School of Design

Studies in the history of architecture tend to focus on form, leading to a narrow emphasis on visual aesthetics. Adopting an anthropological perspective, the paper seeks to widen this understanding by considering how architectural knowledge influences conceptual orientation and how this, in turn, affects the perception of the environment and subsequent decision-making and ways of working. Specifically, the paper explores
the problems and potentials of introducing computer assisted design (CAD) tools into architectural working practices and relations with the environment. The argument focuses on the relations between agents and technologies, and on the representation of these relations. It is shown that knowledge within the architectural design process is situated within social contexts. During the developmental phase of the process,
architects do not separate thinking from doing. Rather, there is a complex interrelation between perception, creativity, innovation and skill, embedded in interpersonal
dialogue. The paper is based on field research carried out between 1997 and 1999, principally in Norway (in the cities of Tromsø and Oslo) but also in Finland and Denmark, involving conversations with professionals from the building industry,
systems designers, historians of science and technology, anthropologists and philosophers. Besides presenting a detailed ethnographic account in an area of activity – namely, architectural design – that has been little studied in anthropology, the paper shows how an anthropological approach to technology can offer an enhanced
understanding of situated action, especially with regard to the dynamic interrelations between gesture and speech, and between drawing and writing.

ABSTRACT
The move towards a more liberalized energy market and the emergent smart grid technology has forced a Scandinavian energy company to begin rethinking the relation between themselves and private energy end users. Originally a unidirectional relationship, the present and future have potential for a more bidirectional relationship between the company and their customers. During this process the company has realized that they lack knowledge about private energy end users. The company has run a demonstration project simulating the face of the electricity smart grid in private households and has used ethnographic methods to investigate the system effect of private households’ participation. Our paper questions why this kind of approach is reproducing the unidirectional relationship instead of creating a bidirectional relationship. We propose an extension of the ethnographic approach whereby anthropological reflection is generated in the company through a flexible tangible scenario model of the bidirectional connection between the energy company and the users.

Can learning be a way of doing research? Can practice be a way of doing theory? This exhibition addressed these questions through the disciplines of art, architecture and anthropology. It focuses on the interconnections between writing, imaging,
drawing and reading, exploring the many ways in which
media and notational systems can be used in contexts of learning to facilitate the translation of knowledge across the boundaries between the three disciplines, and seeking to bring them together on the level of exploratory practice.

How does participation in an ongoing dialogue, help us to think about ideas of how much human activity within the physical world may be thought of as notational actions; to what extent are we normally conscious of this and at what level do such actions become communicative? How does an experience of using a system of notation influence the representation of that system? and How does the notation influence a working process?                       

This is not an exhibition of artistic, architectural or anthropological works. The aim is rather to reflect upon disciplinary ways of working, and of knowing. Every description of the world we inhabit, whether undertaken by an artist, an architect or an anthropologist, embodies certain practices of describing. Any practice that describes must involve some system of notation. These systems, however, are various, and by no means confined to the written word.Exhibitors were concerned with the potential of alternative notations, involving different media, to transcend the boundaries between ways of working and knowing specific to the disciplines of art, architecture and anthropology. The exhibition represents an ongoing dialogue, or conversation,
among practitioners in these respective fields.

What does it mean to use, or do, theory in the scholarship of teaching and learning? The article approaches the question by considering the role of design anthropology in developing studio-based engineering programmes. Central to my discussion within situated contexts of learning is the idea of practice-based exploration conceived as a way of enhancing collaboration between knowledge traditions. My focus is on the practice of interdisciplinarity, and I show how such practice is a way of doing anthropology with other disciplines rather than doing an anthropology of these subjects. Through this ‘anthropology with’, I examine the learning and teaching of critical reflection skills. Building upon an experiment in learning and teaching carried out at the Department of Anthropology,
University of Aberdeen in 2004 in developing ways of knowing and understanding on the interface across disciplines, I aim to show how learning can itself be a
form of research that generates new knowledge and understanding. I suggest that ‘anthropology with’ could be a powerful way of doing theory in the scholarship
of teaching and learning.

Anthropology can contribute to an understanding of everyday working practices of artists, anthropologists and architects by situating both knowledge and skills within their social context. Artists’, anthropologists’
and architects’ working processes should be understood not as a series of abstract actions, carried on in isolation from the social world, but rather as the activity of persons situated within a field of social relations. This challenges assumptions that an interior process of thought controls action, and that thinking is separate from doing. I consider here the difference, and the
relation, between direct and indirect forms of communication within fine art, anthropological and architectural design practice. Referring to ethnographic
materials from fieldwork in artists’ and architects’ workplaces and reflections on my own practices as an anthropologist, I ask how learning within a situated context is mediated by stories and/or drawing and imaging skills.

In this short sub-project, we will investigate how an understanding of people's everyday practices of relating to things and other people is central to the designing of medical products. We will utilize our collaborative inquiries to find out how, through, combining participatory observational activities and design as a process of inquiry; we can in fact provide materials to inform the process of designing medical products. Working between the design studio and field sites we will learn different approaches to engaging different groupings of people within a design process. This will involve an introduction to the skills of participatory observation; interpretative frame working and co-analytical modelling practices to open lines of design inquiry. Our aim is to produce a booklet of our process of inquiry and main findings to share with a counterpart group of interaction and industrial designers working with similar issues at two Schools of Industrial Design in Israel and Brazil. Programme Over the next three weeks, we will study how people involve medical products in their everyday life situations. We will do this by considering the ways people (and that includes you, fellow students and/ or your family members) relate to medical products in their past, present and future situated practices. We will utilize archaeologies of past, present and future encounters as an analytical framework towards opening lines of design inquiry for you to draw upon in sub project 3 (Product) and 4 (Design). Project deliverables October 10, 09:15 – 12:00 a) Identification and graphic presentation (in the form of a poster) of the main lines of design inquiry to take forward to sub-projects 3 and 4. This deliverable is completed in teams of two students and can be included in the final sub-project booklet. b) A small booklet documenting the main processes of participatory observation and findings from your fieldworking and design inquiries. Reference should be made to ongoing workbooks initiated in sub-project 1. The booklet should be a collaborative effort involving all members of the group and allow for experimentation with appropriate compositions of text and image to share the results of your investigations with interaction design, industrial design and graphic design students (in Brazil and Israel) and the people you have been involving within your design process. This deliverable is completed as a group project. c) A brief presentation of your main findings to interaction design and industrial design students and professors working in Israel and Brazil (via SKYPE, or a conference call). This deliverable is completed as a group. Teacher: Wendy Gunn, associate professor of design anthropology Through the design of medical products, which improve the physical functioning of a user, the designer has potential to enable and dis (enable) a person to relate to the norms of her/his social surroundings (Ventura and Gunn 2014).

In recent years ethnography has become important for designers concerned with social and sustainable approaches towards designing. Ethnographic understanding is concerned with understanding people
and contexts. Designing, we argue, always exists in relation to changing environmental conditions and remains responsive to ongoing changes
in people.The challenge for interaction design engineers is to recognise ethnography is not just one method but comprises of many different kinds of practices. These practices involve making tools to think with and generating design materials aimed towards engagement, reflecting-in-action and reframing relations.

In the first year interaction design studio we will explore play. Specifically, play-like qualities raising questions and discussion concerning assumptions and familiar modes of thought underpinning design practices accepted in the private and public sectors. In so doing, our aim is to instigate processes of reflexion and reflection concerning researchers/interaction design students and the people we are carrying out studies with ways of designing together. Through practice based investigations, we will explore the role of design materials during these processes to address the following questions: a) how do you engage families in the designing of systems for energy regulation and control? b) how do you engage teenagers in the future designing of public libraries? and c) how do you engage children in the designing of genderless toys? Working between multiple field sites and the interaction design studio, we will focus on how to register reception of knowledge(s) generated through our design anthropological inquires at sites belonging to multiple stakeholders. For example a company focused on the design of energy saving products, a public library and a children's' toy manufacturer.

Design anthropology practitioners work in many different areas of design including the designing of processes,  products, services, strategy and policy. Design anthropology can be involved during the entire design process towards what could be described as practices of future making. During this course, we would like to focus on a number of research areas within the field, which are closely connected to your semester project on bodily learning: aesthetics of the everyday, anthropology of the senses; understanding of human perception; skilled practice and collaborative forms. Integral to our inquiries, we ask how skills are passed on between people during the course of their actions. Importantly, we give focus to the multisensory skills of perception and action. Specifically, how people engage with materials during processes of enskilment.

At the core of this introductory course in design anthropology is a critique of existing notions of sustainability and intervention. We ask: In what ways could combining biotic and abiotic elements in the designing of buildings shape future urban landscapes? What are the possibilities here for the growth of bi-products in terms of food provisioning for urban infrastructure, or the improvement of air quality in hospital environments through involving biotechnology within the environmental engineering design of buildings? In order to address these questions, we will focus on three main areas: integrating biotic and abiotic elements in building interiors (to improve air quality), exteriors (to clear up contamination and increase land value), interiors (to generate socioeconomic growth for and with a diversity of communities).

The Place Making workshop is for both 1st and 2nd year students,
with the goal of finalising plans for the IT Products Design studio,
workshop and exhibition spaces at Alsion. Central to the workshop
development is developing a good understanding of one’s own
practice, as a precondition for organising workspace to support
that practice. Tracing paths, telling stories, making things, weaving
threads and sharing understandings are central to IT Product
Design practice. Places come into being through these activities.

Abstract
Within the design studio, and across multiple field sites, the authors compare involvement of research tools and materials during collaborative processes of designing. Their aim is to trace temporal dimensions (shifts/ movements) of where and when learning takes place along different sites of practice. They do so by combining participant observation, anthropology methodology and design anthropology research inquiry, engaging with practice based explorations to understand if methods and methodologies, understood as being central to anthropological inquiry, can be taught to interaction design engineering students studying in an engineering faculty and engineers working in an energy company. They ask: how do you generate anthropological capacities with interaction design engineering students engaged in engineering design processes and employees of an energy company setting out to reframe their relation with the private end user? What kind of opportunities can engaging with collaborative processes of designing offer for both designing and anthropological research inquiry simultaneously?

An integral part of my research is concerned with public engagement and dissemination to involve a broader grouping people within research and design processes in order to foster capacity building around forming new forms of partnerships between the university, private and public sectors engaged in designing products, buildings and landscapes.

While moving between homes, institutions and offices people come to know indoor climate as lived experience. Along the way through a history of opening and closing windows, doors, turning thermostats for radiators, air conditioners, towel rails and under floor heating on and off, putting clothes on and taking them off, coping with breakdowns in heating, ventilation and water systems, doing something about drafts and where possible trying to find ways of conserving energy. These 'incidents and encounters en route' involve responding to other people and things within continually changing environments (Ingold 2011:154). Knowing thus comes through movements 'in the passage from place to place and the changing horizons along the way' (ibid, Ingold 2000: 227). In this way what people come to know about indoor climate is not about correlating levels of physical factors such as temperature, relative humidity, carbon dioxide concentration. Rather, 'Lying at the confluence of actions and responses, they are identified not by their intrinsic attributes but by the memories they call up. Thus things are not classified like facts or tabulated like data, but narrated like stories'

This paper addresses recent developments within the social shaping perspective, specifically the forward-looking and political dimensions of intervening in processes of innovation. With a focus on the concept of 'temporary spaces' as an analytical framework we present a study of a case on participatory innovation concerned with indoor climate practices in the building sector. Based on an analysis of the travel and uptake of narratives derived from fi eld studies in industrial and research environments, we discuss the role of intermediaries such as ethnographic provocations concerning user practices in the staging of these temporary spaces. While the direct uptake of qualitative knowledge on user practice in the engineering worlds of indoor climate is limited, the paper highlights the role of staging temporary spaces and intermediary objects in collaboration with stakeholders as a way of reframing conceptions of indoor climate practices.

Where and when can anthropology inform practices of design? and Where and when can design inform practices of anthropology? Both disciplines have distinct identities. Each discipline has its own methods and methodologies. Nevertheless practitioners from within these disciplines continue to realize the benefits of learning with each other. This however does not imply distinctions between the disciplines should be made equivocal. Rather in-the-acts of coming together could suggest different ways of building relations between designing and using. Within a collaborative process of designing what do anthropologists engaged in doing design anthropology bring to the table? And within a collaborative process of designing what do designers engaged in doing design anthropology bring to the table? Addressing questions of where and when things could have been different, anthropologists bring: theoretical concepts based upon grounded ethnographic inquiry; understandings of practices of designing and using; ways of involving theory as a form of practice and juxtaposition of different scales and timelines. Designers bring: critical and material practices of engagement and future making. Both disciplines conduct research investigations of, with and for design. Our aim in the volume is indeed to contribute towards the emerging field of Design Anthropology. Individual chapters address central questions or open lines of inquiry concerning the relations (and how they may be built) between using and producing, designing and using, people and things. The three-section volume is the result of a series of prior collaborations including research seminars held at the Sønderborg Participatory Innovation Research Centre (SPIRE)1 at the University of Southern Denmark between 2007 and 2010, the programme on Designing Environments for Life held at Scottish Universities Insight Institute 2, in autumn 2009, and the international PhD course on Design Anthropology3 held at the Universities of Aberdeen and University of Southern Denmark in March and May 2010. The section leads (Ingold, Redström, Verbeek) with backgrounds respectively in anthropology, design and philosophy of technology, have been asked to frame each section by posing fundamental questions to which the contributors will respond. Contributors come from diverse disciplinary backgrounds, and we regard this as a positive feature of the book. We also believe that it is important that research issues presented should be addressed through the findings of substantive research, rather than purely in the abstract.