Presentation at Interaction12, Dublin, Ireland Will the promise of Critical Design deliver after the disappointment of ethnography? Interaction Designers expected ethnography to reveal rich insights that would inform the creation of better products, services and experiences. However the pressure of solution-focused design practice turned out to be a poor fit with ethnography’s concern with meaning and cultures. In response, Critical Design is emerging as a new strategy for exploring the space that lies tantalisingly beyond the current and the now. At the core of ethnography is observation and therein lies the appeal to Interaction Designers. The disappointment has been in the failure to translate from the rich descriptive picture of ethnography into the generation of requirements. This expectation reveals a misunderstanding as to the purpose of ethnography. Ethnography uncovers meaning, it does not identify problems or solutions. Interaction Designers have responded by taking a more ‘designerly’ approach to requirements generation by considering both the problem and the solution in a more fluid and intertwined manner. In this vein, Critical Design presents design as a catalyst or provocation for thought. Through ‘design fictions’ the approach attempts to challenge assumptions and preconceptions about the role that products and services play in everyday life. A series recent of workshops will be discussed that have blended aspects of ethnography and Critical Design to identify the future paradigms of interaction in the urban environment.

1. Critical Design :: Restoring a sense of wonder
to Interaction Design
Michael Smyth & Ingi Helgason
Centre for Interaction Design
Edinburgh Napier University, UK
@michael_smyth
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2. Digital Blur, Libri Publishing (2010).
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3. Create10 Conference and Showcase, Edinburgh.
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4. We live in a world where everything seems
possible and as a consequence have lost
the sense of wonder.
Branko Lukic, NonObject, MIT Press (2011)
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5. Where do these moments of
design inspiration come from?
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6. Interaction Design takes a more ‘designerly’
approach than HCI and considers both the
problem and solution in a more fluid and
intertwined manner.
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7. One method favoured by Interaction Designers
is ethnography.
Observation that aims to provide insight into
work, culture and behavioural practices.
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8. Ethnography uncovers meaning, it does not identify
problems or solutions.
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9. A tension between the pressure of solution-focused
design practice and ethnography’s concern with
meanings and culture.
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10. Where is the WOW in ethnography?
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11. Critical Design acts as a catalyst or provocation
for thought (Anthony Dunne, 1999).
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12. Critical Design challenges our
assumptions and preconceptions about
the role that products and services play in
everyday life.
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13. Street Art (Tom Welsh, 2009).
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14. Video as a way of understanding the design space.
Layers of meaning.
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15. Saturday, 4 February 12

16. This Pervasive Day, Edinburgh (2011).
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17. A Design Fiction exploring the surreptitious
capture of personal data.
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18. Fictitious personal data matched with your image.
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19. Aim was to encourage people to question
whether this was a desirable future?
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20. digitalAntique :: Split Interactions, Croatia (2011).
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21. Exploring the connections
between past and present.
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22. Articulating the values of the present
and getting people to reflect on them.
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23. The universality of values.
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24. Preckam Most :: Crossing the Bridge, Interaction Design
Workshop, Magdalena Festival, Slovenia (2009).
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25. An intervention that sought to slow down
people’s journeys, to view the mundane and
familiar in fresh ways.
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26. Crossing the bridge became a different experience.
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27. The act of taking photographs altered perspectives
on everyday routines.
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28. Informing the Design of the Future Urban Landscape,
DIS 2010, Aarhus, Denmark.
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29. Intersections & crossing points between the
physical & digital worlds.
bleed points.
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30. Building on scrapbooks, sketches & moodboards.
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31. Inspiring conceptual connections between
tangible objects & imagined behaviours.
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32. The coupling of gathering and reflecting
and what that process reveals.
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33. Ethnography :: minutiae of the now (discovery).
Critical Design :: how things could be (exploration).
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34. No-one cares about what you think, unless
you do what you think. No-one cares about
what you do, unless you think about what
you do.
Jack Schulze, BERG London
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35. www.michael-smyth.co.uk
www.complexpleasures.wordpress.com
www.create-conference.org
www.urbanixd.org
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