Material Vision
Melanie Feinberg · 2017
How do designers identify substances as materials to be worked into artifacts? Understanding how designer-material collaborations are instantiated, and the effect of those relations on design expression, helps us understand how artifacts come to be as they are. In the digital environment, the relationship between designer and material is complicated by the ambiguous, abstract nature of digital "substances." This conceptual essay uses case studies from a design project to trace the role of community values in the materialization of a particular abstraction: a deliberate positioning of the designer's situated viewpoint. By comparing cases where designers materialize a situated position within the resulting artifact and where designers do not do so, this essay illustrates how community values mediate designer-material collaborations. These case studies also demonstrate the effect of designer-material relations on design expression. The designs that materialize a position structure a more reciprocal, dialogic relationship between designer and user.