8 - Design Things: Models, Scenarios, Prototypes

Abstract

This chapter outlines the ways in which constructive design researchers use design things in their research process. Design things are indispensable tools for transforming designers' intuitions, hunches, and small discoveries into something that stays—for instance, a prototype, product, or system. They provide the means for sketching, analyzing, and clarifying ideas as well as for mediating ideas and persuading others. In Bruno Latour's philosophical language, design things turn weak hunches into stronger claims. They also translate many types of interests into joined strongholds and provide tools that take design from short to long networks. This ability to gather people to talk and debate without any command of special skills is what is needed to work with systems design methods. Flow diagrams and other rationalistic tools cut too many parties out from design, creating a caste system. Understanding these forms requires training, and the mere use of these tools tells nonexperts to stay away. Most writing about modeling and prototyping in design has been about the construction, technical qualities, and functions of prototypes, and has typically tried to classify prototypes and other expressions by their function, technology, or place in the design process. In contrast, writers like Ehn give a theoretical and philosophical grounding on design things and shift attention to what designers do with them. To understand design properly, one needs to look at design things in research practice.