Design as Participation
Kevin Slavin,
Journal of Design and Science,
Apr 28, 2019
I hadn't seen this until today (an occupational hazard). It was just cited by Joi Ito, but is important enough to include here anyway, and to get it's own post. Here's the key phrase: "you are not stuck in traffic, you are traffic." The message is that the people using a system or a network contribute to the design of that system or network, and therefore that designers should plan for this participation. He cites my new hero, Cedric Price: "Price was designing not for the uses he wished to see, but for all the uses he couldn't imagine.... As opposed to the 'user' of a building who is interacting with a smart thermostat, the participants in a building are engaged with one another." Or as I like to say, we built a trillion-dollar communication system, and people use it to send cat pictures, and that's the beauty of it.
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