ubiquitous contexts of use.
Silvia Lindtner is a PhD candidate in the department of
Informatics at UC Irvine. Her research interests are
generally concerning media studies and China studies,
anthropology, science and technology studies and social
informatics. Her main research focuses on the role of digital
media in relation to urban development, political discourse
and state legislation in China. She has also conducted
research on digital media use in street art and public play
and on suburban youth culture. She uses methods such as
ethnography and participatory design. Her work is
published across various disciplines and she regularly
engages with scholars from diverse backgrounds to inform
her interdisciplinary work, for example at venues such as
the annual meeting of society for social studies of science,
the annual conference on computer supported collaborative
work and at the conference on Ubiquitous Computing.
Matt Ratto is an Assistant Professor and director of the
Critical Making lab in the Faculty of Information at the
University of Toronto. His current research focuses on how
hands-on productive work – making – can supplement and
extend critical reflection on the relations between digital
technologies and society. In particular, Ratto’s work
addresses the movement of digital media and information
from screens and into the material environment. This trend,
known as ‘ambient’ or ‘ubiquitous’ computing, or more
colloquially as the ‘Internet of Things’, is the primary focus
of his work and builds upon the new possibilities offered by
open source software and hardware, and the developing
technologies of 3D printing and rapid prototyping. Since
2007, Ratto has carried out workshops in ‘critical making’
in Amsterdam, London, Canada, the US, and Scotland.
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