Designer-researcher’s positionality; materialities matter
Amber De Coen, Niels Hendriks, Andrea Wilkinson · 2023
With the rise of cross-cultural, participatory research projects, there is a growing need for reflexivity in the design research community. One way to address this need is by using positionality, which acknowledges the researcher's personal, social, cultural, political position in relation to the subject, participants, context, and process of a study. However, this paper argues that in design research, additional reflections should be made on the research materialities, seeing as these may also reflect the designer-researcher's biases and assumptions, which have implications for the research process and outcomes. Drawing on the example of a participatory design research project researching the personhood of non-verbal participants, this paper highlights the potential of materialities as an additional component to reflect upon starting from a positionality statement. The paper concludes with examples of how these reflections on materialities can influence a research process and suggests ways of recording them in writing about design research.