Everyday Design explores the idea that everyone is a designer. The work explains the design actions of family members to be creative, as evidenced by the resourceful appropriation and repair of artifacts and surroundings, the ongoing adaptation of systems and routines through design-in-use that allows emergent properties to arise and address individual needs, and how implicit understanding and explicit tests occur for judging quality. In addition we investigated the impact on defining users and a reframing of users as creative and sustainable. As a broader underpinning to the research the work theorizes appropriation and aims to describe the long-term practice of everyday design. This work led to investigations of the design practices of expert amateurs like steampunks, DIY, and hobbyists. Further investigations explore a reframing of interaction design as “practice-oriented” and the role of hybrid designers; and investigations of interactions in discussions of unaware objects and unselfconscious interactions.
2005-2013