Design Practice as a Discursive and Interrogating Performance

Abstract

This PhD is focused on how design can play a role in engaging people in potential serious issues, or producing forms of knowledge that are still unstable, or controversial. The research objective is two-fold. At first, to engage my practical skills as a designer to further develop the notion of discursive design, this will be done through a series of hands-on explorations that in different ways aim to mediate and visualise the issue of concern. My role as a designer is meant to reveal new experiences, tell new stories by assuming design is about linking the imagination to material forms. And secondly, to investigate and question how the object of design can be a purposeful, deliberate, direct participant that can open up to dialogue among participants inside as well as outside a project. 

This article presents the status of two different research projects in relation to my current key areas of research where I employ my skills within interaction and product design in a co-design research environment.