Design Bookkeeping: Making Practice Intelligible through a Managerial Lens

As DIS researchers increasingly describe design as an emergent and material engaged practice, many are embracing different approaches to design documentation that capture the breadth of these practices. This pictorial contributes to these efforts by shedding light on a kind of managerial work that emerged when creating a complex e-textile installation. Specifically, we reflect on our project through the lens of “design bookkeeping” to describe documents that embody managerial knowledge and describe what these documents make intelligible about our practice. We surface findings and cross-cutting themes that bring attention to these practices in relation to broader understandings of project documentation. We then speculate on how the DIS community could circulate this knowledge within, and beyond, academic publication venues.