Weaving Stories: Toward Repertoires for Designing Things

Title of the Paper

Weaving Stories: Toward Repertoires for Designing Things

Paper Information

• Subject Area: Posthuman design practices in human-computer interaction and design engineering
• Keywords: Posthuman design, more-than-human, posthumanism, practical toolkits, first-person, research through design, e-textiles, weaving, design objects

Research Background and Problem

• Identified Problems or Challenges:

  • Current posthuman design research is often described from a human-centered perspective, lacking detailed exploration of nonhuman design capabilities (e.g., materials, tools, and software).
  • The design process remains dominated by human agency and intention, lacking systematic approaches and narratives about the roles of nonhuman participants in the environment.
  • The authors question how posthumanist thought can be further integrated conceptually, materially, and methodologically.

• Why It Matters:

  • Contemporary design activities face challenges in creating ecologically sustainable designs, especially against the backdrop of climate change and the unsustainability of anthropocentrism. Incorporating nonhuman entities into the design process can promote more equitable and sustainable outcomes.

• Research Motivation and Related Work:

  • Inspired by Ron Wakkary's concept of "repertoires for designing things," which aims to enhance the role of nonhuman participants in design research.
  • The authors draw on methodologies from external fields, including Anna Tsing's "noticing" technique, Laura Watts' "landscape ethnography," and Bruno Latour's "translations" framework, proposing an extended approach to posthuman design.

Solution

• Methods and Solutions:

  • Proposed Three Practical Toolkits (Repertoires):

    1. Landscape Ethnography
    2. Noticing
    3. Translations

  • Innovative Contributions:

    • Through first-person self-reflection on weaving events, the study provides detailed documentation of the participatory relationships between humans and nonhuman design objects.
    • Offers specific practical strategies to help designers understand the roles and potentials of nonhuman entities through a posthumanist lens.

• Implementation Steps:

  1. Landscape Ethnography: Focuses on detailed descriptions of local practices within design scenarios (e.g., preparation of equipment, weaving techniques), emphasizing the roles of materials and tools in the design process.
  2. Noticing: Adopts a narrative approach focusing on single elements (e.g., knots) to understand the relationships between materials and the environment, encouraging designers to "notice" the agency of nonhuman entities by shifting perspectives (e.g., imagining oneself as wool fibers).
  3. Translations: Records the transformations and tool usage during the design process (e.g., from manual weaving to industrial machine weaving), exploring the interoperability of design objects and how tools "express" material properties.

Research Outcomes

• Specific Results:

  • Development of Three Design Toolkits:
    1. Landscape Ethnography: Combines methods of mapping design scenarios and temporary events to emphasize nonhuman objects.
    2. Noticing: Focuses on the fragility and instability of materials during the design process to understand multi-object relationships.
    3. Translations: Documents and communicates the interactions between design tools and materials, particularly highlighting the roles of nonhuman entities during transformations.

• Comparison with Existing Solutions:

  • Compared to other posthuman design methods, this study clarifies the framework for practical application and fine-grained analysis, making nonhuman design participation "qualitative to quantifiable."
  • Integrates first-person research methods more closely with the concept of repertoires, overcoming the limitations of human intention dominance.

• Experimental or Evaluation Results:

  • By analyzing specific weaving project events (e.g., loom thread breaks, knotting, software translation errors), the authors provide a multi-layered perspective for understanding the interactions between tools and materials in design research, encompassing people, materials, and contextual dynamics.
  • Highlights the dynamic nature of design practices and the contributions of nonhuman materials to outcomes within given design scenarios.

• Limitations and Future Directions:

  • The criteria for selecting toolkits remain unclear, requiring exploration of other potential methods.
  • Future work may include extending the approach to different design fields or testing new methods such as Vinciane Despret's "reconstructing research questions" and Donna Haraway's "multispecies kinship."
  • Further exploration is needed to connect theory with broader design activities (e.g., industrial or social design).

This paper creates a practical framework for posthuman design methodologies, particularly suitable for researchers and designers interested in the roles of nonhuman entities in design, providing a detailed pathway from theory to practice.