[CALL] Design as Creative Life
Designers’ Subjective Experience and Project Engagement
Yesterday I saw a diagram about the process of UX design on Linkedin. See the diagram below.
I shared the diagram and wrote a short post.
[Linkedin Peer Review] What does the term “Design” mean?
There is a bug in this model. The step #4 is named “Design”. The whole process is also called “Design” too.
What does the term “Design” mean?
There are many models of design process. However, the “process” is one of many aspects of Design.
We need to pay attention to other aspects of Design too.
Matt Ji responded to my post and shared the following diagram:
This is also the pattern of the yinyang flow but upside down. Why Oliver you teach this to our enemies in the west?
Matt Ji’s comment, especially the term “the pattern of the yingyang” inspired me to connect my framework “Kinds of Project Engagement” with Design.
Project Engagement
In 2020, I wrote a book titled Project-oriented Activity Theory and introduced the Developmental Project Model. See the diagram below.
In the past two years, I worked on some case studies about Developmental Projects. After reflecting on these real case studies, I realized that the above diagram is only one form of the landscape of project engagement.
Based on my research and reflection, I discovered the following types of project engagement. I called it the “Kinds of Project Engagement” framework.
You can find more details in Life Strategy: Kinds of Project Engagement.
Design Projects as Life Projects
If we connect Kinds of Project Engagement with Design, then we can focus on the subjective experience of Designers.
The Project Engagement approach considers a person’s life as a chain of projects which are embedded in the chain of social life and collective culture.
A designer’s life is a chain of design projects which are also part of social life.
Design is a creative aspect of social life.
Design is also a creative aspect of each designer’s life.
In this way, we can claim that Design as Creative Life.
The “Design as Creative Life” project
The above significant insight encourages me to launch the “Design as Creative Life” project.
I will use the following frameworks and tools for this project:
The Creative Life Curation Framework
https://www.activityanalysis.net/slow-cognition-the-creative-life-curation-framework/
The “Kind of Project Engagement” Framework
https://medium.com/call4/life-strategy-kinds-of-project-engagement-379b8c7825bd
The Thematic Journey Map
https://www.activityanalysis.net/slow-cognition-mapping-thematic-journey/
This is a collaborative project. I need your help!
If you are a Designer…
We need at least 10 designers to share their real-life experiences with design projects.
If you are a Designer, you are welcome to join the project and become a storyteller. The project is your stage for telling your creative life stories.
You don’t have to learn these frameworks and tools. What you have to do is share your real experiences of each design project.
You are expected to write your stories with many details such as your personal feeling, change of ideas, details of each iteration, arguments between you and others, etc.
You are welcome to share supporting documents such as drafts, diagrams, notes, pictures, videos, etc.
If you don’t want to share your stories and documents publically, you can join our project and share your journey with the team members privately. We will discuss your design projects in a safe environment.
You can directly share your journey on the Internet and submit the links to us.
If you are a Researcher…
I will review all documents and connect the above frameworks and tools with designers’ creative life stories.
If you are a Researcher, you are welcome to the project as a Creative Life Curator.
The Creative Life Curator framework requires some skills of Qualitative Research which is not based on numerical data, but text/story-based data.
As a collaborative project, we ask Designers to write their own stories and collect supporting documents. In this way, you don’t have to do the job of gathering qualitative data and original materials.
What you have to do is 1) review the design stories and supporting documents, 2) directly work with a Designer and gather more resources if you need them, 3) connect the above frameworks with Design stories, and 4) write a review and reflection report.
The final case study report will be considered as a chapter of a possible book with designers’ original stories.
If you are running a Design Community…
If you are running a design community, you are welcome to join the collaborative project as a co-host.
The “Design as Creative Life” project is currently co-hosted by the following knowledge centers:
- Curativity Center
- Activity Analysis Center
- CALL (Creative Action Learning Lab)
- TALE (Thematic Analysis Learning Engagement)
We need design communities to join this project in order to encourage designers to share their stories. Moreover, we aim to encourage designers to pay attention to diverse aspects of Design.
If you want to learn Creative Life Curation…
The “Design as Creative Life” project is supported by the following possible books:
- Project-oriented Activity Theory
- Project Engagement
- Life Discovery
- Curativity
- Themes of Practice
- Creative Life Curation
We will consider the Developmental Project Model and the Creative Life Curation framework as the primary framework. You can read the following four articles about them.
- The Developmental Project Model — 12 min read
- Kinds of Project Engagement — 14 min read
- Mapping Thematic Journey (Engaging with Activity Theory, 2020–2022) — 37 min read
- The Creative Life Curation Framework — 15 min
There is a systematic theoretical approach to Creative Life, you can find more details in Creative Life Curation: Turning Experiences into Meaningful Achievements.
If you want to learn the above frameworks, this is a great opportunity because you will work with me directly.
You will see how I apply these frameworks with real data.
The 1:1 Collaboration between a Designer and a Researcher
The “Design as Creative Life” project is also a collaborative project between Designers and Researchers.
The project requires 1:1 collaboration between a Designer and a Researcher. While the Designer wrote his/her design stories, the Researcher conducts a case study by using the design stories as qualitative data.
In order to develop the notion of “Project as a unit of Activity” as a theoretical foundation of the new interdisciplinary theory of Activity, Blunden adopts Hegel’s logic and Vygotsky’s theory about “Unit of Analysis” and “Concept” as theoretical resources. The process is documented in four books:
- An Interdisciplinary Theory of Activity (2010)
- Concepts: A Critical Approach (2012)
- Collaborative Projects: An Interdisciplinary Study (2014)
- Hegel for Social Movements (2019)
Blunden also gives an archetypal unit of a project in his 2010 book An Interdisciplinary Theory of Activity:
“Two people working together on a common project”
He says, “The rich context of the notion of collaboration also brings to light more complex relationships. The notions of hierarchy, command, division of labor, cooperation, exchange, service, attribution, exploitation, dependence, solidarity, and more can all be studied in the context of just two individuals working together on a common project. And yet almost all the mysteries of social science as well as a good part of psychology are contained in this archetypal unit: two people working together in a common project.” (2010, p.315)
The Possible Achievement
The outcome can be various things. We can plan a possible book that contains the following items:
- Ten designers’ life journeys with 40 stories of design projects.
- Each designer share at least 4 design projects which can form a Journey of Creative Life.
- Ten researchers’ case study reports.
- Since a researcher directly works with a designer, they can share their dialogue too.
- A summary and general review by the co-host team.
I am not sure if the possible book will publish. However, publishing is not the goal of the project.
We want to encourage designers to share their real-life experiences and we want to encourage designers to pay attention to more aspects of Design too.
The “Design as Creative Life” Museum
I will use this section to collect public stories. You are welcome to recommend some links.
- Cat Drew: Developing our new Systemic Design Framework — Apr 27, 2021
- Kristian Mikhel: The many deaths of UX design — Jan 25, 2023
