Accumulation and Erosion of User Representations or How is Situated Design Interaction Situated
Sampsa Hyysalo · IGI Global eBooks · 2012
The design process is predominantly presented as the primordial site where creativity of highly talented people flows into material form and results in novel solutions for human concerns. Design-critical views equally place event of design on the pedestal even as they question whether designers’ intuition, creativity, and aesthetic sense is enough and, particularly, whether considerations of the implications of the new technology have sufficiently permeated the process and, through that, determined its outcomes. This latter view has often been condensed into whether designers are guided by appropriate values and/or understandings in their work. There is, however, relatively little detailed research on what actually does take place in the complex and uncertain considerations wherein “design decisions” are made or whatever “design values” are followed. This chapter will contribute to this through the analysis of in-depth video-recorded ethnography of the design process of a monitoring and alarm device for the elderly. At the same time, it aims to raise questions about the centrality of the design process by examining what comprises the situated action taking place in design and examining how design interaction is situated within design-use relations.