A new, empathic approach to design research, drawn from the informed experiences of a leading design research program in Finland.
Design, Empathy, Interpretation tells the story of empathic design, a design research program at Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland, that has developed an interpretive approach to design over the past twenty years. As one of the leaders of the Helsinki group, Ilpo Koskinen draws on his own experiences to offer readers a general intellectual and professional history of design research, and argues for what he calls an interpretive approach. Design, Empathy, Interpretation shows how the group has created connections all across the globe, and how a seemingly soft approach to design research can be useful in both industry and government.
Koskinen follows design research’s transformation from questions of usability, in the 1980s, through to the revolution in personal electronics and the “user-centered” turn of the 1990s. Using the research community in Helsinki as a case study, and moving between specific projects and theoretical debates, heoffers readers a focused introduction to the major methodological and intellectual challenges—as well as the opportunities—of design research. He argues that all design tasks, however simple or complex, begin with understanding the way humans ascribe meaning, both as individuals and as actors in complex societies. Thus all design research must be interpretive at its core.A new, empathic approach to design research, drawn from the informed experiences of a leading design research program in Finland.
Author(s): Ilpo Koskinen
Series: Design Thinking, Design Theory
Edition: 1
Publisher: The MIT Press
Year: 2023
Language: English
Commentary: Publisher PDF | Published: 12 September 2023 | Open Access | Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License
Pages: 208
City: Cambridge, Massachusetts
Tags: Design; Research
Contents
Series Foreword
Preface and Acknowledgments
1. Interpretive Turn in Design Research
From Usability to User Experience
Usability Morphs into Empathic Design
Empathic Research Program
Overview
2. Making Sense of User Experience
From eDesign to Empathic Design
Observing Technologies That Do Not Exist: Prototyping Social
The Path to Probing
Conceptual Pivot: Co-experience
Beyond the Definition of the Situation
Experience Becomes Decoupled from Technology
3. Codesign and Commitment
Action Research and Its Problems
Codesign as Dialogue
Design Games as Codesign: The Play Framework
Vila Rosario: Paolo Freire and Empathic Design
Commitment and Collaborative Design
Studio in Suburbia: Ave Mellunkylä!
Cooptation and Commitment
4. Interpretation and Radical Innovation
In the Shadow of Design Legacy
Super Studio: Learning from Pasadena
“What If”: Spiritualizing Space
Inspiration as Analysis
Opening the Electrome: Hacking Meters in India
Empathic Fiction: Bicycles and Plants
The Aesthetics of Interpretation
5. Interpretation and the Constructive Turn
Cardboard Mock-ups and Conversations
Morphome: The Beginnings of Constructive Design Research
Hacking a Car: Interpretive Foundations in Electronics
Prototyping Interactions: A Taxonomy of Prototypes
Toward Methodology: Design Research through Practice
The Epistemological Foundations of Construction: Drifting by Intention
Interpretation and Constructive Design Research
6. Interpretive Design Research and Beyond
Four Sensitivities: An Interpretive Design Framework
The Growth of Interpretive Knowledge
Interpretation after Twenty Years
How Interpretation Can Meet Recent Challenges
Interpretive Design Research and Imagination
References
Index
