Different types and ‘chunks’ of knowledge get produced and are embodied by design projects. One way of looking at design projects, and Designerly Research in particular, is through the idea of the creation of an ‘object of design’. Design scholars such as Pelle Ehn and Thomas Binder describe the design practice through notions of ‘the constitution of the object of design’ (the gradually growing collection of designs, prototypes, texts, thoughts, results, videos, photographs and other things that come into being during the design process), a ‘web of constituents’, ‘actors and stakeholders’ and ‘alignments’ (Binder et. al. 2011). In doing so they put into words the ways of doing and making performed in the design process in a way that shows similarities to Actor-Network-Theory as put forward by Bruno Latour and John Law, among others. In our project description we ask three general questions; How can design help RE-frame and RE-make flows of waste or residual materials into resources, what roles do the various participants take in this process, and how can their participation inform the design practice, education and research. We intend to give answer to these questions through Design by means of Designerly Research and through reflection on this process. One of the suggested methods for facilitating reflection is ethnomethodology.
Firstly, let’s explore the role of ethnomethodology in this project. Design in our project is seen as a mode of inquiry that has the ability to generate knowledge by engaging and intervening directly in complex issues. Because the knowledge generated takes on many different forms, understanding how the knowledge practice that is Design produces this knowledge, i.e. contextualizing this knowledge and making it available for reflection, is of importance. In a way the designerly ways of knowing fall outside of the traditional scientific modes of knowing. Ethnomethodology gives us an entry into the knowledge generated, making it shareable and allowing us to reflect on how this knowledge came into being. As I am writing this, the designer-selection-process is well on its way and, informed by the research program, is itself a reflective process. By means of selecting different designers aided by a selection tool that is the result of the research team’s reflection on the project, input for the design of the mobile platform is being generated and tools for future reflection on the knowledge practice that is Designerly Research get generated.
The way we conduct ethnomethodology within our project is as follows. Firstly, both Ester van de Wiel and myself document what we do digitally, both in text and image. We will document visually and descriptively the locations and places where the act of design takes place. This will lead to the construction of an online archive that during the project can serve as ways to saturate data. The archive will be fed by periodical interviews with the participants, visual observations of the acts of designing, and visual documentation of public moments. The intended public moments within the project are important opportunities to allow for the participation of others in the research and to allow for reflection. As each designer will be active for 2 months before handing over the proverbial torch, these overlap moments will be particularly relevant as reflection and dissemination moments. These moments can be used as reflection on the past two months aided by a representation of that time by a video/audio document established from the archive. Additionally, these moments themselves will be documented to feed back into the archive.