Designing as production of presence rsd2017
- 1. Design(ing) as production of presence – systemic approach to re-designing novelty Piotr Michura Department of Industrial Design, Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, Poland Stan Ruecker School of Art & Design, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
- 2. Overview 1. Design is “making sense of things” (Krippendorff, 1989) = interpretation. 2. Incremental innovation vs radical innovation by design research (Norman and Verganti, 2014). 3. Radical innovation by design research = change in meaning / by meaning change (Norman and Verganti, 2014). 4. What if design is also “production of presence” (cf. Gumbrecht 1999, Landgraf 2009) besides sense making? 5. Can “production of presence” be a condition / result of novelty? 6. Designing (for) improvisation.
- 3. Incremental innovation vs radical innovation (Donald Norman and Roberto Verganti, 2014) Norman and Verganti defined two categories of innovation for products or services – incremental and radical: ■ incremental innovation – improvements within a given frame of solutions (“doing better what we already do” = based in user-centered design); ■ radical innovation – a change of frame (“doing what we did not do before”).
- 4. Design is “making sense of things” (Klaus Krippendorff, 1989) Design is an activity of “making sense of things”: ■ “The etymology of design goes back to the latin de + signare and means making something, distinguishing it by a sign, giving it significance, designating its relation to other things, owners, users, or gods. Based on this original meaning, one could say: design is making sense (of things);” ■ “making” (innovating) vs “sense” (being understandable); ■ “meaning is a ... constructed relationship. It selectively connects features of an object and features of its ... context into a coherent unity.”
- 5. Incremental innovation vs radical innovation by design (Donald Norman and Roberto Verganti, 2014) ■ radical innovation is caused by deep change in technology and /or meaning ■ meaning change can be a subject to design intervention. Design research (research by design) can drive / be driven by meaning change but only if “research addresses fundamental questions of new meanings and their interpretation” ■ “Radical innovation driven by meaning change can be design driven through better understanding of potential patterns of meanings. ... The search of new breakthrough meaning must avoid becoming trapped by the prevalence of existing products and usage” ■ interestingly, radical innovation driven by both technology and meaning the authors called “epiphany”
- 6. “Production of presence” (Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, 1999) ■ “production of presence” is a gesture contrasted with meaning-making. Drawing on the history of literary scholarship, Gumbrecht argues that hermeneutics and interpretation gained so much attention within humanities that researchers have tended to overlook other aspects of cultural phenomena. ■ “experience of presence” – intense feeling of “here and now”, appreciation of the moment, immediate sensual contact with object ■ nonrepresentational phenomenon, something which is not to be interpreted (endowed with meaning) in the first place ■ presence in his view is “the convergence of an event-effect with an embodied form”. Gumbrecht speaks about “embodied form” associating the presence effect with spatial and tangible material aspects that affect our bodies and senses
- 7. “Production of presence” (Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, 1999) ■ spatial-temporal aspects – isolated from everyday life (event’s time is related only to itself, there is a contrast between empty and occupied space) ■ state of alertness, tension – ontic experience of something to happen; contrast between order and chaos ■ impossible to anticipate, tension between something and nothing ■ complex multiplicity, a simultaneity results in epiphany of form
- 8. “Production of presence” (Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, 1999) ■ form is is seen in the process of its constitution (event) ■ form and medium; form – a momentary crystallization within medium, like relative difference between “finality” and “end” – “the end” is broader frame but can be finality for other “ends”; embedness ■ form, in Luhmannian sense, is being produced by the subsequent acts – as the simultaneity of self- and other-reference ■ singular perspective is always placed in a context of other possible views – meaning / interpretation can be understood as a contrast between actual and potential
- 9. Novelty in design as “production of presence” (after Edgar Landgraf, 2009 ) ■ novelty in design, as structured by design system, is following its own codes of newness and originality ■ “production of presence” is about distinction and indication ■ starting from contingent selection of distinction the design can follow its own emerging program, which further governs its own construction and completion (cf. Luhmann) ■ distinctions are not signs referring to something else (reality, concept, object) but allows the system to construct its own reality, concepts, also signs ■ designing, starting from doodling, works this way (cf. Glanville) = improvisation ■ a design – enables improvisation (expected unintended consequences)
- 10. Novelty in design as “production of presence” ■ novelty might be based in a thorough re-conceptualization of commonly assumed system boundaries involving resignation from the central position of a designer ■ creative act is a process of mutual irritation of autonomous systems of designing and “a designer”, who can be understood as a complex of expectations put forward by the design system (cf. Luhmann)
- 11. References Clarke, Bruce and Mark B. N. Hansen (2009). Introduction. Clarke, Bruce and Mark B. N. Hansen Emergence and Embodiment. Durham & London: Duke University Press. Hayles, Katherine, a lecture Contesting for the Meaning of Meaning: Cognitive Technologies, Cognitive Humans, Cognitive Others, at the University of Rhode Island, April 17, 2017. Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich (1999) Epiphany of Form: On the Beauty of Team Sports. New Literary History, 30: 351-372. Krippendorff, Klaus (1989). On the Essential Contexts of Artifacts or on the Proposition that ‘Design Is Making Sense (of Things),’ Design Issues, V(2), 9-39. Krippendorff, Klaus (2007).The Cybernetics of Design and the Design of Cybernetics. Kybernetes, 36(9-10), 1381-1392. Luhmann, Niklas (2013). Introduction to Systems Theory. Cambridge: Polity. Landgraf, Edgar (2009). Improvisation: Form and Event. Clarke, Bruce and Mark B. N. Hansen Emergence and Embodiment. Durham & London: Duke University Press. Norman, D. A., & Verganti, R. (2014). Incremental and Radical Innovation: Design Research Versus Technology and Meaning Change. Design Issues, 30(1), 78-96.