A 'way of being' in design practice: Zen and the art of being a human-centred practitioner

Akama, Y. 2012. 'A 'way of being' in design practice: zen and the art of being a human-centred practitioner', Design Philosophy Papers, Vol. 1.

Design’s attempts to address social, ethical and environmental concerns of our time have often been marred by theory generated by well-meaning scholars who have imposed hard-line definitions and models of what it means to be an ‘ethical designer’. These arguments abstract values and impose ideological and political positions that designers can find difficult to apply in their daily practices. It is not as simple as prescribing the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ values for designers to have and translate them through design. Whatever values there are, those values need to matter to people who care about them enough to translate them into action . Values are not impersonal. They cannot be detached and be subsumed under a more universal value or comparable importance. The paper opens with a critique of this prescriptive approach to highlight the reasons for why ethical design remains stuck in a rut. I then move to discuss more deeply, the close relationship between being ethical and being a human-centred practitioner in design. In doing so, I critique common notions of human-centred design that gives it an ergonomic, human-factors emphasis, or its ‘do-gooder’ side that is associated with humanitarian design. Instead, I offer an alternative framework for human-centred design based on the Japanese ethical concept woven into what it means to be human.

The Japanese term for ‘human being’ is ningen (人間), composed of two characters for ‘person’ (人), and ‘between’ (間). The Japanese understanding of human as in-betweenness, etymologised by ‘between person’, situates it as a relational being. This is the central framework for my notions of ‘self’ and being ‘human’ . This concept of human is strikingly different from major Western philosophies that emphasises ‘anthropos’ or ‘homo’, denoting the individual. Being human-centred is criticised for perpetuating an anthropocentric position , further contributing to humanity’s self-centredness and environmentally destructive behaviour. The profound ethical difference of conceiving humans as detached and in isolation, compared to the Japanese concept of human as relational in-betweennes, is argued by one of the most significant Japanese philosophers of the twentieth century, Tetsuro Watsuji . He was influenced by hermeneutics, phenomenology, Zen Buddhism and the Japanese indigenous spirituality of Shinto. In his book Rinrigaku, ethics in Japan, Watsuji is critical of Western philosophy (Heidegger and many others ) that emphasises the individual concept of self and the locus of the ethical problem pertaining to the consciousness of the individual. The paper dives deeply into Watsuji’s ethical framework in explaining the ningen ‘between person’ that is significant to my definition of being human-centred. I attempt to combine the Eastern philosophy with the West by bringing in a selection of other philosophers such as Goethe, Bortoft and Merleau-Ponty that have resonance with the argument constructed. There is nothing to be gained from East-West dualism or exoticism, as it locks down discourse. Although these Eastern and Western philosophies that I draw upon have not, until now, directly engaged with each other in the discourse of design , they have many valuable overlaps that I would like to share in this paper.

The relational association located in the betweenness, Watsuji argues, to be human is to shift and change continually – it is undergoing a process of constant transformation. The transformation of a designer to being a human-centred practitioner is achieved in relation to others. This connection between self and others (including people, animals, objects and environment) is essential in positioning and embedding oneself in the world. The transformative process is more than cognitive learning or professional development – it is in fact a process of self-awareness that comes from continually reflecting on our activity, our behaviour and how we are with others. This is reflective practice. Though in contrast to reflection and reflective practice that is grounded in critical theory , I explore this by incorporating aspects of wholeness from Goethe’s phenomenology and embodied perception by Merleau-Ponty . I argue the importance of being a reflective practitioner as the first step in being able to fully understand ourselves, our relationship and our connection to others. This pursuit of self-awareness, through reflective practice, is the central argument of this paper of being a human-centred practitioner. Through weaving together these various frameworks, I discuss the cyclical journey of transformation of the self where reflection is experienced in an immersive, affective, embodied way.

True, long-term sustainable change towards building and creating an ethical practice cannot come from being told what to design or choosing the ‘right’ values to adopt. Neither does it come from simply undertaking community-based projects, taking up a social cause or deploying participatory methods. To manifest and practise human-centredness is not a switch one can flick ‘on’ when you are in the design studio at 9am and ‘off’ when you’re leaving work. Instead, I stress the importance of human-centredness manifesting through all facets of our lives that involves engaging in the in-betweenness with others. It requires active creation and the practising of practice that is truly human-centred and aware – aware of oneself, of others and the world we live in. It is a day-to-day application and manifestation, but it is not merely a mechanical repetition. The significance of this being a practice is that it is a transformation and evolution of ourselves in bringing an awareness and embedded-ness to what we do everyday. It is a path (Tao) we each carve our ‘way of being’ in the world.

A Candour in Reporting: designing dexterously for fire preparedness

Co-authored by Yoko Akama, RMIT University and Ann Light, Northumbria University

Paper presented at AltCHI 2012, May 5-10, 2012, Austin Texas, USA

This paper challenges the domination of repeatable methods in HCI discourse and, instead, offers a design case study that details ad-hoc, contextually-driven decisions as to how processes can unfold in a community-based project, taking on fire awareness in Australia. The paper draws out details which enable us to understand why and how methods were modified or abandoned to overcome obstacles, and what was made a priority in arriving at greater understanding of communicating risk. This reporting differs from an established research accounting, but offers complexity and richness in human-centered research as we seek to develop our epistemologies of design research practice.

Design-led strategies for bushfire preparedness

Co-authored by Yoko Akama, Susan Chaplin, Richard Philips, Keith Toh

Bushfire CRC research team: ‘Effective Communication: Communities and Bushfire’. RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia

Paper presented at EARTH: FIRE AND RAIN
Australian & New Zealand Disaster and Emergency Management Conference, Brisbane, 16 – 18, April 2012

To date, both government and fire authorities in Victoria have deployed a variety of communication messages on bushfire awareness. Yet, distributing information to a wide audience is not enough to increase people’s preparedness for bushfire. These forms of communication sustain a transmission process that reinforces the power-dynamics of control, making audiences passive. It perpetuates the disempowerment felt by communities who are not engaged in a dialogic process, further broadening the gap between ‘expert’ fire authorities and ‘non-expert’ community. This paper presents co-design methods that were used to facilitate a dialogic form of communication on bushfire preparedness with community members in the Southern Otways, Victoria. The research engaged a group of 20 residents to facilitate co-creation and communication of local knowledge of the geographical environment through visualisation. These methods show potential of bridging relationships between neighbours and the importance of social interactions that can lead to better fire preparation.

Probious: Researching Australian Communication Design Through Collaboration and Design Practice

Co-authored by Yoko Akama and Carolyn Barnes

Akama, Y. and Barnes, C. 2011. Probious: Researching Australian Communication Design Through Collaboration and Design Practice, Studies in Material Thinking, Vol. 6 (December 2011), Auckland, New Zealand. pp. 1-14.

This article contributes to mounting evidence of the value of participatory methods in discovering knowledge about design. It discusses an on-going study into the experiences and self-perceptions of Australian communication designers, focusing on designers’ contribution to research direction and methods. We argue that researcher-driven approaches to knowledge production are too reductive to discover critical information about complex, human phenomena like design, especially where they occur in diverse circumstances. A variety of design-led interactions saw designers and researchers jointly develop research tools and questions to enhance the study’s relevance to the design community and establish the foundations for a collaborative research partnership. To engage designers’ participation and guidance, the research design process used familiar language and practices. The stress on creative processes in the resultant cultural probes was vital in allowing participants to reflect on their practices, experiences and situations in open-ended ways, rather than pre-empting research questions as with established social survey methods. The article reports some early research findings, but mainly presents an epistemological and methodological discussion on the importance of involving those being researched in research design, reflexive collaboration challenging researchers’ perspectives on the issues under investigation.

‘Telling your Story’: People and the Aylesbury Estate

Co-authored by Teal Triggs, Claire McAndrew, Joanna Choukeir and Yoko Akama. Paper presented at Include 2011 conference, Royal College of Art, London, UK on 18-20 April 2011.

One of the largest housing estates in the UK, The Aylesbury, South London, is undergoing transformation as part of a £2.4 billion regeneration project. The scheme aims to provide a ‘blueprint for a new neighbourhood’ and in the process, ‘create a strong and vibrant community’. As the demolition of the Estate began in October 2009, the Kaleidoscope Project was launched to share the memories, experiences and images of the people who lived there. This paper focuses on one aspect of Kaleidoscope – ‘Telling Your Story’, which had two main aims: The first was to capture the life stories of the Estate at this moment of change and the second was pedagogical, to use notions of transformational learning to enhance the skill base of some of the Estate’s long-term residents. This was achieved through a series of innovative workshops focusing on dialogues around the cultural aspects of food, craft and a sense of history and place. At the same time, the ‘people-centered’ workshops provided the opportunity to share aspirations for the future through a resident-led blog. These processes and methods can lead to social innovation: social engagement through building a community of learners and knowledge exchange between residents and academia.

Dialogic Shifts: The rhythm and sequence of artefacts in aesthetically informed interaction design practice

A co-authored publication by Jeremy Yuille, Yoko Akama, Hugh Macdonald, Nifeli Stewart, Laurene Vaughan, Stephen Viller

OzCHI 2010, November 22-25, 2010, Brisbane, Australia
Published in ACM Digital Library

Aesthetic accounts of interaction design (Löwgren 2008, Wright et al 2008) acknowledge the importance of the descriptive and dialogic roles that design artefacts play. Yet, much of the focus in this aesthetic turn (Udsen 2005) concerns final designs, or products of the design project. Ephemeral artefacts that are produced in the course of these projects or the design actions by those who created the artefacts inside projects are often omitted and rarely discussed. This paper critically reflects on a project to shed some light on the 'secret life of artifacts' and the role they play through making and using by the project team.

What community? Facilitating awareness of ‘community’ through Playful Triggers

When using this reference, please cite:
Akama, Y & Ivanka, T, 2010, ‘What community? Facilitating awareness of ‘community’ through Playful Triggers’, Participatory Design Conference, Sydney, Australia, Nov 29 – Dec 3, 2010. Proceeding published in ACM

Notions of ‘community’ are still taken-for-granted in Participatory Design discourse, omitting critical examination of how people participate in projects to achieve and evaluate community-based participation and outcomes. This paper critically reflects on challenges and obstacles faced when using participatory design methods in engaging a ‘community’ on bushfire risk awareness. Bushfires are a critical and continuous threat to residents living in regional areas of Australia. Through this project, we identified a critical communication problem in bushfire awareness and preparation caused by ‘fragmented’ networks among a ‘community of place’. This fragmentation contributes to significant communication obstacles in community-level preparation for bushfires. This research explored participatory design ‘scaffolds’ to capture, share and visualise locally relevant knowledge vital in mitigating bushfire risks. These methods facilitated awareness and revealed tacit knowledge on who and what community is. Critical reflection of the project examines how such methods have the potential to facilitate the creation of sub-groups gathered around a common cause. And has also built understanding to avoid ‘imagined’ notions of a community that can hide social heterogeneity.

Where is our diversity? Questions of visibility and representation in Australian graphic design

Co-authored with Carolyn Barnes. Published in 'Visual:Design:Scholarship', 2009, vol 4, no. 1, pp. 29-40

This polemical discussion explores the lack of diversity of representation in Australian graphic design. It questions what it means that the image and voice of a cultural field is limited to a narrow category of individuals, especially when there is increased awareness across society of the value of opening representation to previously excluded or marginalised groups. The discussion of diversity builds on established analyses of the situation for women in graphic design. This may seem to skew the argument towards issues of gender not diversity, but the matter of women’s participation in design is an open, if unresolved, topic of discussion. The nature and extent of other groups’ participation in design remains largely unstated and undocumented due to the sensitivity of broaching issues of ethnicity and indigeneity in Australian society. The paper argues that a creative industry that lacks plurality and inclusiveness in its leadership is unlikely to provide the nuanced, receptive and well-informed responses required to communicate to a diverse Australian public. The paper does not seek to provide answers to the questions it raises. Rather, its aim is to prompt discussion about the nature of graphic design as an industry and a cultural institution.

Warts-and-all: the real practice of service design

Paper presented at the First Nordic Conference on Service Design and Service Innovation, Oslo, Norway, Nov 24 - 26, 2009.

Service design practice, discourse and education are still nascent in Australia where most designers are trained in fields such as industrial design, architecture, communication design, and to a lesser degree, interaction design (a field that is equally nascent). Academic research on service design has so far been limited (Kimbell and Seidel 2008) and much of the knowledge generated from business contexts has been proprietary (Tether 2008). These factors have led to a lack of critical engagement in examining and investigating the complex contexts that surrounds service design projects. This also adds to the challenging obstacles for designers seeking to establish and embarking upon a service design-led practice in Australia.

The paper critiques service design case studies that are often documented and reported in a manner that abstracts and generalises the realities of this field as obstacles to understanding the ‘real’ practice of service design. Through attempts to clarify, systematise and advocate the benefit of service design, authors might gloss over the messy realities and the contextual knowledge grounded in action. This has resulted in practice-based knowledge being ‘lost in translation’. This is a critical shortfall. It becomes a disadvantageous factor in developing learning frameworks for designers in similar contexts to Australia who are seeking models, methods, case studies and discourse on service design from established agencies and research institutions on service design across Europe. These case studies can, by default, construct an idealistic scenario of service design that omit issues such as relationship building, resources, skill-sets and disciplinary boundaries that are integral to the realisation of projects and the adoption of a service design-led practice.

Within this context, the paper offers learnings drawn from a case study of a team of communication designers in Australia who attempted to undertake a project from a service design perspective. As practice-based research, reflection and critique was emphasised to reveal knowledge generated and situated in action. Numerous questions rather than answers have emerged from reflecting on the case study, which are presented as ‘lessons learnt’. These lessons highlight logistical obstacles, issues of losing disciplinary identity and change management barriers that project stakeholders faced when embarking on service design projects. The discussion in this paper argues for the importance of documenting and reporting case studies that captures the grounded contexts as a way to facilitate knowledge generation and transfer. It also highlights the need to integrate knowledge from organisational theory and change management that examines, documents and addresses human-related challenges that are often omitted from service design discourse. These learnings are offered to the community of potential service designers who are broadening their current disciplinary practice and are seeking opportunities to create a service design practice. The aim is to provide ‘signposts’, particularly for communication designers intending to apply service design methods and thinking in their current or future projects.

One of the values of generating knowledge in service design and disseminating this as research is to assist and enable more designers to enter in this field. Our responsibility as design researchers is to apply service design thinking in the way we disseminate this knowledge to others. The unique knowledge situated and generated from service design context is complex, yet typical of practice-based design research. In comparison to those who argue for a ‘clear consensus or an over-arching unifying framework’ for service design (Saco and Goncalves 2008, p. 12), the paper argues that it can never be, nor should it be framed in such a way. If service design practitioners truly believe in its value and agency to companies, organisations and public institutions, then, accounts of the practice needs to be captured and articulated in ways that reflect the lived world.

Visualisation as a method for knowledge discovery

Co-authored with Laurene Vaughan, published in 'Studies in Material Thinking', Vol 3, (November 2009) pp. 1-14

This article discusses some of the challenges and key learnings identified by Yoko Akama in the course of her doctoral research in the field of communication design. In particular the text reflects on the challenges of undertaking practice based research within and through the practice of design, rather than as an exploration about
design. A number of tools and methods were used within the study, many of which can be clustered under the heading of visualisation. Through a series of visual
mappings, including the arrangment of three dimensional artefacts, Yoko was able to undergo the critical process of sense mapping that is essential within the research process.

Design that keeps designing: designing for participation

Co-authored with Neal Haslem, paper presented at ACUADS conference, Queensland College of Art Griffith University Brisbane, Australia, Sept 30 – Oct 2, 2009

What role does participation take when engaging the public in communication design projects? What considerations and capacities in the communication design process and practice are required to enable participation? These questions are considered in this paper through critically reflecting on a project entitled Fashion City, which explored engaging the public as co-author of the communication content. The unexpected and confronting outcomes of the project provided valuable insights into designing for participation. The paper summarises three of the key lessons learned during the project that revolved around issues of releasing control and de-centralising the designer and the outcome of design. Following the understandings arising from the project, a ‘scaffold’ model is proposed. This scaffold can act as a framework that respects the individual’s agency and their participation as well as their rights to choose to ignore or interact, engage or disengage in a ‘conversation’ initiated through design. These scaffolds may be risky and unconventional to normative commercial processes, however, it is argued that they can lead to generative situations of uncertainty and indeterminacy to occur, enabling the discovery of new concepts, knowledge and practices in communication design.

Engaging with Ku˜: from abstraction to meaning through the practice of noticing

Co-authored with Laurene Vaughan, presented at Architecture and Phenomenology 2 conference, Kyoto Seika University, Japan, June 26 – 30, 2009.

This paper presents a design project that explored the practice of “noticing”. Noticing is a way in and through which we are able to understand and create our relationship to space and place. The practice of noticing can facilitate awareness, reflection, learning and transformation (Mason 2002). Noticing is a practice that enables us to engage with the concept of Ku˜, meaning “space”, in Japanese. In this project context, Ku˜ is interpreted as a space of potentiality rather than emptiness or nothingness. Engaging with Ku˜ through the practice of noticing can enable a transition from abstraction to meaning. Ku˜ can also be an expression of the ambiguous potential of design investigations: including knowing and the unknown, the limitations and the challenges. To practice design in this way is to step outside of the confines of certainty and embark on an exploratory path of discovery. Just as design is a way of engaging with space – to enunciate the unknown, to create meaning from the abstract – so too is noticing as a temporal practice of discovery and place making. Through the act of noticing the ambiguous openness of space is transformed into the connectedness of place (Casey 2001).

Politics makes strange bedfellows: addressing the ‘messy’ power dynamics in design practice

Paper presented at Undisciplined – Design Research Society Conference, Sheffield, UK, July 16-19, 2008.

The paper addresses the role of the designer in navigating through politics and power dynamics that can potentially hinder ways in which people have input into a design process. It acknowledges that such obstacles are common to design practices and much is already documented in organisational, business and management frameworks (Best, 2006, p. 97; Jones, 2003). However, the paper draws on the author’s doctoral research that explored how designers work within the complexities of politics and power dynamics and the agency they bring when working within such contexts.

Firstly, the paper clarifies its use of the word politics by distinguishing between the Political choices that designers make, to the embedded politics of power dynamics and hidden agendas. It acknowledges how the Political content and intention of design is widely discussed in communication design literature where designers have created political content toward a purposeful political outcome. The paper therefore focuses more on another political aspect to communication design practice that relates to values, relationships and power dynamics. These human aspects of practice are complex, ‘messy’ and are often implicit. The power dynamics within projects can significantly influence the way stakeholders have input into the design process and subsequent project outcome. The politics of the individual, organisation, community or the society can often abruptly and unexpectedly surface through designing.

Based on several interviews with a variety of communication design practitioners and project case studies from the author’s research, the paper highlights a role that designers can potentially play in addressing the ‘messy’ politics that can manifest through design projects. The research explored various design interventions to enable a variety of people with different values, opinions and viewpoints within a design project to collectively negotiate them through dialogue. It has discovered that such design interventions can be instrumental in facilitating the dialogic process amongst stakeholders to illuminate differences in values or hidden agendas. The paper proposes that the role of the designer, then, is to facilitate this dialogic process through design interventions to enrich the experience of dialogue and exchange amongst project stakeholders.

Show and tell: Accessing and communication implicit knowledge through artefacts

co-authored with Cooper R, Vaughan L, Viller S, Simpson M & Yuille J. Published in 'Artifact Journal', 2007, vol. 1, no. 3, pp.172-181.

This paper contributes to the current discourse on the role of artefacts in facilitating and triggering interaction among people. The discussion will focus on artefacts used as part of an interview method developed in order to discover knowledge that was observed but absent from both project reports and other documentation within multidisciplinary collaborative research projects, located within the field of Interaction Design. Using artefacts in an interview context enabled participants to reveal insights that were, in turn, participatory and human-centred. Thus the method was effective and appropriate in illuminating knowledge situated in interaction. This ethnomethodological tool enabled participants to reflexively externalize their understanding of the complex interactions that occur within projects, encouraging participation, interaction, visualization, reflection and communication through the use of tools aimed at capturing and illuminating the lived experiences of human engagement. These interviews were conducted with a selection of participants, chosen because they were researchers, working together within a cooperative research centre.

Designers’ agency: human-centred design in communication design practice

Published in 'Design Principles and Practices: An international Journal', 2007, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 1-6

This paper raises questions about the designers’ agency in human centred design using a communication design project as the site for investigation. It builds on the discussion surrounding human-centred design where the designer is viewed as a key agent in the design process. What is the designer’s role? What is their agency? How is agency enabled? These questionings moves the discussion beyond the traditional boundaries of ‘form giving’ that characterises the practice of communication designers. Furthermore, the paper critically reflects upon the interactions that had occurred amongst the stakeholders in this project and explores key factors that enable agency, such as roles, value and empowerment.

Reflecting on Fashion City - learning from collaborative experimental design

Co-authored with Neal Haslem, published in 'Visual:Design:Scholarship', 2007, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 39-47.

Learning through designing is a common pedagogical model in design education. Many design institutions utilise studio-based teaching with design tools and methods facilitating students’ learning in a discovery-led way. This paper builds on the above model by examining the learning and discovery that took place that arose from a collaborative student design project named Fashion City. In contrast with most other learning models in undergraduate studio-based teaching, this project did not have a prescribed learning objective. Rather, it took an experimental approach to learn and discover from propositions, interventions, friction and failures. Instead of having a set objective, Fashion City evolved as a response to context, generated through the interactions and actions of a group of designers who all had developed research agendas. In this way Fashion City simply took a position of ‘seeing what might happen’ when a group of graduate students collaboratively designed a project within a particular context. The design or learning objectives were deliberately left undefined at the outset to allow the students to focus on how to build a project collaboratively. The aims of Fashion City were fuzzy; they arose during the collaborative process and developed in a haphazard way. This could be perceived as a weakness, as certain aspects of the project 'failed' to achieve aims that one might normally perceive to be the key indicators of 'success'. However, this paper proposes that this indeterminacy was one of the key strengths of the project when viewed from the perspective of an exercise in design research and education. In other words, this paper does not set out to critique whether or not Fashion City successfully met its implicit objectives; rather, it evaluates its outcome as a vehicle for learning and generation of design knowledge.

Fashion City set out to explore the parameters of the city of Melbourne and its public, within the context of the Melbourne Fashion Festival. The project members were all graduate communication design research students as well as practicing designers and were interested in exploring this context with a collaborative model of designing. This collaborative model was ideal to examine how it facilitates and provokes an experimental approach of risk-taking and stepping into the unknown. The authors of this paper, themselves both members of the Fashion City team, have undertaken critical reflection on the outcome and process of the Fashion City project. This reflection has allowed themes such as public engagement, design authorship and a re-prioritising of the value of objects to emerge. The clarification of these themes has allowed the authors to view the project as a ‘gift’ – a rich source of knowledge and learning for design practice. Viewed in this way, Fashion City demonstrates the value of graduate education for commercially practicing designers, in generating design knowledge, investigating theory and evolving new models for practice.

Kaleidoscope of roles: valuing the agencies of the audience, client and the designer

Presented at Include 2007 conference, Designing with people, Royal College of Art, London, UK, April 2-4, 2007.

This paper broadens the discussion on the inclusiveness of design process. It discusses an inclusive approach to communication design projects that values the agencies of various stakeholders involved. In particular, this paper explores the importance of the designers’ human agency to enable a human-centred approach in the practice of communication design. The paper draws on data drawn from design-led investigations and interviews with design practitioners. These were undertaken as part of the author’s practice-led doctorate research, which is situated in the field of communication design.

What roles do people play during the design process? How does this affect the design outcome? The paper argues that the multiplicity of perspectives is vital to the design process in creating engaging and meaningful outcomes for all concerned. A dialogic interaction that occurs between various people in the project facilitates multiplicity of perspectives. The paper concludes with a proposition for communication design to embrace the notion that designing is an interpersonal, complex and layered process that includes the multiple roles that people have.

Design plus People

Co-authored with Vaughan, L, Viller, S, Simpson, MR, Yuille, J & Cooper, R, published in 2007 Principles and Practices: An International Journal, vol. 1, no. 4, pp. 131-138.

This work proposes a hypothetical model based on a shared understanding of design and ethnography that draws on the agency of both disciplines. In particular we explore how ethnography and design can become equal partners in an interaction design context. All too often one side or the other dominates this discussion. When the design view dominates, the ethnography is about providing empirical data to inform the design process. In this context, there is a risk that ethno- graphic fieldwork is seen simply as an empirically based service to derive data for the designers to work with. However,  when ethnography dominates the project focuses on building theory, rather than meeting the brief. In this context, design  is viewed as being about aesthetics and layout, and ignores the tools, methods and experiences that designers have in their  repertoire to understand the people in context. This down-plays the analytic qualities that ethnography can offer in contributing to knowledge and theory. Thus the paper draws on the research undertaken within an interdisciplinary project involving designers, ethnographers, and technologists concerned with understanding how human-centred design takes place with considerations of how to enact this in the future.

The Object of Interaction: the Role of Artefacts In Interaction Design