Re-reading Design Methodology and the “Toolbox” Metaphor
Scott Townsend · Design and Culture · 2016
In 2006 Paul Dourish gave a paper about ethnography and its implication for creating design intervention and form. This is part of the basis of this paper, which illustrates the need to develop critical interrogations of what Dourish called a “toolbox of methods.” The paper argues that the metaphor of the “toolbox” suggests a departure from the reflexivity of the social sciences, where theory and method are continuously questioned and interrogated. The article concludes with a recommendation for how design practice might benefit from such reflexivity.