The embodiment of a format in interaction design : A discussion about design thinking, acting and tools for intentional creation of emergent qualities

Sammanfattning: Design researchers and design practitioners differ regarding their notion of thenature of design complexity, and how design practitioners should approach it in arational way. By describing three ways of viewing design rationality, differentapproaches of what it means to design and be a designer is presented. This paperargues that design complexity is ‘wicked’, with no definite conditions or limits todesign problems. This means that the designer acts as a ‘bricoleur’; someone whoshares the notion of ‘wicked’ design complexity, and who understands that thecomponents in the design space is interrelated and interdependent. A ‘bricoleur’,engages in the design space with systems thinking, in a dialectic process ofinterpretation and meaning-making, where judgment and imagination are the coredesign skills. I describe this process in terms of the design of a composition, guided bya parti (an early vision of the design) with the aim to create a strong format (agestalt) with desired emergent qualities. In this process I have pinpointed the‘embodiment of a format’ as the key activity if the designer wishes to create a designwith components in harmony and desired emergent qualities. When the designerembodies a format, the designer becomes aware of the different roles that componentsin a design have in the whole design, and as a consequence, this creates awareness ofthe qualities that emerges before the design is implemented. This paper also discussesthe support for this activity in the tools used by interaction design practitioners, andthat sketching is the tool that is mostly used in the activity of ‘format embodiment’.The conclusion is that there is a lack of support for ‘format embodiment’ in the toolsthat are promoted by mainstream HCI-research. Design researchers should view thedesigner as a ‘bricoleur’ to be able to address the need for tools for formatembodiment.