Title Contextualising Critical Design: Towards a Taxonomy of Critical
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Title Contextualising Critical Design: Towards a Taxonomy of Critical Practice in Product Design Type Thesis URL http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/6102/ Date 2012 Citation Malpass, Matt (2012) Contextualising Critical Design: Towards a Taxonomy of Critical Practice in Product Design. PhD thesis, Nottingham Trent University. Creators Malpass, Matt Usage Guidelines Please refer to usage guidelines at http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/policies.html or alternatively contact [email protected]. License: Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives Unless otherwise stated, copyright owned by the author Contextualising Critical Design: Towards a Taxonomy of Critical Practice in Product Design Matthew Malpass A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Nottingham Trent University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy September 2012 This work is the intellectual property of the author. You may copy up to 5% of this work for private study, or personal, non-commercial research. Any re-use of the information contained within this document should be fully referenced, quoting the author, title, university, degree level and pagination. Queries or requests for any other use, or if a more substantial copy is required, should be directed in the owner(s) of the Intellectual Property Rights. Abstract This study focuses on critical design practice. The research challenges the colloquial understanding of ‘critical design.’ It problamatises, defines and reassesses the concept of ‘critical design’ situating it among other forms of critical design practice. The research reviews the field of activity from a historical perspective. It reviews contemporary activity in contexts of design research and the gallery system to establish domain authorities and theoretical perspectives that inform critical design practice. The research draws from a body of literature relating to design theory and critical design practice to identify several important themes by which to discuss the practice. The research employs a hermeneutic methodology and engages expert ‘critical’ designers through a series of conversational interviews. The interviews are analysed using code to theory methods of inductive qualitative analysis and subjected to hermeneutic analysis that draws on the extensive contextual review. Salient concepts found in the discourse are extracted, theorised and organised to create taxonomy of critical design practice. In the taxonomy, the field of critical design practice is categorised by three types of practice: Associative Design, Speculative Design and Critical Design. These three practices are differentiated by topics addressed in each and further differentiated by the type of Satire, Narrative and Object Rationality used in each practice. The original contribution of this research is a Taxonomy of critical practice in product design, which consists of a written and visual dimension. The taxonomy acts as a discursive tool to chart design activity and it illustrates the diversity in critical design practice beyond the colloquial understanding of ‘critical design’. The taxonomy presents three distinct types of critical design practice; it outlines the design methods used to establish the critical move through design and identifies the contexts where critical design is practiced. It can be used to compare projects, chart designers’ activity over time, illustrate trajectories of practice and identify themes in practice. The taxonomy provides theoretical apparatus to analyse the field. Such analysis contributes towards a discussion on critical design within design studies. i Acknowledgements Firstly, my thanks go to the School of Architecture Design and the Build Environment Nottingham Trent University for the generous bursary that funded this study. I would like to thank staff in the CADBE research office and in the Product Design Department at Nottingham Trent for help and support throughout. For their support and friendship, I would like to thank, Sabine Hielscher, Guy Birkin, David King, Marc Zandy, Amy Bolt and Patricia Lockren. For the opportunities and advice offered during the PhD, my thanks go to Lorraine Gamman, Adam Thorpe, Nick Rhodes, Leslie Arthur, Janet McDonnell and Tom Fisher. For their enduring support, special thanks goes to Dianne and Paul Malpass, Debbie and Andrew Moss, Rita Lee, Jonathan Malpass and Rebecca Stevenson. For generously offering their time to participate in the interviews and share their perspectives, my sincerest thanks go to Ralph Ball and Maxine Naylor, Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, Noam Toran, James Auger, Tobie Kerridge, Simon Bowen and Ramia Mazé. Finally, I would like to extend special thanks to Steve Rutherford, Hugh Miller, Jamie Billing and Tracy Cordingley my Director of Studies, for their insight, pragmatism, enthusiasm and guidance as supervisors over the past five years. Thank you! ii Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................................................................... i! Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................................... ii! List of Figures ........................................................................................................................................... vii! 1! Introduction ......................................................................................................................................... 2! 1.1! Challenging colloquialism: the problem with critical design ................................................. 4! 1.2! Mainstream design ....................................................................................................................... 5! 1.3! Why study critical design? .......................................................................................................... 6! 1.4! Design as a research paradigm ................................................................................................... 7! 1.5! Design Studies .............................................................................................................................. 9! 1.6! Design Culture ........................................................................................................................... 10! 1.7! Aims and objectives .................................................................................................................. 11! 1.8! Methodology ............................................................................................................................... 12! 1.9! Hermeneutics ............................................................................................................................. 13! 1.10! Thesis structure ........................................................................................................................ 14! 1.11! Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 16! 2! Critical design and a history of marginalised practice .................................................................. 18! 2.1! Radical Design ............................................................................................................................ 18! 2.2! The Bristol Experiment ............................................................................................................ 19! 2.3! Anti Design ................................................................................................................................. 20! 2.4! New Design ................................................................................................................................ 24! 2.5! Representative Design .............................................................................................................. 26! 2.6! Interaction Design ..................................................................................................................... 28! 2.7! Critical Design ............................................................................................................................ 29! 2.8! Conclusions ................................................................................................................................ 31! 3! Forms of inquiry: critical design, methods and theoretical perspectives .................................. 34! 3.1! Post-optimal design and Para-functionality ........................................................................... 34! 3.2! Meaningful presence and the aesthetics of use ..................................................................... 38! 3.3! Critical distance .......................................................................................................................... 40! 3.4! Exploratory potential ................................................................................................................ 42! 3.5! Propositional Design ................................................................................................................. 44! 3.6! Design as a medium .................................................................................................................. 45! 3.7! Design fiction ............................................................................................................................. 48! 3.8! Speculative Design ....................................................................................................................