September 21st — [UN]Making-Co-creation
This is the summary for week 4 “[UN]Making-Co-creation” of Seminar 3 Advanced Interaction & Service Design Concepts / Design Theory & Practice. The aim of this course is to engage in critical discourses in design and explore and reflect on the implications of designing in the world, the agency of designed artifacts, and their effects not only in human systems but also in environmental ones.
We are currently covering the first module of our course called [un]making. This module inquires about the political, social, and ecological implications of design as a transformational practice in our worlds. We talk about emergent ways of designing and conceiving design in the design discourse which include both making and unmaking practices. We question dominant forms of design with a particular focus on the visual and expose students to embodied and somaesthetic forms of enacting and designing for interactions. This week, we covered the topic of [UN]Making-Co-creation.
In the class, the students played Silent Game, which is designed by Bill Porter, MIT. There were builder A and builder B in the game. Builder A started to build things with LEGOs without saying a word, and builder B had to continue to build the same design by taking the guess of A’s design intent. Lastly, builder A continued B’s creation and clarify B’s understandings. As one of the students pointed out, “builder Bs’ actions were based on how their understanding of builder As’ intentions. The understanding of the aftermath of design is currently lacking because most people associate design activities with creating something new. Constantly chasing for new things prevent us from seeing the long-term impact of the designed products/services.”
As the first module [Un]Making closed this week, the students reflected on what they’ve learned, one of them being “un/making design invites us to shift this mental model and reflect on what kind of legacy we want to leave behind.” Likewise, one of the students wrote, “It introduced new methods like un/making as a form of designing and how I need to continuously think about the role of design in creating new possibilities but also its role in destroying alternative possibilities for people and the environment we inhabit.”
- GUEST: Dr. Diana Albarran González (Asynchronous Q&A). Dr. Albarrán will answer the questions we sent on Week 3
- M.J. Reddy (1979) “The Conduit Metaphor: A Case of Frame Conflict in our Language about Language” in Ortony (ed.) Metaphor and Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.165–201.
- Nelson Goodman(1978) “Words, Works, Worlds”, Chapter 1 in Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking. Hackett Publishing Company, pp. 1–22.
- Kristina Lindström and Åsa Ståhl. Un/Making in the Aftermath of Design. 2020
- Kristin Dew and Daniela Rosner. Designing with Waste: A Situated Inquiry into the Material Excess of Making. 2019
- Cassie Robinson. How do we help things to die? I don’t mean people, I mean organisations. 2019
- PhDs only: Alfredo Gutiérrez Borrero, “Resurgences: south, as designs and other designs” Versión en Español | English version
