Koskinen, I., Zimmerman, J., Binder, T., Redström, J., & Wensveen, S. 2011. Design research through practice: From lab, field, and showroom. San Francisco, CA: Morgan Kaufmann.

• Communicating the work / research through an [[exhibition]] rather than papers or a product
• More and more collaborative work, that needs flexibility in the methods and theory used

Chapter: How Constructive Design Research Produces Meaning

• Research is today more based on [[imagination]] and [[speculation]]. It is not only building and altering reality, it is adding more depth to it by showing/offering more alternatives of [[Reality]], of what could be.

• Act of invention that adds to reality

• Hypothetical [[Design|designs]] can change the way people think, about [[Material]] and [[Society|social]] [[Reality]]

• Provide new ways of thinking and perspectives, as many ways of thinking are internalised and unflexible > [[Disruption]]

• Opens up more possibilities and prepare [[action]], enables new ways of seeing and discussing opportunities

• Provides examples and precedents, that you can reach back to if such situation may occur in the [[Future]] > may ==prepare for what is to come==

• [[Dunne&Raby]],[[Critical Design]]: Design that asks crafted questions and makes us think, opposed to design that solves or finds answers

  • Difference to art: Dunne Raby argue that art is too removed from the world (of consumption) to be effective
  • Purpose is to stimulate discussion and debate among audience, designers, industry and public. Opposed to other ‘visions’ that try to set trends or propagate and envision the future
  • It is ==not about re-imagining a better future, but about disrupting the existing one==

Chapter: Toward Socially Robust Knowledge

• What does knowledge do to [[Society]]? > Interesting question, since researcher have been more concerned about making discoveries and researching than to think of what impact this knowledge would have on society
• Thus, research has to be closely linked with society
• In discourse with the public
• Interprets society rather than be the ‘legislater’, the one who ‘decides’

Project: Reframing Public Health in a Favela

• [[Cultural Probes]]: cameras, letters, diaries, tasks for volunteer workers, workshops so people understood the cultural probes and their results

• Instead of improving sanitation (which is too big a task), they improved [[awareness]] about hygiene

  • Project reflected the world the people lived in, rather than abstract instutitions
  • Low tech design was used: comics, etc (more understandable than computer systems)

• Effectiveness: Design was [[Evaluation|evaluated]] in workshops (if and how they understand it), design/workshop was ==recreated somewhere else to see its scalability==

  • How does the design, when introduced to people’s life, shape their activities, thoughts, and interactions?
• Design project created [[knowledge]] about the village, the visible and [[Material]] culture, habits, beliefs, social structures [[knowledge]]

Chapter: Understanding as the Basis of Design

• [[ethnography]] : Understanding as a tool.
• Example: When computers moved from industry to the home, design research and ethnography was necessary to understand how people use these new tools and ==what they wanted from it. ==
• [[Field research]]: Being with the people to find out what they do rather then what they say
• Observations not only to make better design, but to inspire and inform own work in subtle ways ([[Wang Chau]]!)

• More than tourism:

  • About understanding people’s mind
  • Gathering of data
  • Developing empathy (emphatic grasp)
  • Most important: ==Driven by understanding rather than data==

Chapter: Exploring Context with Props

• [[Field research]]: Focus on products, things, prototypes, mock-ups
• Workshop: Designers used [[toolkit]] with legos, pens,…
• Participants used those tools to create artefacts that embody their feelings, values and perspectives
• Exercise of imagination rather than collecting data
• Stimulating people’s [[imagination]] and [[dream|dreams]] > hard to see people’s dream, so those exercises help
• ==Kits for Dreaming!==
• How to synthesis ideas from the field work?

Chapter: Co-Design and New Objects [[co-creation]]

• Designer is here the facilitators, who encourages people to take part in design process
• Exploration together with the people > should be reflected/visible in process
• [[action research]]: trying to understand people, what they need, want and worry about and turning this [[knowledge]] into [[action]] that changes the [[community]]