Histories and futures of research through design

Histories and futures of research through design: From prototypes to connected things

Giaccardi, Elisa (TU Delft Human Information Communication Design; Umeå University)

2019

This article discusses how the artifact of Research through Design (RtD) is changing due to data technology. The article firstly reviews the character and role of the prototype in RtD traditions informed by practices of skillful crafting and industrial design manufacturing. It then describes the move of RtD to data-enabled practices to offer a conceptualization of artifacts as connected things, that is, decentralized objects that actively collapse the division between design participation, user interaction and the creation and distribution of products and services. By considering connected things as capable of ‘making’ things too, the article positions the changing character and role of the RtD artifact in relation to three key shifts in design practice: (1) the agential shift towards the inclusion of things as partners in design, (2) the temporal shift towards always available opportunities for co-creation, and (3) the infrastructural shift towards unstable forms of value. The article concludes with a discussion on the implications of these changes for how knowledge might be generated, critiqued and shared in future data-enabled RtD practice.

Connected Things
Data Technology
Prototype
Research through Design (RtD)

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:d6011ca8-8dd1-4b6e-805b-6b3e1807b599

1991-3761

International Journal of Design, 13 (3), 139-155

Institutional Repository

journal article

© 2019 Elisa Giaccardi