METTE KJÆRSGAARD
Intelligences
Theory Instruments as Tangible Ways of Knowing
JESSICA SORENSON
Department of Design and Communication, University of Southern Denmark
METTE GISLEV KJÆRSGAARD
Department of Design and Communication, University of Southern Denmark
JACOB BUUR
Department of Design and Communication, University of Southern Denmark
MARY KARYDA
Department of Sociology and Environmental Economics, University of Southern Denmark
AYŞE ÖZGE AĞÇA
Department of Design and Communication, University of Southern Denmark
While ethnographers and the data they produce already play a role in affecting industry practices, there is potential to integrate anthropological ways of seeing and knowing into a shared transdisciplinary design praxis. In a series of design research experiments, we have taken a pragmatic and playful approach to physicalizing theory. The result is a set of ‘Theory Instruments’ that transform theory into tangible interaction. Theory Instruments scaffold knowledge production by encouraging new ways of seeing organizations, products, users, and the relations between them....
Intelligences
Anticipating Connectivity in (UX) Design Practices: Reframing Challenges by Introducing Theory Cards
METTE GISLEV KJÆRSGAARD
Department of Design and Communication, University of Southern Denmark
WAFA SAID MOSLEH
Department of Design and Communication, University of Southern Denmark
JACOB BUUR
Department of Design and Communication, University of Southern Denmark
JESSICA SORENSON
Department of Design and Communication, University of Southern Denmark
This paper presents a design anthropological study with User Experience design departments from five large companies in Denmark, ranging from manufacturers of medical equipment through toys to control systems for industrial infrastructures. We explore the challenges they face as products, services, and user research are increasingly connected. Our research shows that current methods, development processes, and organizational structures do not sufficiently support User Experience design teams in dealing with emerging design and organizational challenges that follow from increased digitalization. As a result, UX designers are struggling to anticipate the future of product interaction,...
Intelligences
Valuable Connections: Design Anthropology and Co-creation in Digital Innovation
METTE GISLEV KJÆRSGAARD and RACHEL CHARLOTTE SMITH
This paper explores challenges and potentials for innovation and co-creation within an increasingly interconnected and digitalized world, and its affect on ethnographic practices within the field of design and business development. Our discussion is based on material from an interdisciplinary research and design project with a leading computer game developer, exploring opportunities of involving online gaming communities in innovation processes and product development. Based on our case, we argue that in a world with increasingly blurred boundaries between physical, digital and hybrid contexts, as well as design, production and use, we might need to rethink the role of ethnography within user centred design and business development. Here the challenge is less about ”getting closer” to user needs and real-life contexts, through familiarization, mediation, and facilitation, and more about creating a critical theoretically informed distance from which to perceive and reflect...