Anything is a fridge: The implications of everyday designers
Ron Wakkary · Summit (Simon Fraser University) · 2009
Kerry and Beck are everyday designers.An everyday designer remakes or modifies systems and appropriates design artifacts as creative resources through design-in-use [1, 2].Beck is also an electrician who works at the city port, and on weekends and the odd evening plays bass guitar with his band.While not well-to-do, he squirreled away enough money to buy an inexpensive sailboat.In addition to being an everyday designer, Kerry is a dancer who works part time at a health food grocer across town, and is the full-time caretaker of her two boys, who are 18 months and six years old.One day, Beck asks Kerry what he should do with "this thing" on top of the fridge.Kerry explains to him that "this thing" is a breast pump she is lending her friend.She assures him it will soon leave the house.Beck and Kerry (and the kids) graciously allowed me and Leah Maestri, a student researcher, into their home a few days a week.We were conducting an ethnographic study of four families over five months in an east-side Vancouver neighborhood to explore how families creatively use and reuse design artifacts.Our purpose was to utilize these studies to improve the design of interactive technologies in the home.