Pierre Lévy is a professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, holder of the Chair of design Jean Prouvé, and member of the Dicen-IDF laboratory (EA 7339). He holds an engineering degree in mechanical engineering (UT Compiègne, France), a Ph.D in kansei (affective) science (University of Tsukuba, Japan) and an HDR in information and communication sciences (UT Compiègne, France). He has lived for nearly 10 years in Japan (where he worked in industry and then in several Japanese universities) and 12 years in the Netherlands (at the Eindhoven University of Technology).
His work focuses on the relationship between the creative moments that are the design practice and the appropriation in everyday practices. This work is based on theories related to embodiment, reflexive practices, and Japanese philosophy and thinking. Through this research, Pierre Lévy discusses the posture and societal role of design, and more generally of reflexive practices, in the service of transforming everyday life.
Chaire of Design Jean Prouvé
The Chaire of Design Jean Prouvé is a benevolent place dedicated to the development of design practice and research. It is committed to a program combining research, teaching and design projects, with a view to transformation through reflexive practices in everyday life.
events Au sein de l’École Estienne, SEMPER* constitue un espace d’intersection et de réflexion commun aux quatre parcours de formation en DSAA. Le séminaire, initié par Jérôme Duwa, Olivier Moulin et Carole Papion invite à réfléchir et à mettre en valeur ce qui se constitue comme recherche en design dans le milieu qui est le nôtre à l’École Estienne : expériences en imprimerie, dans les métiers d’art, dans les domaines du graphisme, de l’illustration, de la création numérique, de la typographie et de la stratégie de communication.
Manuel ZACKLAD (Prof. CNAM) et Pierre LÉVY (Prof. CNAM) ont dialogué au sujet du design et des sciences humaines pour la conférence inaugurale de SEMPER, présentée par Jérôme Duwa (École Estienne), le jeudi 26 septembre 2024.
2024-09-26 16:00:00 +0200 CEST
events
This seminar aims to launch the third session of the school of not-Knowing. The first began in September 2022 at the French Institute in Milan and culminated in the form of a first exhibition in the same place in January 2024. During the second phase the exhibition of around a hundred panels circulated Florence and Rome. New schools joined the initial project by adding new visuals. This set will be presented in Porto as part of the Design Biennale from October 21, 2023, with the support of the French Institute of Portugal.
The third phase is being organized on the basis of around thirty schools and universities, coming from France, Italy, Portugal, Germany, Poland, India and Madagascar.
The Cnam seminar, will begin the design phase. It will allow partecipants to better understand the project and its actors, and above all to begin, through examples and exercises, to confront this difficult transformation consisting of accepting that what we do not know has real value, an interest which deserves to be explored. confronts it in an open and experimental way. During this phase, attempts at educational narration will also begin, which will consist of recording an explanation from a specialist based on panels produced. It is also at the Cnam that this phase will be finalized with a new exhibition which will take place on 1 and 2 February 2024. The project will then continue for new phases which will also be presented during the seminar.
2023-10-16 14:00:00 +0200 CEST
events The moment of design Inaugural lecture of the Jean Prouvé Design Chair, May 18, 2022
Thank you Ruedi for this warm introduction. Your mentorship of the Chair can only be a good omen for what it can and will become.
Dear General Administrator, dear Marc, dear Jean-Claude, dear colleagues, dear friends, dear family, dear listeners present here or somewhere online, it is a great pleasure to be able to start this inaugural lecture today at CNAM.
Lucie and I decided to do our inaugural lessons together, because we think it is an opportunity to emphasize the closeness and complementarity of our subjects and ways of doing, and to celebrate what CNAM is for all of us: a place of learning and development, as well as a place of interdisciplinary and interprofessional exchange and sharing.
It also requires that our lessons be about 40 minutes each, so that it remains a celebration and an enjoyable time, and does not become an ordeal for you.
So let’s get started.
1. Jean Prouvé // where design is part of a history of materials, of doing, of society and of attachment to everyday life
It is an event for a Chair of design and an honour for its holder that the name of Jean Prouvé is associated with it. And I would particularly like to thank Mrs. Catherine Prouvé, for her presence here today and for her precious help in making this association a reality.
This association is, of course, within the filiation of the Chairs at CNAM - and in particular between the Chair of Applied Arts and Crafts, which Jean Prouvé held from 1958 to 1971, and the Chair of Design Jean Prouvé, which symbolically begins today. But this association also plays the role of mediation, allowing for a moment of dialogue and advocacy on what the Chair of Design Jean Prouvé intends to be.
I therefore propose in this first part to discuss this filiation, not from a historical perspective, but rather to find in it an inspiration of what a Chair of design at CNAM can be today, in today’s society, with its own social, economic, technological, and of course ecological challenges. Instead of looking in the rear-view mirror for too long, we should see this filiation as a way to look ahead, and to help us reflect on what we can do here and now in view of a future that we still have to imagine and make.
1.1 A path To me, Jean Prouvé embodies an essential position in design. Jean Prouvé was an ironworker, an engineer (self-taught), a designer (self-taught), an architect (self-taught), a member of the Resistance, a player in the post-war French reconstruction program, the mayor of Nancy, and a partner of Abbé Pierre in the creation of a House of Better Days. Coming from traditional ironwork, he contributed to a modern look at materials, forms and uses. His attachment to a design for use and for all, and in particular for the most modest, makes him an important post-war actor not only for the world of architecture and design, but for society as a whole.
And as such, Jean Prouvé places design where it is wanted: as a societal actor, producing ingenious proposals for material arrangements whose value emerges from their use and their potential for transformation. In other words, the value is to be found in the appropriation of the designer’s proposals and their consequences for society.
It is thus a question of working on what I call the “contexture” of the environments in which we evolve, i.e., on their form and their texture. I will come back later to this notion of contexture that I have developed through my research.
1.2 The doing, the reflecting, and the envisioning Moreover, the art historian, architect and sociologist Nils Peters, who wrote a biography on Jean Prouvé1, reminds us that during his classes at CNAM, “Jean Prouvé rarely said much. Instead, he made drawings and continually visualized his ideas on a chalkboard. What he illustrated here, true to his own convictions, was that the practice of theories was paramount and that any knowledge that was acquired only academically could hardly inspire creativity.” It is therefore an attitude towards the relationship between practice and theory in the field of design in the broadest sense: that of studying, understanding, involving scientific, technological, social, and ecological developments, and finding a place for them in society within the daily lives of each and every one.
Design is therefore presented as a practice and as an attitude, questioning possible worlds, in order, as the political scientists Trevor Hancock and Clement Bezold2 propose, to move towards preferable futures. Design is therefore not just about creating artifacts, a commercial offer of stuff. Working on these futures through design requires that the practice be accompanied by societal, political, ethical, and ecological reflection, and that this reflection take place in action, that is, at the very heart of design practice.
And therein lies the first aspect for which the Chair of design claims to be in the continuity of Jean Prouvé: an attitude at the crossroads of doing, reflecting, and envisioning.
1.3 The everyday This dedication to exploration and the powerful understanding of material, technique, and the aesthetics that can emerge from it are at the foundation of the excellence of Jean Prouvé’s work, and resonate with the Nancy school that strives to revitalize art, and to have it permeate everyday life.
This environment - what I will later call this tradition - probably contributed to making Jean Prouvé a craftsman, a Jean Prouvé explorer of new materials and new projects, with a strong sensitivity to the everyday and a particular attention to the societal dimension of his art. What the architect Jean Nouvel also notes when he says, speaking of Jean Prouvé, that “rarely that ethics have created such a clear beauty”1.
1.4 A societal posture Design is therefore a practice, an attitude and a societal posture:
And therein lies the second aspect for which this Chair of design claims to be in the continuity of Jean Prouvé: the ambition that design and craftspersonship be at once practices, an attitude and a societal posture at the service of the transformation of everyone’s everyday life.
2. Design // where design is an attitude and an activity situated and built on ambivalences
We have thus established the societal posture aimed at by design, or at least aimed at by the Chair through its future activities. But the question of design remains, and even if the road is full of pitfalls, let’s take it, at least a little.
2.1 What design does Indeed, the definition of design has always been a difficult issue - a long history of intense discussions and failed conclusions - and thus a hitherto unsatisfied question. A recent article by design professor Alethea Blackler and her colleagues3 reports on twenty years of global discussions about the definition of design with no real consolidated result. Through a strategy that is quite popular these days, the authors then invite us to reflect instead on “the importance of design’s role in the global conversation about transdisciplinary approaches to researching and designing future scenarios and emerging pathways for humanity.”
In my opinion, this approach is not satisfactory, because once again it turns away from the question of design. But if we cannot determine what design is, and knowing that it is at least a practice, an attitude and a posture, then the effort of clarification should turn to what design does.
2.2 Design is situated This can be based on an essential principle of design: that of its situation. By this I mean that design is situated: it finds its relevance through what it can propose as potentially transforming arrangements. In other words, design is lost and cannot, or even does not know how to act in the abstract. It is here on the ground, where experience takes place, where design rubs up against matter, bumps up against experience, that design acts and establishes its practice. So let’s keep this in mind: design is situated.
2.3 Design is coloured I also take up with interest the point made by the design philosopher Johan Redström4 that design is fundamentally and historically structured on dichotomies. We are particularly interested in the dichotomous relationships between methods and practices, between everyday life and global issues, between art and industry, to name but a few. These dichotomies are places of friction, what I call irregularities, inspired by the writings of the Japanese thinker Yanagi Soetsu5,6, and I will come back to this notion later, which invites design to constantly question its positioning and its action.
The practice of design is therefore fundamentally reflexive. As a practice situated in a complex context, as we have already seen this reflection is on what it does. Yet design does not find a definitive answer here either. This answer is always changing. Therefore, design is elusive. In other words, and complementing Johan Redström’s words with those I have proposed with Professors Ambra Trotto and Caroline Hummels, and our colleagues through Transformative Practices7, it is complex and colourful, that is to say, rich in its variety of practices; it is resilient and learning, engaged and transforming.
2.4 Attitude Within the practice, the designer engages knowledge, know-how, and an attitude. In this commitment, it is important to carry out quality work as an end in itself – this is what the sociologist Richard Sennett8 suggests. It is important to use and trust one’s senses and imagination, one’s intuition and curiosity – this is what design professor Kees Overbeeke9 reminds us. Finally, it is important to use one’s skills and knowledge either to do (i.e., to work and interact with the material) or to think (i.e., to work and interact with ideas).
2.5 Sustainable instability Immersed in the practices as they are lived and as they are realized, the design is moreover interested and situated in a complex world. It makes, questions, reflects, opens towards possibilities, without never putting aside the ambiguity and the uncertain… in short, what resists, the world as it is lived.
It advances, and thus progresses in a form of balance which is in fact only apparent. It is formed by a multitude of temporary imbalances. Caroline Hummels and I have called this the sustainable instability of design, which qualifies the dynamic in which design works. Instabilities are moments of potential changes in practice: reflections in and on action allow for change, necessary to maintain coherence in practice, necessary for learning and development through practice10.
Therefore, it seems relevant to call on phenomenology, and more generally on the philosophies that gather around the notion of embodiment. To make a long story short, these philosophies show that we perceive the world by interacting with it. This perception, fundamentally active, requires a body and skills. We perceive the world through the potentiality of our actions (what we can do), and by interacting with it (by what we do). Hence, there is a primacy of the body over action, and a primacy of action, or at least of the potential for action, over cognition. This in no way evacuates the importance of the symbolic in human experience (at aesthetic, social and cultural levels).
2.6 Symmetrical anthropology To summarise, we have seen that design is a practice whose perspective is both individual and collective, social and political, transforming and virtuoso of complexity and norms.
It questions how the material arrangements it proposes can transform practices, those of others and its own, and in a complementary movement how these practices are the moment11 of an appropriation of the proposals made by design.
Design is therefore a bearer of meaning that potentially modifies the context in which people and practices evolve. It is a mediation that makes transformation possible, by giving the action and its actor the possibility of discerning and thinking about its condition and its possibles, which will then be selected and appropriated.
In design, it is thus a question of what we can do with our personal, social, ecological environments… and what these environments do with us. A form of symmetrical anthropology.
Therefore, we are asking ourselves the question of the aesthetics and ethics of the contexts in which we live and in which the practices perform. This is what I named in my HDR work “contexture”, the texture of the context of our practices5, which allows the transformation of these practices through the mediation of design.
3. A perspective // where tradition, irregularity and moment structure a societal design
With the design landscape thus described, it now seems important to move forward in this lesson by positioning the Chair and its work within this landscape.
To do this, we must take sides, that is, we must structure and formulate an approach and a perspective from which we will work. And it is primarily the perspective I propose for the Chair that I will now develop.
3.1 Craftspersonship 3.1.1 The handling To begin with, it is important to emphasize the proximity of design to the arts and crafts. Already at an institutional level – which is particularly the case here in the close relationship built between CNAM and the schools of crafts and design –, and also because they are both socially situated and committed to the proposal of a beautiful with societal value through use and usefulness.
And it is indeed necessary to briefly recall that the contemplation of the works produced by the crafts is not sufficient to appreciate them. It is through their handling that their materiality is expressed and revealed. It is through their handling that their usefulness and value take on meaning. Just as for design, it is through their handling that their aesthetics are fully discovered.
If the crafts have a social role as works12, it is indeed that this materialization of the beautiful through the useful and the durable has a societal and ecological relevance, which our time needs.
3.1.2 Quality Besides this, the development of industry, i.e. segmented, mechanical and informational production, which has allowed impressive development and innovations in the last centuries – and CNAM is rich of examples and of experiences, also challenges the production of applied arts and the importance of quality and workpersonship in everyday life.
And make no mistake, industry is needed to serve a population that continues to grow (aren’t we talking about 10 billion humans13!). And it is the role of the designer (who in the imaginary can be an engineer or a designer, and who in reality is a multidisciplinary, multicultural, multi-profession group of people who together design and produce) to project proposals to move towards a better world. And in this proposition, the quality of the proposed material arrangement cannot be absent. Let us reason by the absurd and we will quickly see the absurdity of a world that would doubt the necessity of beauty.
It is therefore for the craftspeople, designers and engineers, not only to keep the gesture and the tradition which enable a creation of quality, but also to reinforce the one produced by the machine. Let the manufacturing process take advantage of the skills, the sensitivity, the attitude of the craftsperson in order to improve the machine, its use, and its deliverables! It is then for the craftsperson not to distance oneself from industrial production, but on the contrary, and I think as did Jean Prouvé, to contribute to its use in order to improve both the craft that integrates the machine in its practice and the quality of what it produces. And we will see later the example of the textile designer Minagawa Akira who illustrates this situation beautifully.
In order to move forward, I will focus our attention on three aspects that are relative and common to craft and design, which I have already mentioned, and which seem fundamental to the structure and conduct of the Chair: tradition, irregularity, and moment.
3.2 The tradition It is important to realize that the crafts produce objects of very high quality because the exigence of the profession demands it and because its environment enables it.
3.2.1 The exigence The exigence of the profession demands it, because it is sensitive to the beauty of the work and its handling, and claims its importance. It recognizes the talent, of course, but does ask as well for an attitude.
3.2.2 The environment Its environment enables it, because it carries the tradition in which the craft is registered. The notion of tradition that I use here is directly inspired by the writings of the Japanese thinker Yanagi Soetsu, who describes it as an environment made up of a culture, a collective dynamic, and a vitality centered on a know-how. A tradition is in no way static. On the contrary, it is nourished by experiences and individual daily lives to continue making the community evolve.
To return to the craft, even if its execution is sometimes individual and that one finds a certain freedom of action and creation in the workshop, the practice, in the broad sense, is plunged in a cultural and socio-economic environment which enables excellence. The craft profession finds its strength and excellence because it is part of a tradition.
Yanagi14 teaches us that the beauty and greatness produced by the hands of the craftsperson are not simply the result of one’s own skills (individual power), but also of what the environment provides (power beyond [individual mastery]). 3.3 The irregularity Before continuing, I would like to make a small parenthesis on Japanese philosophy, which has been developed at the crossroads of Buddhist thought and phenomenology15. Having spent about 10 years in the beautiful country of Japan, including my doctoral research years, this philosophy, as well as Japanese thought in general, has influenced and inspired me a great deal and helped me to reflect on our affective relationship to the world as it is lived, and on the experience of beauty in everyday practices. The references to Japanese literature that I will cite here are therefore fundamental in the construction of my reflection on design and on the everyday.
To extend this parenthesis beyond my own experience, I hope to give here a new dimension to the colouring of design. Let’s remember that design is colourful, rich from a great variety of practices. It is also rich from a wide variety of cultures, which is poorly reflected in current design literature and discourse, heavily tinged with Western culture. Culturally decentring design, through its exposure to worldviews based on other thoughts and cultures, may allow for a broadening of the worldview through which design operates. This clear post-colonial positioning envisions the formation of more relevant perspectives and approaches to topics to which design can effectively contribute. Needless to say, the Chair will support this effort to culturally enrich design, beyond Japanese culture.
Let’s go back to art and design, which recognize the strength and importance of the gesture in what it expresses of human, in what it expresses through its imperfection.
To understand what is at stake in this notion – imperfection – let us take up the notion of perfection and what Yanagi Soetsu14 tells us about it. He describes it as a closure since there is nothing more to change. It is perfect! It is static and final, with no horizon of possible transformation. The end of history. The absence of freedom. To it is opposed imperfection, which invites to change, to a possibility of transformation, and thus to a form of freedom. But Yanagi is not satisfied with this form of freedom, which is in fact bound to imperfection, itself posed in opposition to perfection. He then invites us to go beyond this dichotomy asserting that what he calls “true beauty” (奇数の美 - kisuu-no-bi) is in a non-dualistic totality - we are evolving here in a Buddhist thought. He then suggests that this beauty emerges from what he calls irregularity (歪み - yugami), when imperfection becomes identified with perfection and that “something unexplained” (不定形 - futei-kei) remains. Yanagi puts it this way14: “The love of the irregular is a sign of a fundamental quest for freedom.”
3.3.1 The gesture Such irregularity can be the expression of the gesture, that of the craftsperson for instance. But we must also think about the tool and the use, other moments of interaction and appropriation.
3.3.2 The tool Hamada Shōji, a great Japanese ceramist who became a Living National Treasure in 1955, had a kiln capable of holding about ten thousand pots. When asked about the need for such a kiln, he replied that he would be able to completely control a smaller kiln, and that he would then be the master and controller. With this large kiln, the “individual power” weakens so that he cannot control the kiln, and what had been called “power beyond” is needed to get a good piece16. Therefore, he wants to work with grace from that power beyond, not toward a perfection that his mastery would impose.
This idea of power beyond and irregularity, dear to the beauty and ethics as expressed by Yanagi, is also found in the work of Minagawa Akira. Minagawa pushes industrial embroidery to the limits of its mechanical capacities, in order to produce unpredictable and a priori unexpected imperfections, that is to say a form of irregularity, source of a unique and poetic beauty. Minagawa himself says: “I want the fabric to convey the feeling I experience myself when I make sketches. The embroidered patterns I create not only use thread to sew the design, they create a three-dimensional relief by overlapping stitches on top of each other, piercing the fabric randomly while remaining true to the light and shade of my original sketch. This way of doing embroidery without a fixed rule gives the feeling of hand-drawn lines.”
In Minagawa’s work, as in Hamada’s one, it is the designer-tool pairing that makes this irregularity possible as a new craftsperson embedded in both a tradition (ceramics or textiles) and industrial engineering.
A few years ago, I had the opportunity to explore this designer-tool relationship again during a project with one of the students, Yamada Shigeru, whom I was accompanying for his master’s degree at Eindhoven University of Technology. We made Japanese tea ceremony objects in 3D printing based on parametric models. It was a question for us to work on the speed of impression of the machine so that on this one associates with a power beyond. These objects were printed at the standard speed, then 2, 3, 4, 6 times faster. The evaluation made by several Japanese tea masters allowed us to conclude that the object printed with a doubled speed of impressions made precisely an aesthetics of the irregularity appreciated by these tea masters17.
3.3.3 The use But this irregularity, if it offers freedom and the possibility of transformation, must also manifest itself in the user’s experience. Without it, the everyday would be an experience without surprise, without the possibility of change and therefore without freedom. For the everyday to be worthwhile, what the philosopher Bruce Bégout calls the process of quotidianization18 must be accompanied by irregularities placed in the usual or in the expected, what George Pérec calls the endotic19. And then the everyday becomes a moment in permanent evolution, and a space of imagination, creation and freedom.
Focusing on irregularity in everyday use, three concepts come to mind, which unfortunately I will not have time to develop today:
3.4 The moment of design, the moment of use There are therefore two moments in which irregularity can offer opportunities for transformation: the moment of design and the moment of appropriation. And it is on these two notions that I would like to conclude this reflection on design.
3.4.1 The moment of design These two moments, of design and of appropriation, are moments of creation. And the artefact, proposed and then appropriated, forms a link between these two moments. For design, it is therefore an essential, social and humanist role to propose the conditions for creation within use, that is to say for appropriation.
The position I take in projects and in research is to defend and structure this precise idea according to which the designer must think of the human being essentially by one’s capacity of appropriation and creation of one’s environment, and by one’s capacity of reflection and responsible decision. This is not trivial and not always shared when we hear what is prescribed following “user tests” or sometimes under the unfortunate name of “good user practice”.
For this, two things are needed. One has already been discussed at length. It is of course the irregularity that allows reflexivity and choice. The other is what I call the artefactual emptiness, a concept also inspired by Japanese philosophy, which denotes the space of opportunities offered to the user. The artefactual emptiness corresponds to the idea that the artifact must open up possibilities of appropriation, which it will mediate through irregularity. It is in this artefactual emptiness that appropriation takes shape.
Keeping in mind the history of design and crafts, the Chair will strongly assert this societal proposal of its practices and their production. This proposal is based on the primary considerations of the capacity that each person has to create, the need for a collective and an ever-evolving tradition to move forward together, and a Jonasian categorical imperative of a social, ecological and responsible life23.
Conscious of producing and disseminating proposals in a complex context and through a practice that is always in a state of enduring instability, the Chair will continue to keep its production open to questioning by all, beginning with itself.
3.4.2 In practice In practice, it will first be a matter of clarifying more clearly the role and manner of design in the moment of its own practice, outside of and yet linked to that of everyday life. This effort will lead to a reflexive practice of design, and to question its anthropological, humanistic, social, ecological, political and philosophical implications.
4 Programme // where the Chair intends to become a societal actor through designing, for training, research, and social commitment
Now that we have positioned ourselves on the practice of design, all that remains is to highlight the programmatic elements of the Chair.
Within CNAM, the Chair puts forward training and research approaches through design, arts and crafts and culture. Its ambition is to create and to develop collaborations in training, research and projects within and outside CNAM, in France, in Europe and internationally. It therefore aims to be an actor in an ecosystem that goes beyond CNAM and beyond design, and that will take as its horizon the possibility of a societal transformation of everyday life, through that of design and arts and crafts practices.
The Chair dialogues with numerous training institutions, and is part of the dynamic of the Campus des Métiers d’Arts et du Design. One of the major visions of the Chair is to confirm the possibility of a continuum throughout the initial training of the arts and design professions, from the vocational schools to the doctorate, and of lifelong learning. Particular attention to this subject, which is dear to me, is focused on the fundamental and very CNAMian idea that one must learn to learn.
The Chair contributes to research in design and in the arts, culture and creation, at the intersection of epistemological, craft and industrial, societal and ecological considerations. This research is situated and engaged through practice. The Chair therefore proposes and promotes research through practice, that is, research that involves practice in the research activity itself, and not adjacent to research. It invites pragmatic approaches, based on reflective practice10.
The Chair is also involved in projects with a clear societal contribution. Historically, design proposals have always contained a political dimension, and the Chair intends to place this consideration at the center of its questioning and its work.
Finally, the Chair wants to be constructively provocative. While questioning and proposing possibilities of societal transformation through practices, it is committed to questioning its own questioning, its own proposals and its own practices.
5 Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
Thank you.
6. References Peters, N. Prouvé. (Taschen, 2017). Hancock, T. & Bezold, C. Possible futures, preferable futures. Healthc. Forum J. 37, 23—29 (1994). Blackler, A. et al. Can We Define Design? Analyzing Twenty Years of Debate on a Large Email Discussion List. She Ji J. Des. Econ. Innov. 7, 41—70 (2021). Redström, J. Making design theory. (MIT Press, 2017). Lévy, P. Le temps de l’expérience, enchanter le quotidien par le design. (Université de Technologie de Compiègne, France, 2018). Lévy, P. Designing for the everyday through thusness and irregularity. in Proceedings of the International Association of Societies of Design Research Conference 2019, IASDR19 (Manchester Metropolitan University, 2019). Trotto, A. et al. Designing for Transforming Practices: Maps and Journeys. (Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, 2021). Sennett, R. Ce que sait la main: la culture de l’artisanat. (Albin Michel, 2010). Overbeeke, K. The aesthetics of the Impossible. Inaugural Lecture (Eindhoven University of Technology, 2007). Schön, D. A. The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think In Action. (Basic Books, 1984). Dōgen. La présence au monde. (Le Promeneur, 1999). Arendt, H. Condition de l’homme moderne. (Librairie générale française, 2020). dix—milliards—humains. dix—milliards—humains. dix—milliards—humains https://dix-milliards-humains.com/fr (2021). Yanagi, S. Artisan et inconnu, perception de la beauté dans l’esthétique japonaise. (Langues Et Mondes L’asiathèque, 1992). Stevens, B. Invitation à la philosophie japonaise: autour de Nishida. (CNRS, 2005). Yanagi, S. The Responsibility Of The Craftsman: And Mystery Of Beauty. (Literary Licensing, LLC, 2013). Lévy, P. & Yamada, S. 3D-modeling and 3D-printing Explorations on Japanese Tea Ceremony Utensils. in Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction - TEI'17 283—288 (ACM Press, 2017). doi:10.1145/3024969.3024990. Bégout, B. La découverte du quotidien. (Éditions Allia, 2005). Perec, G. L’infra-ordinaire. (Seuil, 1989). Fukasawa, N. Micro consideration. MUJI無印良品: 無印良品とクリエイター (2015). Cox, A. L., Gould, S. J. J., Cecchinato, M. E., Iacovides, I. & Renfree, I. Design Frictions for Mindful Interactions: The Case for Microboundaries. in Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems 1389—1397 (ACM, 2016). doi:10.1145/2851581.2892410. Lévy, P., Deckers, E. & Restrepo, M. C. When Movement Invites to Experience: a Kansei Design Exploration on Senses’ Qualities. in Proceedings of the International Conference on Kansei Engineering and Emotion Research, KEER 2012 366—372 (National Cheng Kung University, 2012). Jonas, H. Le principe responsabilité une éthique pour la civilisation technologique. (Flammarion, 1998). Yeats, W. B. La Rose et autres poèmes. (Seuil, 2008). 2022-05-18 10:30:52 +0200 CEST
events Séminaire les Médiums en design, pour une anthropologie symétrique du design – 2022 Le séminaire « les Médiums en design » est co-animé par CY Design Research, Dicen-IDF et la chaire Design Jean Prouvé du CNAM. Il invite les membres de la communauté de recherche en design à contribuer à la compréhension du design comme éco-système fait d’humains et de non-humains, de vivants et de non-vivants structurant et structuré par les pratiques et les réalisations.
Design ? une conversation avec des matériaux Dans les années 80, les recherches en design ont amorcé un tournant qui a remis en scène la matérialité des pratiques du design. Parmi les fondateurs de cette recherche, Donald Schön (1992) parle de l’activité du designer comme d’une « conversation avec les matériaux » : pour lui les matériaux sont aussi bien des mots, des paroles avec lesquelles on joue et sur lesquelles on revient, que des dessins qui permettent de préfigurer les architectures ou objets à venir.
Agentivité des mediums du design et pratiques incarnées La recherche en design s’est aussi inspirée pour une bonne part des anthropologues des cultures matérielles (Knappett & Malafouris, 2008; Ingold, 2007) qui attirent l’attention sur ce que le medium fait au designer et s’intéressent aux pratiques incarnées du design.
Propriétés physiques mais aussi sociales et culturelles Ces recherches aujourd’hui rencontrent les media studies aussi bien anglo-saxonnes (McLuhan, 1965; Mitchell & Hansen, 2010; Hayles, 2004) mais aussi la philosophie Allemande des médias (Kittler et al., 2018; Mersch et al., 2018)) et les recherches francophones en SIC (Jeanneret, 2000; Bonaccorsi & Flon, 2014)).
En effet, depuis le fameux « le medium est le message », on se rend compte à quel point le support n’est pas transparent derrière le message, ou pour le dire en termes de sémiotique (Fontanille, 2015) le plan de l’expression ne disparaît par derrière le plan du contenu. Même le numérique présente une matérialité sensible qu’il faut prendre en considération. En France, ce sont les historiens du livre (Chartier et al., 2001), de l’écriture (Christin, 2009) et des chercheurs en sciences de l’information et de la communication (Jeanneret, 2008) qui ont compris l’importance de revenir sur les incarnations, les métamorphoses, les légitimations, et les circulations de ce qui fait médiation entre notre réalité psychique et le monde extérieur, aussi bien que ce qui fait lien entre nous.
Médiation et médialité Plus largement encore, c’est une théorie de la médialité qui rencontre les théories du design : en effet, pour changer le monde, il ne faut pas être complètement pris dans ce monde. Il nous faut un entre deux, des espaces et des objets de médiation, qui permettent à la fois de relier et de mettre à distance pour composer et recomposer des alternatives à ce qui nous entoure (Guillory, 2010; Gentes, 2017).
Une histoire des médiums Ainsi, les recherches centrées sur les médiums du design s’intéressent non seulement à l’agentivité des matériaux mais aussi à la façon dont le designer fait sens avec les matières qui s’inscrivent dans une culture et une histoire de leurs mises en œuvre (Greenberg, 1971). Le bois par exemple ne présente pas que des propriétés chimiques et mécaniques, il s’inscrit aussi dans une culture du bois : les valeurs sociales qui lui sont associées, et dans les traditions de son utilisation : pour des objets utilitaires mais aussi pour des sculptures.
Le rôle des mediums et la relation qui est entretenu entre le designer et ces mediums évoluent de plus dans la temporalité du projet et dans celle de l’usage (Levy, 2020). D’un côté, la variété et la pluralité des fonctions du prototype au sein du projet en fait un medium au cœur du déploiement du projet. De l’autre côté, l’appropriation est un moment d’évolution du sens.
Quels médiums pour le design d’aujourd’hui ? Aujourd’hui, le design ne traite plus seulement du bois ou du plastique, mais du vivant, de nos modalités d’être ensemble, et des technologies qui organisent notre vie. De la terre à l’IA, il y a plus d’un pas et pour les designers contemporains des enjeux colossaux. Quelles sont les caractéristiques de ces nouveaux matériaux du design ? Quelles sont les méthodes de travail de ces nouveaux médiums ? Comment former à ces nouveaux matériaux du design ?
Le séminaire « les médiums en design » invite ceux qui se questionnent sur leurs pratiques, qui s’interrogent sur leurs méthodes à rejoindre la communauté de recherche formée par CY Design Research, Dicen-IDF et la chaire Design Jean Prouvé CNAM pour échanger sur ces questions.
La revue Sciences du design est associée à ce travail : nous proposerons aux auteurs qui ont abordé ces questions de faire une présentation de leur article.
Bibliographie Bonaccorsi, J., & Flon, É. (2014). La « variation » médiatique: D’un fondamental sémiotique à un enjeu d’innovation industrielle. Les Enjeux de l’information et de la communication, n° 15/2(2), 3–10.
Chartier, R., Collectif, & Cavallo, G. (2001). Histoire de la lecture dans le monde occidental (Édition : [Ed. augm. d’une bibliogr. rev. et augm.]). Seuil.
Christin, A.-M. (2009). L’Image écrite ou La déraison graphique (Enlarged édition). Flammarion.
Fontanille, J. (2015). Formes de vie. Presses universitaires de Liège. https://doi.org/10.4000/books.pulg.2207
Gentes, A. (2017). The In-Discipline of Design: Bridging the Gap Between Humanities and Engineering (1st ed. 2017 edition). Springer.
Greenberg, C. (1971). Art and Culture: Critical Essays. Beacon Press.
Guillory, J. (2010). Genesis of the Media Concept. Critical Inquiry, 36(2), 321–362. https://doi.org/10.1086/648528
Hayles, N. K. (2004). Print Is Flat, Code Is Deep: The Importance of Media-Specific Analysis. Poetics Today, 25(1), 67–90.
Ingold, T. (2007). Materials against materiality. Archaeological Dialogues, 14(1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1380203807002127
Jeanneret, Y. (2000). Y a-t-il (vraiment) des technologies de l’information ? Presses Universitaires du Septentrion.
Jeanneret, Y. (2008). Penser la trivialité: Volume 1, La vie triviale des êtres culturels. Hermes Science Publications.
Kittler, F., Guez, E., & Alloa, E. (2018). Gramophone, film, typewriter (F. Vargoz, Trans.; Illustrated édition). Les Presses du réel.
Knappett, C., & Malafouris, L. (Eds.). (2008). Material Agency: Towards a Non-Anthropocentric Approach. Springer US. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-74711-8
Levy, P. (2020). Artefactual emptiness: On appropriation in kansei design. Proceedings of the Kansei Engineering and Emotion Research International Conference 2020, KEER2020.
McLuhan, M. (1965). Understanding media: The extensions of man. McGraw-Hill.
Mersch, D., Alloa, E., Baumann, S., & Farah, P. (2018). Théorie des médias: Une introduction. Les Presses du réel.
Mitchell, W. J. T., & Hansen, M. B. N. (Eds.). (2010). Critical Terms for Media Studies (Illustrated edition). University of Chicago Press.
Schon, D. A. (1992). Design as a reflective conversation with the materials of a design situation. Research in Engineering Design, 3, 131–147.
2021-12-11 20:04:12 +0200 +0200
events Entre méthodes et pratiques en design - un moment d’apprentissage Pierre Lévy, professeur du CNAM, Chaire Design Jean Prouvé
Je voudrais m’intéresser aujourd’hui à la place des méthodes et des pratiques en design, et décrire leur entre-deux comme un lieu de développement des pratiques, c’est-à-dire comme moment d’apprentissage réflexif sur la pratique.
1. Le design Le premier point d’attention porte sur la notion même de design et la façon dont il est décrit par la propre communauté de recherche en design. Un récent article (Blackler et al., 2021) propose une analyse de vingt ans de discussion sur l’une des listes de diffusion les plus actives et renommées dans le monde (PHD-DESIGN List, n.d.) et portant sur la définition du design. Sa conclusion est comme suit (traduit par l’auteur) :
Malgré un discours robuste autour des perspectives pertinentes sur le design, les discussions de la liste sont et ont été répétitives, sans aucun progrès significatif vers une définition consolidée du design. […] Nous proposons qu’il n’est peut-être pas possible de définir le design de cette manière, et que le domaine devrait s’éloigner de la réitération et discuter de l’importance du rôle du design… (Blackler et al., 2021)
On note déjà que la tentative de définir le design semble inaboutie, et les auteurs de l’article suggèrent que cette tentative est inévitablement vouée à ne jamais aboutir. Le design ne se laisse pas définir et il serait temps de passer à autre chose : au lieu de questionner ce qu’est le design (description de l’état), il semble plus judicieux de questionner le rôle du design (description de l’action).
La résistance du design à la définition semble également être exprimée par Johan Redström (2017) lorsqu’il s’intéresse aux fondations du design (traduit par l’auteur) :
Le design semble fonder son existence sur des complexités issues de dichotomies. De négocier la forme et la function. D’engager l’artisanat et ses compétences, et de travailler avec la production industrielle. De travailler avec des processus ouverts et d’être profondément engagé à la méthode. D’être centré-utilisateur et design-driven. D’être art et science. […]
Et le design peut aussi être remarquablement résilient et désireux de s’engager à tout cela, ce qui n’est ni blanc ou noir, mais complexe et coloré. […]
La raison pour laquelle on apprécie tellement les dichotomies en design est parce qu’elle permet d’adresser le conflit, la collision, et les contradictions, et d’ouvrir ainsi de nouvelles perspectives et potentiels.
Ce que nous dit Redström est que l’on peut trouver la force du design (certains disent le pouvoir du design, nous dirons sa capacité d’action) au sein des dichotomies. C’est en effet dans la collision, la contradiction ou l’irrégularité (Lévy, 2018, 2019) que des opportunités nouvelles se créent et que des transformations sont possibles. Dans un entendement commun et global, c’est-à-dire sans friction, la transformation est bien moins probable.
La première conclusion est donc ainsi : Le design est insaisissable, et c’est plutôt une bonne nouvelle ! La pratique réflexive ainsi que l’acceptation de plusieurs perspectives et de dichotomies semblent donc pertinentes pour le design.
2. Méthodes et activités Les méthodes en design sont essentielles pour la formalisation des processus de conception en design. Elles le sont donc dans l’enseignement puisqu’elles permettent de clarifier un cadre pour le projet et à l’apprenant d’appréhender des complexités précédemment discutées. Elles le sont dans la pratique professionnelle à la fois pour la gestion du projet et pour la communication du et autour du projet.
Toutefois, les méthodes existantes, et nous prenons ici pour exemples le double diamant proposé par le Design Council (2019) et le Model MV proposé par Kees Dorst (2015), semblent s’attacher à une séquence ordonnée d’activités prédéfinies, séquence souvent contredite par la pratique.
La pratique peut être plus fidèlement décrite par les actions situées qui la constituent. C’est ce que propose le Reflective Transformative Design Process (C. Hummels & Frens, 2009) qui propose une perspective effective autant pour la pratique elle-même du design que pour son enseignement. La description d’activités permet de cadrer la pratique sans pour autant imposer un ordre hors contexte. L’expérience montre en effet que le projet doit s’adapter aux ressources accessibles et aux contraintes et opportunités qui se présentent.
De plus, dans une période où le design s’investit de plus en plus dans l’arène sociale et politique, nous avons développé une nouvelle approche, les pratiques transformatives (C. C. M. Hummels et al., 2019), qui justement reprend cette idée de discuter la pratique au travers d’activités tout en incluant des notions liées entre autres à la participation sociale et à la complexité.
Ces approches ne prescrivent ni séquence ni réelle limite aux activités, si bien que la pratique ainsi décrite peut paraitre à la fois déstructurée et omnipotente. Mais c’est justement au travers de l’une des dichotomies proposées par Redström - travailler avec des processus ouverts et d’être profondément engagé à la méthode - qui expose la force de l’association contradictoire formée par la méthode et la pratique, celle d’une activité réflexive possible grâce au delta entre pratique et méthodes, qui invite justement à une réflexion transformative, et donc apprenante, de la pratique du design.
C’est donc là la seconde conclusion de ma présentation aujourd’hui : Les méthodes et !es activités forment donc une dichotomie en design. C’est au travers de cette dichotomie que la pratique du design s’établit, au travers d’une réflexion transformative et apprenante de la pratique.
Bibliographie Blackler, A., Swann, L., Chamorro-Koc, M., Mohotti, W. A., Balasubramaniam, T., & Nayak, R. (2021). Can We Define Design? Analyzing Twenty Years of Debate on a Large Email Discussion List. She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation, 7(1), 41-70. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sheji.2020.11.004
Design Council. (2019). What is the framework for innovation? Design Council’s evolved Double Diamond. Design Council. https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/news-opinion/what-framework-innovation-design-councils-evolved-double-diamond
Dorst, K. (2015). Frame Innovation: Create New Thinking by Design. MIT Press.
Hummels, C. C. M., Trotto, A., Peeters, J. P. A., Levy, P., Alves Lino, J., & Klooster, S. (2019). Design research and innovation framework for transformative practices. In Strategy for change (pp. 52-76). Glasgow Caledonian University.
Hummels, C., & Frens, J. (2009). The reflective transformative design process. Proceedings of the 27th International Conference - Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems CHI09, 2655-2658. https://doi.org/10.1145/1520340.1520376
Lévy, P. (2018). Le temps de l’expérience, enchanter le quotidien par le design [Habilitation à diriger des recherches]. Université de Technologie de Compiègne, France.
Lévy, P. (2019). Designing for the everyday through thusness and irregularity. Proceedings of the International Association of Societies of Design Research Conference 2019, IASDR19. International Association of Societies of Design Research Conference 2019, Manchester, UK.
PHD-DESIGN List. (n.d.). Retrieved 4 December 2021, from https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=PHD-DESIGN
Redström, J. (2017). Making design theory. MIT Press.
2021-11-18 10:30:52 +0200 +0200
events For example, should we focus on local challenges starting from an individual perspective, e.g. your grandmother with dementia that can’t live independently anymore, or should we focus on global challenges starting from the bigger perspective, e.g. how can society maintain a healthy lifestyle? Should we invest more in artificial intelligence and new technological possibilities to tackle our challenges, or should we invest more in the socio-cultural values needed to tackle our challenges? And should we focus on moonshot projects that yield systemic change in 2040 or 50, or should we start today designing for tomorrow?
During this one hour session you will get acquainted with Designing for Systemic Change through interviews with international experts (via videos), 3 presentations of best practices, and having a lively panel debate.
2019-10-03 16:27:15 +0200 CEST
events DESIGN 3.0 FORUM Introduction by Dr. Ki-Young Nam, KAIST
Congratulatory Remark by Prof. Kun-pyo Lee
Professor Rachel Cooper, Lancaster University
| Context-setting for the theme: Design for Public Sector and Social Innovation
Professor Martyn Evans, MMU
| Design for policy
Dr. Edward Hyunwook Hwangbo, PDR
| Design for policy
Dr. Pierre Levy, TU Einthoven
| Interaction design for society
Professor John Vines, Northumbria University
| Digital civics
2019-09-03 16:27:15 +0200 CEST
events Introduction First, I would like to thank Stephan Wensveen for the organisation and for making this day a such a special one, from start to end (although who knows how it will end…).
I am very glad to be here. It is an honour to participate to this symposium, and to have the role of opening the series of presentations. It is also a challenge I must say. Kees has been enriching the life of many of us, and I believe many of us would have something valuable to tell based on sharing experiences with Kees. I am very conscious of this privilege.
Times ago, discussing this symposium with Stephan, the idea was to have one eye looking back at what Kees brought to us and hoped for the design community, and to have the other eye on the future trying to tell our current students, to remind our alumni and ourselves some aspects Kees carried through his work, that we may bring further.
I have the honour and the challenge to operate this eye gymnastic and to share with you today what I see.
Contemplating the impossible Today, in this speech, I will try not to bore you with details of the inaugural lecture of the late Prof Kees Overbeeke, “The Aesthetics of the Impossible”, that he gave in 2007, 11 years ago in exactly a week. Today offers an occasion for me to bore you with a contemplation of some of the key ideas raised during this lecture, and to contemplate them from where and when I stand today. And much have happened in between.
Today is also for me the occasion of getting bold again in the tradition of DQI. For the ones who hoped this was the past, bear with me and I’ll promise I will try to be soft. For the ones who miss it at times, hope you can enjoy.
For the ones who did not meet Kees, I would like to briefly introduce him. Late professor in our department of Industrial Design, Kees had a significant impact on the design and CHI communities all over the world, especially on the topics related to embodiment in design for interaction. But that would not tell much about the guy, by far. If he is remembered and celebrated in such a way as today, is because his ideas, his generosity, his friendliness and appreciation to all, impacted many individual lives, many of us both intellectually and humanly. He is, for many, one of these very few people that significantly meant something to us. He is a moment in the development of thoughts and attitudes.
His inaugural lecture was entitled “the aesthetics of the impossible”. The notion “impossible” demands here a little clarification, which is to me twofold:
Aesthetics, which is the core of design for interaction is ungraspable. It is only when and where it happens, in the here and the now. And then it is gone, suddenly as it happens. It is unique and impossible to grasp. Standardisation is impossible and actually not wished, as it would lead towards an extreme level of boredom and dissatisfaction. Systematic research is difficult but should be challenged. Impossibility is also in the complexity we encounter in design: that is, in the variety of disciplines our students are facing (challenging skills, knowledge and practices), and in the inherent complexity of interaction and of experience. To address this impossibility, design approaches require a greater balance between making and thinking (supported by reflection on action, which I will address again later). Therefore today, to contemplate the impossible, I will especially focus on three aspects: believes, teaching and research, making and thinking. And I will do so by freely mixing what Kees said (at least the way I understand it) and by my reflection on it. For the flow of my discourse, I will often borrow from Kees’s inaugural lecture without systematically mention it.
Contemplating believes Kees explains:
Every scientist, as well as every designer, has a body of knowledge, as well as a galaxy of believes (that is my wording).
Knowledge is established through research activities and transmitted through teaching. It is about how things are. Believes contribute to envisioning how things ought to be. They result from philosophy, intuition, awareness, experience, from our being-in-the-world, in a giving culture, in a giving timeframe.
Believes are guides for where we go, where we look, we what we do, and what strikes us. They condition our engagements, our motives, our stance and our actions in the world. Less than a month ago, Bill Buxton, lecturing here at TU/e, was reminding us the importance, and actually the necessity of having a compass and a horizon in design practice and design research. It is essential for good design (given that this design intends to contribute to the making of a better world).
In the current context where the most striking thing we know is that we do not know where the world is going, because of its complexity, because of challenges that we are aware of but do not fully comprehend, because of tensions we feel but that are not clear to our sight. This is made even more complex by our relation and use of technology: as we praise it and support its development and its use in society, yet questioning it at the same time.
Knowledge and believes then are necessary in design practice, design education, and design research.
A few believes that Kees mentioned during his inaugural lecture, are worth remembering:
“Design is about people. It is about our life and dreams, about our loneliness and joy, our sense of beauty and justice, about the social and the good. It is about being in the world”. Meaning emerges in interaction and cannot be detached from action. This demands a primacy of embodiment and a primacy of action. Considering these two first points, a few consequences can be suggested here. The first two ones are also stated by Kees:
A design theory must be a theory of action (and I would add of transformation, which I will discuss later). This theory should focus on embodiment in the first place, and on meaning in the second place. Reflection in/on and for action is a source of knowledge and a creator of new and valuable perspectives on and for design, on and for the world. Design research and practice are powerful source of knowledge. As I will discuss it later, research and education should be highly interwoven. To these two considerations, I may add the following:
Design research is not solely an applicative research but contains also, and actually is for a large part, a theoretical research, with the condition that we give space to it. Design theory, constitutive of design research, is a theory of action. If design would to be a science (in the modern sense of the term, which I have throughout the years got progressively to agree with), it would be a transformative science, as any other science with transformative outcomes, such as engineering or chemistry (when it tries to create a new molecule for example). Design is not a descriptive science, such as ethnography, physics trying to describe the phenomenon of gravitation, or chemistry trying to describe a natural chemical reaction.
Design (being practice, education, or research) is about transformations, and is specific as it is about action, about people, and about ethics. Therefore, I would challenge any reduction of the world or the experience of it, to data. In this crucial moment, where data related technologies become so predominant, with incredible and promising outcomes, design practitioners and design researchers should obviously embrace such technologies, as well as not forgetting that the experience of the world is embodied, is affective, and symbolic. We are beings with a history, culture, ethics, visions and dreams. Contemplating teaching and research This is especially important when considering the necessity of aligning research and teaching. Kees reminded us clearly and simply the necessity to align both activities for the academic world.
He told us: “expressivity, beauty and meaning are at the core of design”. In 1999, I (being Kees while in Delft) pointed out the mismatch between teaching and research. Research was about structural aspects of perception, and teaching was about beauty of interaction. I could not change the teaching, so I changed the research. “Emotion became important, which is not obvious as a research topic in the technical background that was then in Delft and now here.”
The PhD of Stephan Wensveen is one of the first and a clear example of research work on emotionally intelligent products. Already then he noticed the challenge and the necessity of interacting in a continuous and simultaneous way with products (topic that was still challenged in the PhD of Jelle Stienstra just 2 years ago). Many related topics were then developed further in various ways throughout most PhDs executed in the DQI research group. And I am no surprised that Stephan today pushes the research further and focuses on questions related to the “aesthetics of the intelligence”.
Recently, our students are facing a progressive increase of topics the design community is engaging in (design based on big data, A.I. and other learning algorithms, but also service design, social design…). All these increase challenges and complexity in their education and their future work. They also face a progressive increase of technological solutions at hand to make their designs.
Now that teaching is challenged by many other topics (related to technology and society), I think It is important for us, as a leading academia in design, to keep focusing where our skills are: as we interact with data through interfaces, being either sensors or actuators… “how do these become meaningful and beautiful to us?” is our core question. Mastering data management (among others) is certainly important, however, providing meaningful, rich and beautiful interactions is the heart of design.
This demands to care for human and their actual experiences as beings-in-the-world, and to keep design teaching and research focusing on this. Only then, when students will embody that by being curious, sympathetic and independent, only then they will embody and act the richness design may provide. Taking again the lines from Kees: “But the only way to develop curiosity, sympathy, principle, and independence of mind is to practice being curious, sympathetic, principled and independent. For those of us who are teachers, it isn’t what we teach that instills virtue, it is how we teach. We are the books our students read most closely”
“Let us practice what we preach”. Let us care, through our teaching, what our students learn and become.
Contemplating making and thinking The electronic and digital interfaces are loaded with buttons that demands little of our motor-perceptive skills, and too much of our cognitive skills.
This situation leads to standardized and efficient interactions, as well as to boring and poor ones if we consider the human being in its entirety.
Making simple buttons by default is, to my point of view, a triple failure:
First, as we already mentioned it, it fails the possibility to provide beauty in interaction, beauty and care in the experience. It fails the heart of design.
Second, it is defeating the idea that design is about challenges and only addressing these challenges will help, in the long term, to find novel, effective, rich and beautiful ways of interacting.
Third, the button degrades our contact with the world. When there is no experiential relation between the activity of pressing a button and the functional and experiential consequences of doing so, there is also less space for grasping the world, that is for sensemaking. Proposing poor interaction solutions (by opposition of making rich interaction solutions), makes us designer and us users less to experience our being-in-the-world, and therefore inepter (or more moronic is you prefer).
The button here is obviously only the archetype of a quick and easy decision making, yet leading to boredom, poverty in life experiences, and flattening both designers’ and users’ minds.
Our design skills exploring possibilities of rich interactions are therefore not only a way to make user’s experiences and life better, but also a way to advance in design research: exploring through making (using design skills well), and reflecting in and on action is what design can do best, and contribute to the most in the world of academia in the first place, and in the world in the second place.
Finally, as Kees reminded us, we need to keep in mind that we are too many that know, and not enough that make. Reflection on action should be the drive to push design practice and design research further. “in our effort to understand reality, we have been too much abstracted from it”.
Contemplating transformation As mentioned before, design is about transformation, transformation of practices in societies and in our everyday life. Understanding reality, which means understanding our everyday life, is to transform it:
Étudier la vie quotidienne serait une entreprise parfaitement ridicule, et d’abord condamnée à ne rien saisir de son objet, si l’on ne se proposait pas explicitement d’étudier la vie quotidienne afin de la transformer. Guy Debord
Studying the everyday life would be an absurd undertaking, and anyway fated to catch nothing of its object, if studying the everyday life would explicitly be with the intention to transform it. Guy Debord
And I would like to conclude with this notion of everyday transformation, being actually my research topic which I believe I have built partly on the considerations I have discussed today.
Although this word, “everyday” is so much used in the world of design, addressing it is not as obvious as it seems, and is often actually avoided or subverted. As things become part of our everyday, a process called quotidianisation, they escape from our attention, giving us peace of mind. They stop questioning us, and we stop questioning them. This way, they progressively disappear from our awareness. Perec even speaks about amnesia, rather than lack of attention. What can be extraordinary when new, becomes infra-ordinary through the process of quotidianisation.
Questioning the everyday requires exploring the infraordinary, which demands exploring tiny and often personal details that we are obviously not aware of in the first place. Exploring the everyday to transform it demands to get aware and to understand its most tiny details, which as Coyne & Mathers explain “often appear irrational from a third-person perspective, but most often rational from a first-person perspective”. Therefore, designing for the everyday demands a continuous and structuring dialog between an exploration at the first-person perspective, to create a rational, observing and transforming ones’ own everyday life to comprehend these rationales, and a third-person perspective that enables us to design for others.
I have found the sensibility, the attention to tiny details and the beauty in the everyday in the Japanese culture and philosophy, from which I have elaborated a theoretical framework for designing for the everyday. This framework relies indeed on Japanese philosophers and thinkers, such as Nishida Kitaro or Yanagi Soetsu who through their work have pointed out where beauty relies in the everyday, as well as designers, such as Naoto Fukusawa and Kenya Hara who through their work have not only designed but also reflected on their making to show the values of paying attention to the everyday towards human and social elevation, and have made it existing in our societies all over the world, through companies such as Muji.
Designing for the everyday is to me a clear example of what design claims to do, yet actually (and for now!) fails to do properly. The hope of making design research education and practice an actual unique and yet not isolated contributor to a betterment of our world, goes through a repositioning on what design can do best: focusing and creating meaning in interaction for people’s experiences, using at full reflection in and on action to make sense of the world as it is lived, making sure to enrich the beauty of our everyday life. All that stands in the way of abstraction, standardization.
Contemplating the impossible To finish on Kees’s considerations: “It is our role, scholars and industrialists, to define a new project for design. We have to avoid remaining in a problem-solver perspective, and to wake-up and let grow the challengers that is in each of the designers we are educating.”
We must dream, to give youngsters hope.
Thanks to Kees for all this teaching, that even in challenging times remain constitutive of our design compass.
La reconnaissance est la mémoire du cœur.
Thank you
2018-10-19 10:30:52 +0200 CEST
events Stephan was appointed full professor of ‘Constructive Design Research in Smart Products, Services and Systems’ in the Department of Industrial Design on May 1, 2017. He will deliver his inaugural lecture ‘Constructive Design Research’ at 16:00.
Additionally, there will be a series of lectures by staff and students including Pierre Levy, Caroline Hummels, Luke Noothout and Angella Mackey.
Guest speakers include Bill Gaver, from the University of London, who will give a talk describing how he and his team has designed DIY devices that people can make themselves: ‘The first is for a collection of cameras and an audio device designed for Cultural Probes studies. The second, a ‘wildlife’ camera that uses computer vision to trigger image capture when it sees movement.’
2018-10-09 16:27:15 +0200 CEST
events The nature of design thinking projects requires a great capacity to solve situated-inquiry problems (versus technical problem solving – Schön). Design thinking requires practitioners to become reflective professionals. This piece of research provides a protocol and tools to guide their journey of self-reflection:
A new action research protocol (derived from Pedagogical Action Research) for design thinking practitioners, A conceptual framework (People Place Process) to guide design thinking development, in both academic and business environments, A scale-up model to develop design thinking pedagogy at the scale of an individual educator, a university and a government, An activity framework for both academic and business users to identify competences developed with (and required for) design thinking projects. Pedagogical action research represents the oldest strand of action research, reaching back to the Science of Education movement in the late nineteenth century (Bain, Boone) and revived in the early twentieth century by the work of John Dewey. The ultimate goal of reflective teaching is to develop teachers’ skills in ‘‘reflection-in-action”, i.e., their ability to frame and reframe problems, find solutions instantly on the basis of their interpretation and analysis of the situation, and construct new meanings and directions for future actions (Schön). The protocol and tools developed in this research have been adapted to design thinking projects, both in academic and business contexts.
2017-05-23 16:27:15 +0200 CEST
events This thesis takes on a combined approach, from societal and business development angles, to explore the question of ‘how to design for an active and healthy lifestyle. It follows a Research-through-Design approach, which generates new knowledge through the act of designing. A design-driven research method called Experiential Design Landscapes (EDLs) is developed together with accompanying tools and techniques. With the EDL method, the design process is taken into society by creating infrastructures where designers work together with stakeholders in jointly creating experienceable propositions that can evolve over time. These propositions, Experiential Probes, are intelligent, open, sensor- enhanced, and networked products service systems that enable people to develop new and emerging behaviours, and in parallel enable detailed analysis of the emerging data patterns by researchers and designers as a source of inspiration for the development of future systems.
2015-04-15 16:27:15 +0200 CEST
events Holism and kansei design – kansei beyond borders In the field of kansei research, three main disciplines contribute, in different ways, to the creation of artefacts: kansei engineering, kansei science, and kansei design. In this presentation, I will focus specifically on kansei science and kansei design, and on their differences and similarities. Finally, I will show how these two disciplines are actually complementary and that their collaboration can be relevant.
First, I will briefly describe these two disciplines and their approach. More detailed work on these descriptions, together with a comprehensive historical approach on the disciplines of kansei research can be found in (Lévy, 2013).
Kansei science (KS) was first proposed by Akira Harada, and was introduced at the crossing of kansei and cognitive sciences. The research initiated in the eighties by Harada aimed at describing holistically users’ cognitive processes related to preference and choice of products. KS is built upon brain science, mostly cognitive neuroscience and psychophysiology, and relies on related philosophies. The mind/brain identity theory is for example used extensively in KS. Human’s thinking and resulting behaviours can be best understood by using a model involving mental representational structures and mental procedures that operates on these structures. These models and structures can be studied by psychophysiological approaches. In this academic context, KS research aims to characterize and to evaluate emotional experiences and creativity, to contribute to a better understanding of the mind based on physiological and psychological approaches. Moreover, it is important to notice that KS has very often worked with design research to develop conjointly new methods and inspiration means for design and communication.
Kansei design (KD) is, on the other hand, an emergent discipline in the field of kansei research. Currently, there are two approaches in the discipline of KD, which can be differentiated by their focus.
The first approach focuses on the physical materiality of artefacts (i.e., their intrinsic properties), and their evaluation or preference by the user. This approach is very close to KS in terms of domains of application, in term of tools (often based on semantics), but differs by their attitude towards ambiguity and uncertainty. While KS intends to avoid it or to “solve” it by means of logic reasoning, KD deals with it by means of design skills and experience.
The second approach focuses on the interactive materiality of artefacts (i.e., the qualities of the artefact in interaction). This approach is the one adopted and explored by the author. Whereas KE and KS have found their roots in scientific establishment, KD intends to return to (Japanese) philosophical or cultural works related to kansei, and to use them as a source of knowledge and opportunities to be addressed by design. From this perspective, two major stances are taken: the primacy of action (“We see a thing by action, and the thing we see determines us as much as we determine the thing. That is action-intuition.” - Nishida) and the primacy of the body (“Just as the body of an artist is the organ of art, so is the body of a scholar the organ of scholarship; the life of an artist exists in beauty and that of a scholar in truth. Even the activity of thinking does not exist separately from our physical body.” - Nishida). Example of kansei design works can be seen in the aforementioned referenced paper.
What is interesting to notice when overviewing these two disciplines together is the closeness of the focus despites the great difference in the approach. KS is obviously internalist (perception is a process taking place within the human mind), and KD externalist (perception is a process taking place within a system composed of the human and the environment). However, both disciplines focus on the immediate experience, i.e., on the here and the now of the human experience.
In previous research projects, addressed from a kansei science perspective, I have explored the idea that as long as there are two persons in the same space, there is diversity. I call this interX. Most classically studied ones are the intercultural and interdisciplinary aspects. I have focused on the diversity in a broader sense and used a kansei science approach to contribute to the creation of tools that supports this diversity. The output were the Evoked Metaphor (a conceptualising tool facilitating knowledge sharing among members of an interdisciplinary design workgroup to work together upon individual and disciplinary differences) and MATiK (a computer-mediated communication system, inspired by the cocktail party effect using positive filters to provide each member the necessary information according to the consideration of individual qualities). See (Lévy & Yamanaka, 2006) for more details.
Now, I would like to succinctly explore what could be the starting point from a KD perspective on the same topic. As the variety of interX types is immense and can hardly be overviewed (KD aims at considering opportunities from a holistic perspective), I propose to reverse this inquiry and to address a fundamental commonality: we are in the world, and there is a primacy of the body in interaction (as suggested by Nishidian’s action-intuition). Note that he stance is also addressed by various contemporary psychology and philosophy, notably: Gibson’s ecological psychology and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception. Kansei design address is how to design for direct and immediate experience. It addresses it by synthesising concepts coming from Japanese philosophy (notably the school of Kyoto) and relying on Japanese cultural values of aesthetics and craftsmanship. However, as kansei design is a very emerging discipline highly related to direct interaction design, many conceptual and methodological aspects are still borrowed to it. Consequently, kansei design aims at creating ‘irresistible’ artefacts, i.e., that resonate with the user engaged in interaction. Resonance interaction is the “perfect interplay between the product and the person which evokes strong positive emotions” [Kevin Andersen].
To conclude, based on my research experiences within the two disciplines, I strongly believe that we can go beyond the theoretical differences (not to say the contradictions) and mutually contribute to both the understanding of kansei and its application to the creation of kansei-quality artefacts. From this mutual contribution, kansei will be more widely, and therefore better understood, and kansei designs will be more irresistible. Challenges are to be faced, opportunities are to be taken!
References
Lévy, P. & Yamanaka T. (2006). MATiK – CMC Design by Kansei Information Approach, in Proc. KEIS’06.
Lévy, P. (2013). Beyond kansei engineering: The emancipation of kansei design. International Journal of Design, 7(2).
2013-08-30 21:55:59 +0200 CEST
events This doctoral project investigates whether and how to design for perceptive qualities in systems of interactive products from a phenomenological point of view. It sets out to form and frame a new perspective on designing an artefact’s intelligence from a quality- and action-centric approach, rather than a functional approach. Artefacts and the systems they create become increasingly intelligent and disappear to the background of our environment. How do we understand all these intelligible connections that systems create in our environment when they are invisible and highly flexible? Moreover, how do we design for such systems of intelligent and interactive artefacts? I am convinced that if we want to design for successful intelligent systems that are perceptible to and evolve around its user, the artefact’s intelligence has to build on the direct interaction with its user(s). It is shown that, by designing for perceptive qualities, the system’s activity becomes meaningful to its users. Moreover, the user activity becomes meaningful to the system in the course of the interaction.
The work is inspired by and directly synthesises from theory. The theoretical starting point and the generated design-relevant knowledge, in the form of design notions, are a leitmotiv through this work. Three main chapters are structured around this connecting thread. In each of these chapters, designing plays an essential role. The first chapter follows a minimalist approach in context and in implementation to bring forward fundamental knowledge for designing. The second chapter investigates the added value of the generated knowledge for designing, and a step is made towards design practice. In the third chapter, a third-person perspective corroborates the first-person approach and findings. It is crucial that these three chapters feed into each other to inform, inspire and validate.
2013-05-23 16:27:15 +0200 CEST
events The future of design is unclear, as designerly responsibilities are changing. The emphasis used to be on form and production, but as the products to be designed have changed, design has changed. With an interactive product the designer needs to consider not only the form but also the temporal aspects of the product?s interaction and behaviour, and even the specifics of its functionality. While we are starting to understand how to design for interaction through the integrating of form, interaction and function, the next challenge is already in sight: designing for systems.
From a design perspective, there is very little experience of designing systems, and there are no methods ready at hand. However, our question of ?how to design for systems? is not a ?methodology? question in the first place. To formulate a method is to simplify and abstract the design challenge into a defined set of subsequent steps to be taken. In the case of design for systems, this is problematic because it is difficult, if not impossible, to have an overview of the complete system before it exists or of its impact on society. Not only is our grasp of the system limited by our point of view, but systems also allow for many different yet valid points of view, thanks to their inherent complexity.
In order to overcome these issues it is necessary to start exploring the design space for systems. As we have little experience in this area, it is essential that we get involved in designing ourselves and let our insight in these matters grow until we can compile it into a relevant methodology. What is more, we need to take an experiential approach to the design of these systems. That is, we need to undergo the experience of living with such systems as we are designing them if we are to make value judgements on the direction the solution should take. In other words, the uncertainty of method and the complex nature of systems call for a research-through-design approach, with ?doing? as the mechanism for obtaining insight into the process at hand guided by relevant theory and a vision of what we want to achieve.
This exposition contains a selection of projects involving members of the Designing Quality in Interaction (DQI) group in which research, education and industry come together. These projects provide insights into our perspective on design and how it has changed over the years. We aim to paint a picture of a world that could be, as well as giving insight into how we think the design challenge for industrial designers is changing.
Text by Oscar Tomico
2012-12-12 16:27:15 +0200 +0200
events SHIFT is the product of 18 master students working within OPENLIGHT, the creative lab of the Intelligent Lighting Institute at TU/e.
Our world is in a constant state of transformation. Most of the time, our view of the world will change parallel to this transformation. The changes in the world are often propelled us as an individual, group, generation or country. Are we aware of the influence we have on our environment? The installation allows you to experience and admire this influence by joining forces with others.Your acts have meaning!
Students of the Intelligent Lighting Institute of Eindhoven University of Technology want to make visitors of GLOW 2012 think about the amount of control we have on the changing façade of the world. The visitors will be able to experience individual and collective influence on the world around them by collectively replacing weight.
Students: Sietse Dols, Rik Vegt, Evy Ansems, Dennis de Klein, Thom van Boheemen, Nick Hermans, Karin Niemantsverdriet, Troy Reugebrink, Tijmen van Gurp, Job Huberts, Daniël van Paesschen, Martijn Peeters, Jelle Tuinhout, Adriaan de Regt, Maxim Sakovic, Freek de Bruijn, Teije Oudshoorn, Tom Kölker.
2012-10-12 16:27:15 +0200 CEST
events The Practice of Constructive Design Research is a conversation proposed by Stoffel Kuenen at the DRS2014 conference.
‘Catalysts (=invited participants) for the conversation were researchers in this field: Lorenzo Davoli, Mahmoud Keshavarz, Pierre Lévy and Ambra Trotto. In order to feed and frame the conversation, I made a video containing statements taken from interviews with more consolidated researchers: Pelle Ehn, Daniel Fällman, Caroline Hummels, Johan Redström and John Zimmerman.’
(Stoffel Kuenen)
2012-09-03 16:27:15 +0200 CEST
events This thesis starts with a Manifesto, bold, passionate and ambitious. Goals are set high, as to commit to a major endeavour: how can design contribute to a new civilisation. The first version was written in 2006 in Bertinoro, Italy, where Caroline Hummels, Kees Overbeeke and I were giving a workshop on Aesthetics of Interaction for the University of Bologna. In this Manifesto, we declared our belief and proposed a vision, concerning how design can change Western thinking towards pervasive ethics. By pervasive ethics I mean a social praxis aimed at justice and freedom, which pervades society in a capillary way, becoming a Universal attitude that makes people aware of their own rights, able and willing to contribute to seeing their own rights and those of all people fulfilled. I called this approach Rights though Making. The manifesto stated a mission1, which was later applied and validated. The main lines of thoughts of the manifesto have been respected and enforced through several actions. This thesis will describe these actions, the underlying theory and the related reflection both on the approach and on the outcomes. The Manifesto integrated the points of view of the writers, united by a common drive, in a world riddled with all sorts of social uncertainties. In the Manifesto we declared our intention of preparing and doing workshops with students of different nationalities, stimulating the integration of skilful points of view among future designers. When the Manifesto was written, there was not yet a concrete strategy on how to empower people towards pervasive ethics. The only anchor point was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We wanted the values contained in this document materialised, embodied in (intelligent) products or systems. Both the outcome of what we were envisioning (intelligent products or systems empowering towards the realisation of human rights) and the process of realising it (workshop) had to work towards ethics. This was all I knew at that point. Later I designed the way to do it, based on this solid and enthusiastic shared vision.
Throughout the years, the underlying theoretical framework started to acquire its own body. Only after the realisation of the first 5 workshops (out of 7 in total), was I able to explicitly structure and describe the platform of theory that was supporting my endeavour. These actions (the workshops), contributed to the formation of a body of knowledge, of which the potential strength and soundness until then had exclusively been perceived through intuition. This tacit knowledge was dredged out, reflected upon and refined, through iterations of reflection-on-action, in which the “active” parts were the individual workshops.
Thus the forming of this theoretical platform, the refinement of the research quest or design challenge and giving the workshops were overlapping in time and closely intertwined. For clarity, in this thesis I chose to position them in the following order:
Part 1: defining the design challenge / research quest and the Rights through Making Approach; Part 2: illustrating the theoretical framework underlying the whole work. This theoretical framework is formed by three elements: (1) Ethics (2) Making and (3) their integration, i.e. how Making empowers towards Ethics: the core of the RtM approach. Part 3: describing how this theory is applied in design workshops and how the Rights through Making (RtM) approach evolved; Part 4: reflecting on the overall research experience and the underlying personal motivations. Before this central body I placed and introductory part, containing acknowledgments, rights of the readers, synopsis (this chapter) and tables of contents. After the fourth part, I positioned a part called “Annexes”, which is composed of two main sections:
In the first section I present the RtM workshops in detail, in regard to both the process of each RtM workshop and their evolution;< In the second section, I illustrate the direction in which I envision the diffusion of RtM in the future, through the realisation of an Internet platform. 2012-05-15 16:27:15 +0200 CEST
events Light through Culture is an international design school which explores the theme of complexity in learning environments. The aim of the school is to weave the newest technologies and the rich existing culture into a new canvas for making and thinking. The school was funded in 2011 by Patrizia Marti (University of Siena) and Kees Overbeeke (Technical University of Eindhoven).
This ehibition proposes a reflection on the individual vs. social perception of human rights, exploring 2 fundamental and controverted articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 13: Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country. Article 19: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. Visitors travel through an interactive path, where they experience the application or the negation of such rights. This concurs in stimulating and reinforcing a reflection on their relevance and universality.
2012-01-15 16:27:15 +0200 +0200
teaching Description The major aim of this course is to improve students’ scientific or technical presentation skills, focusing on the roles and the effects of involved media in presenting a project (e.g., a poster, an artefact, a video…). First, a few theoretical guidelines a provided for understanding the practical and rhetorical use of media in presentation. Second, this understanding is used in presenting projects carried out or chosen by students in their own specialties. Third and last, presentations are analysed to point out how they can highlight the key aspects of a project, and how the elements produced for the project can structure a presentation and serve its objectives.Therefore, the aim of this course is to develop students’ abilities to understand and present scientific and technical projects.
Objectifs pédagogiques acquiring techniques for structuring and performing a presentation, using and adapting different media for presenting, using relevant resources to continue progressing independently.The development of these skills will be based on projects selected by the learners (their own or chosen projects). Requirements Be enrolled in one of the international Masters programs of the scientifiques and technology departments at Cnam proposing this course. This course is entirely taught in English. Hence a fluent level of English is expected.
Livrables Each course is ended by a presentation or a delivable (to be submitted on the course’s Moodle) that will be assessed.
2024-10-01 16:27:15 +0200 CEST
teaching Cette UE propose une vue d’ensemble des pratiques de la recherche en design, art et création, afin d’atteindre deux objectifs pédagogiques. Il s’agit d’abord de contextualiser l’implication de la pratique du design, de l’art ou de la création en recherche, et de développer une approche de recherche au travers de ces pratiques. Il s’agit ensuite de fournir des ressources (connaissances, outils, méthodologies, réseaux…) utiles à la recherche au travers d’une pratique, et de permettre un développement en autonomie des ressources utiles à la pratique de la recherche.
Une attention particulière est portée sur la recherche au travers du design, de l’art et de la création. L’objectif d’une telle approche est de générer une connaissance pertinente à la pratique engagée, au travers d’une imbrication forte entre une pratique et la recherche : la pratique contribue à la création épistémologique. Elle n’y est pas attenante. Cette approche se distingue donc clairement par rapport à celles plus classiques qui séparent recherche académique et pratique de création et visent soit la contribution de la recherche à la pratique, ou l’observation de la recherche sur la pratique. La recherche au travers du design considère la contribution épistémologique de la pratique à la recherche, et la réalisation de la recherche grâce à l’expertise du praticien.
Cette UE vise donc à initier des praticiens à la recherche au travers de leur propre pratique, afin non seulement d’améliorer leur propre perspective sur cette pratique, mais aussi de contribuer au champ disciplinaire de leur pratique et des champs attenants.
Elle vise plus spécifiquement un public de professionnels dont l’activité s’inscrit dans un processus de création (artistique, culturelle, scientifique et technique, idéation…) tant dans le domaine manuel et technique que dans le domaine du projet soucieux de valoriser leur pratique professionnelle à travers un travail de recherche.
2022-09-01 16:27:15 +0200 CEST
teaching Cette UE propose une approche réflexive sur une pratique située, c’est-à-dire sur une pratique vécue dans un contexte réel (e.g., les moments de sociabilité d’une équipe, la recherche d’information, les approches d’idéation…). Elle fournit des outils, issus des domaines du design et de l’innovation, permettant la réflexion transformative des pratiques professionnelles (celles structurées par une normalisation partagée), ou du quotidien (celles rendues habituelles par normalisation personnelle). Il s’agit donc d’instruire une approche qui intègre des pratiques transformatives et innovantes dans les processus liés à l’attention, à l’observation et au développement des pratiques, ainsi qu’à l’expérimentation de leur transformation.
Au travers de cette UE, l’apprenant devra être capable de prendre une posture et une perspective réflexive et pragmatique sur sa propre pratique, questionnant principalement les phénomènes liés à l’habituation, l’appropriation et la transformation. Cette réflexion lui permettra de proposer une dynamique de transformation formalisée par un projet inscrit dans sa propre pratique.
Cette UE vise donc à initier des praticiens (apprenants au niveau 7 ou 8, professionnels) aux pratiques transformatives. Elle fournit des ressources pragmatiques issues de design et de l’innovation permettant la mise en action de cette pratique transformative.
Si le public premier est celui du design, de l’art et de la création, les apprenants peuvent tout à fait venir de tout domaine professionnel, afin d’intégrer une approche réflexive à leur pratique professionnelle (cadres issus de tout domaine professionnel soucieux de valoriser un effort de transformation de leur pratique professionnelle: acteurs sociaux, chefs de projets, cadres RH, métiers de la culture, du patrimoine.
Objectifs pédagogiques S’approprier les enjeux des pratiques transformatives en argumentant du potentiel d’une pratique réflexive située comme origine de transformation, Mettre en place un projet de transformation au travers d’une pratique. Livrables Les livrables attendus pour le cours sont les suivants:
un portfolio annoté une vision projetée un rapport d’étonnement 2022-09-01 16:27:15 +0200 CEST
teaching Objectifs pédagogiques comprendre les bases du fonctionnement de l’internet, connaître les bases de la programmation sur l’internet, manipuler des outils d’organisation sur l’information sur l’internet. Livrables un mini-site web HTML/CSS fait main un site d’organisation d’information sur un sujet pré-défini Encapsulation MR05901A · Master Transition numérique responsable et co-design 2021-09-01 16:27:15 +0200 CEST
teaching Compétences visées Posséder une culture numérique de base- Disposer de méthodes de recherche d’information utiles Connaître les ressources utiles et principes d’organisation de l’information sur le Web permettant de réaliser des recherches Appréhender les principes du Web 2.0 et de la gestion de sa présence numérique permettant de faciliter divers type de recherches 2021-09-01 16:27:15 +0200 CEST
teaching This elective invites students to consider and deepen (both hands-on and through reflection) their understanding of the relationship between aesthetics and various concepts from human sciences that are at stake in the design process for transformation, including philosophy, psychology, sociology and economics. For this aim, three frameworks are introduced and discussed (examples):
complex thinking, learning, lenses & perspectives, embodied theories, post-phenomenology, transition theories. Throughout the elective, students analyse the implication of these frameworks on the designs they create (as aesthetics propositions), and of designs on these frameworks. To reflect on their practice based on the three frameworks, students visualise all noticeable shifts in their designs, in their processes and in relations between and within these frameworks.
This reflection will be supported by a frequential redesign of an everyday design, seen as an embodied experience of an aesthetical and ethical proposition.
Learning objectives Identify, structure and illustrate relations between design (as aesthetical propositions) and other disciplinary fields within human and social sciences, Reflect on the impact of design on society and on oneself. 2019-11-04 00:55:28 +0200 +0200
teaching The everyday is the reality in which we act and perceive through unremarkable experiences. It is about going to sleep, waking up, cleaning, eating, dressing and undressing, reading, drinking tea or coffee… It is therefore in the flow of the infraordinary (Perec, 1989) and the banal, away of the extraordinary and of the memorable. What the everyday is actually less a matter of activity value than a matter of ‘specific mode of manifestation’ (Dewolf, 2008).
The aim of this course is to address the qualities embodied in the everyday from an interaction design perspective, and to explore the relation between the designed artefacts and the everyday they are involved in. The main focus will be on how to capture the everyday and to design towards it. A continuous discussion throughout the elective will address the merits of addressing the everyday in interaction design.
To address this course through a project, we will first focus on a personal everyday ritual, in order to determine descriptive elements. We will then explore ways to approach the everyday through a project.
The final day will close the module by a demonstration of the design addressing the students’ inquiry on the everyday, and a discussion on these designs.
Describe your street. Describe another one. Compare.
Make an inventory of your pockets, of your bag. Wonder about the origin, the use, the future of each of the objects you take out.
Question your tea spoons.
It matters little to me that these questions are fragmentary, barely indicative of a method, at most of a project. It matters a lot to me that they seem trivial and futile: that’s precisely what makes them as essential, if not more so, as so many others by which we have vainly tried to capture our truth. (Perec, 1989)
Learning objectives Describing everyday rituals and the everyday; Implementing details related to the everyday through interaction design; Arguing the design decisions taken during implementation and their consequences; Assessing or evaluating the everyday-related qualities in interaction. 2018-09-04 00:55:28 +0200 CEST
teaching Our lives are a collection of rituals. The way we wake up, the way we leave or enter our home, the way we prepare our suitcase before going on a trip are just simple examples of the many rituals each of us have constructed and that structure our everyday lives. These rituals are not rigid procedures, but a seemingly established series of activities from which experiential meaning emerges, and by which personal values are expressed. The aim of this course is to address these qualities embodied in rituals from an interaction design perspective, and to explore the relation between the designed artefacts and the rituals they are involved in. Through this exploration, we will gain insights in the relational nature of these influences between the artefacts, subjects, and the ritual (and by extension the experiential meanings and the expressed values). The main focus will be on how to capture, to clarify, and to compose rituals. The final discussion will address the merits of addressing rituals in interaction design, and how to design for meaningful rituals.
To address this course through a project, we will first focus on a personal everyday ritual, in order to find descriptive elements. We will then explore ways to enrich rituals through a project. Both will be used to contribute to the elaboration of a composing tools for rituals. The final day will close the module by a demonstration of the ritual with the newly designed series of artefacts.
Learning objectives Describing rituals; Implementing ritual-related interaction qualities; Arguing the design decisions taken during implementation and their consequences; Assessing or evaluating the ritual-related qualities in interaction. 2016-09-01 14:55:28 +0200 CEST
teaching Our lives are a collection of rituals. The way we wake up, the way we leave or enter our home, the way we prepare our suitcase before going on a trip are just simple examples of the many rituals each of us have constructed and that structure our everyday lives. These rituals are not rigid procedures, but a seemingly established series of activities from which experiential meaning emerges, and by which personal values are expressed.
The aim of this course is to address these qualities embodied in rituals from an interaction design perspective, and to explore the relation between the designed artefacts and the rituals they are involved in. Through this exploration, we will gain insights in the reciprocal nature of these influences between the artefacts and the ritual (and by extension the experiential meanings and the expressed values). The final discussion will address the merits of addressing rituals in interaction design, and how to design for meaningful rituals.
To address this course through a project, we will first turn to a Japanese tea ceremony, which is one of the most elaborated and rich rituals and one of the pillars of the Japanese craftsmanship culture. By extracting key characteristics of this ritual, we will start a design exploration to conclude with a concept at the end of the first week. The entire module focuses on one ritual (to be decided), and each group will focus on one artefact within this overarching ritual. The second week focuses on opportunities of a series of prototyping iterations to reach details. Each of them being concluded by a discussion on the reciprocal influences between the artefacts and the ritual and the implication on the interaction design process. The final day will close the module by a demonstration of the ritual with the newly designed series of artefacts.
2014-11-03 16:27:15 +0200 +0200
teaching In this two-week workshop, theories of interaction design are explained and explored through applications. The DQI approach to Interaction Design is theory informed. This means that theory inspires and even guides the way we look at interaction, and the way we design for interaction and experience.
Topics Phenomenology and experience (Merlau-Ponty and Dewey) Gibsonian theory of perception Models of interaction: Interaction Frogger Resonance Rich Interaction Societal Design Craftsmanship These theories, philosophies and models will be explained first and then explored in a series of interaction designs, i.e. practical applications.
2011-09-03 16:27:15 +0200 CEST
courses Dans une démarche de développement des formations et des activités de recherche liées aux métiers d’art, de la culture, du design et de la création au CNAM, l’École Doctorale Abbé Grégoire a créé une mention « Arts, Design et Société ». Cette création s’inscrit dans une démarche plus large, comprenant entres autres les activités de la chaire Design Jean Prouvé au CNAM, le Master Design « Création, Projet, Transdisciplinarité », la contribution active au développement et à la diplomation des DNMADE de l’Académie de Paris, et le développement de formations initiales et professionnelles dans les métiers d’arts et du design en coopération avec les écoles.
Cette dynamique s’inscrit à la fois dans la tradition multiséculaire du CNAM autour des métiers d’arts et techniques, de la conception et de l’innovation, et dans l’évolution contemporaine du design liée à l’attention grandissante portée sur l’innovation sociale et écologique en France et à l’international.
Elle s’inscrit enfin dans HESAM Université, qui regroupe des acteurs majeurs de la formation en architecture (l’ENSA de Paris La Villette), de la mode (l’IFM), du design et des métiers d’arts notamment (les Écoles d’Arts Appliqués de la CESAAP, l’ENSCI - Les Ateliers, l’ENJMIN, l’INSEAC), et porte une volonté d’un développement complémentaire entre formation initiale et continue, recherche et professionnalisation dans ces domaines.
La mention « Arts, Design et Société » de l’École Doctorale Abbé Grégoire porte sur un ensemble de disciplines liant création et société. C’est à cette intersection que la recherche doctorale de cette mention trouve sa pertinence, entre considérations épistémologiques, artistiques et industrielles, sociétales et écologiques, entre création, conception et innovation. Elle n’est donc jamais une recherche unidisciplinaire, renseignant uniquement son propre champ ou discipline. Elle est pluridisciplinaire et contribue au moins à sa discipline et à l’impact social de celle-ci. Le doctorant devient alors un acteur engagé. La pratique de la recherche se place donc dans un champ nécessairement complexe et aux normes toujours en évolution – champ dont le design est virtuose. Il est en effet une activité de création en dynamique avec les complexités du monde et riche d’une histoire culturelle à la fois issue des arts et de l’industrie.
La mention entend donc soutenir plusieurs approches de recherche, se donnant pour objectif commun et systématique de pouvoir justifier d’une contribution épistémologique à la fois à la recherche et à la pratique liées au design, à l’art et à la création.
De plus, considérant le contexte susmentionné de l’École Doctorale Abbé Grégoire structuré par un tissu académique unique, une recherche au travers de la pratique en design, art ou création sera fortement souhaitée. Ainsi, la mention invitera à développer une recherche basée sur une pratique réflexive, pour favoriser une recherche impliquant la pratique au sein de l’activité de recherche. Une rigueur et une contribution théorique seront bien sûr nécessairement exigées afin d’assurer une qualité académique forte du travail doctoral.
Ce positionnement impose certaines considérations pratiques et organisationnelles :
Il est nécessaire de pouvoir situer l’activité de la recherche dans le contexte où s’inscrit la démarche pratique (pouvant aller de l’atelier, aux laboratoires de recherche, jusqu’à la ville et au territoire). En plus des règles normales pour la composition d’une équipe encadrante, celle-ci inclura au moins un praticien ou acteur responsable du contexte où s’inscrit la démarche pratique impliquée dans le projet de recherche. De même le jury sera composé d’au moins un praticien expérimenté en tant qu’examinateur dans la mesure du possible, ou sinon en tant qu’invité. Cette recherche relevant un défi épistémologique pluridisciplinaire et disséminable, le mémoire de thèse, dont le format respecte le règlement intérieur de l’École doctorale Abbé Grégoire, est la “pièce” principale autour de laquelle la soutenance s’articule. Si un ou plusieurs artefacts sont réalisés dans le cadre de la recherche au travers de la pratique, ces derniers (1) doivent être décrits visuellement et textuellement dans le mémoire – ainsi que leur processus de conception et de fabrication – et (2) peuvent être exposés avant ou pendant la soutenance doctorale. Une attention particulière sera portée à la réflexion théorique ou méthodologique portée sur la pratique par lesquels ces artefacts sont produits. On ne saurait se satisfaire d’une simple explication ou description du travail effectué par la pratique comme unique perspective dans le travail doctoral. L’ensemble de ces points permet non seulement la réalisation d’une recherche au travers de la pratique, mais aussi son suivi par l’équipe encadrante et son évaluation par le jury. Il clarifie de plus que les thèses visées ne soient pas basées sur la seule description ou justification d’une pratique ou d’un projet, mais bien plus fortement sur la contribution de la thèse à la discipline autant du point de vue théorique que méthodologique.
Finalement, considérant la relative jeunesse de la recherche en design et en métiers d’arts, il paraît essentiel de viser trois grands groupes de doctorants potentiels :
L’étudiant issu d’un master 2 d’une formation en architecture, en design ou en métiers d’arts. Celui-ci pourra éventuellement inscrire sa recherche dans la continuité des sujets et des démarches déjà abordés dans le cadre du master, Le praticien professionnel, possédant le grade de master (e.g., obtenue via une VAE), qui posera un sujet de recherche construit sur l’expérience et la pratique professionnelle qui lui sont propres, Et, non le moindre, l’enseignant ou formateur en design, architecture ou métiers d’art, qui non seulement invoquera sa pratique et son expérience d’enseignement pour établir un sujet de recherche pertinent, mais qui aura pour vocation de contribuer par la suite à la formation à la recherche de ses étudiants et auditeurs. L’ambition de la mention « Arts, Design et Société » de l’École Doctorale Abbé Grégoire est donc claire : développer et porter une recherche doctorale réalisée au travers de la pratique des métiers d’art, du design et de l’architecture, dont les implications de développement et de transformation portent à la fois sur des aspects théoriques des disciplines concernées, sur leur épistémologie, leur pratique, ainsi qu’à leur contribution sociale et industrielle.
2023-09-01 16:27:15 +0200 CEST
courses Le design contribue à la création d’objets, de produits, de services, d’images ou d’interfaces. Le design intègre des processus de conception à la fois esthétiques (forme, couleur, matières…), fonctionnels (usage, ergonomie, accessibilité, sécurité…), écologiques (choix et usage des matériaux et des processus de fabrication), et économiques (modèle d’affaires). Le design comme une activité profondément multidisciplinaire qui privilégie les individus dans leurs relations à autrui, aux objets, aux images, aux environnements, aux systèmes techniques. In fine le design donne naissance à l’émotion et définit ou redéfinit une identité des objets ; il peut alors engendrer de l’innovation. La thématique du design s’est fortement développé dans l’économie française ces dernières années avec la montée en puissance des problématiques d’innovation et de conception. En Angleterre, pratiquement 10% de la population travaillerait dans le design, entendu au sens large de toutes les formes de conception selon le Design Council. Des travaux de recherche en ingénierie de la conception et la montée en puissance des « industries créatives » ont progressivement érigé le design en nécessité économique et pédagogique d’une activité de conception intégrée. La mention proposée s’inscrit dans le champ « Innovation, création, conception » du Cnam comme formation transverse et pluridisciplinaire à la conception innovante.
L’objectif de ce Master est de former des créateurs capables de concevoir leur projet professionnel, d’inventer leur pratique de design de manière prospective en intégrant l’évolution des sociétés et des contextes culturels et techniques sans cesse redéfinis.
Ce master s’appuie sur la mise en œuvre d’une pensée et d’une pratique critique qui a pour visée de contribuer à formuler et définir les enjeux du design contemporain.
Dans les différents secteurs d’activité où s’exercent ses compétences, le designer a pour responsabilité de contribuer à créer des réalisations contemporaines utiles et porteuses de sens.
Il s’adapte aux besoins identifiés dans le cadre de contextes et de problématiques complexes relevant de la sensibilité esthétique, des conditions matérielles de mise en œuvre et des contextes humains et relationnels mis en jeu.
2021-10-01 16:27:15 +0200 CEST
courses Créée à la rentrée 2015 par la Conférence des écoles supérieures d’arts appliqués de Paris - Césaap -, la formation Design : création, projet, transdisciplinarité est un diplôme Master 2 délivré par le Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers - CNAM -. Elle réunit des étudiants issus des différents champs du design.
Pour former des designers-chercheurs capables de questionner les formes de l’environnement humain tout autant que leur propre champ disciplinaire, ce master a fait le choix d’un fonctionnement en résidence. Plongés en immersion, les étudiants découvrent, analysent et interrogent l’institution qui les accueille, investissent ses ressources et ses process, identifient et engagent des projets qui ont force de proposition pour l’avenir.
L’Académie du Climat accueille cette expérimentation. Lieu d’intelligence collective et d’action, cette jeune institution souhaite donner les moyens de comprendre, d’expérimenter et de se mobiliser sur les défis climatiques, comme les possibilités d’actions pour construire collectivement les chemins vers un futur désirable.
Les jeunes designers initient des projets collectifs qui investissent tous les champs du design, du protocole de médiation à la production artisanale. Collectivement et individuellement, ils font appel aux ressources de l’institution, entreprennent collectes et inventaires de ces ressources et l’enrichissent, engagent le réemploi de matières d’œuvre, et mobilisent les forces vives de l’institution en proposant, in situ, rencontres, échanges, expertises et partages de connaissances.
Le master Design, création, projet, transdisciplinarité propose 20 places aux étudiants issus des Diplômes supérieurs des Arts Appliqués - DSAA - ou d’un master 1 lié aux domaines des arts et du design. Les étudiants sont accueillis en résidence à l’Académie du Climat du mois d’octobre au mois d’avril. Ils sont accompagnés d’enseignants issus des quatre écoles supérieures d’arts appliqués de Paris - Boulle, Duperré, Estienne, Ensaama -. Ils constituent des collectifs de recherche et de création afin d’identifier des enjeux et des sujets adaptés au contexte de la résidence. Les enseignements et le tutorat de projet se développent dans le cadre de l’Académie du Climat pour la résidence, au CNAM pour une partie des cours et sur les plateaux techniques des quatre écoles pour les phases de production.
Les étudiants conçoivent les contenus éditoriaux de la revue du master - Plateau - et les expositions dédiées à leurs productions.
L’année s’achève avec un stage de cinq mois en entreprise ou dans le cadre d’une institution culturelle.
2021-10-01 16:27:15 +0200 CEST
projects The cahier of the School of not-knowing are published and accessible on the Civic City website and on Ulule.
The school of not-knowing, a collaborative project and event with Civic-City, Ruedi Baur and Vera Bau, the Cnam’s Chaire of Design Jean Prouvé, the Institut Français and Estienne / École Supérieure des Arts et Industries Graphiques, is based on the conviction that dialogue between the arts, design, science and society can open up new horizons in our understanding and apprehension of known and yet-to-be-discovered worlds. Through collaborative and evolving reflection, we question the mysteries and blind spots of today’s world and of worlds to come, our relationship with the known, the unknown, the hidden and the buried, questioning representations as well as modes of transmission of non-knowledge. The aim is to imagine how design can give visibility to what is not visible, make perceptible what is not, and show what cannot be seen. To this end, it is bringing together experts and a network of 30 art and design schools from around the world to examine this non-knowledge together.
The event will take place on February 1 and 2, 2024 in the Salle des Textiles at the CNAM.
It will be accompanied from February 1 to March 30 by an exhibition of panels from the School of Non-Knowledge at the École Estienne / École Supérieure des Arts et Industries Graphiques.
The / Seminar of the School of not-knowing / was help at Cnam on Oct. 16th 2023.
Some pannels Semiotica del Tatuaggio - NABA Nuva Accademia di Belle Arti, Milano
What is the common language of minakind? - Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology, Poland
How are we living in this world? - Musashino Art University, Japan
And some more here
2024-01-31 10:30:52 +0200 +0200
projects La TransFabriC Institut de la transfabrication circulaire matérialise l’ambition du Conservatoire national des Arts et Métiers d’accompagner le développement des pratiques sociales et citoyennes pour l’émergence d’une économie sociale, solidaire et circulaire (ESSC). Il s’agit de créer un éco-système opérant, des formations et un programme de recherche, capables ensemble de faire émerger une ESSC répondant aux missions historiques du CNAM.
Éco-système Créer des lieux de mutualisation des pratiques de transformation de la matière (entreprises, ateliers, fablabs, labos, ressourceries…)
Permettre le pilotage de la transformation de la matière
Fédérer les acteurs de l’ESSC en assurant une interface entre le milieu de l’enseignement supérieur et le monde socio-économique
Formation Acculturer aux pratiques liées à l’ESSC, pour tout public
Former aux métiers de l’ESSC de la transformation de la matière
Former aux défis du recyclage citoyen Construire une communauté d’apprenants et de contributeurs
Caractériser les dimensions sociales et écologiques de l’appropriation au quotidien
Contribuer à la transformation des pratiques liées à l’ESSC
Concevoir des dispositifs pour l’Intégrationde la créativité citoyenne à l’ESSC
2022-12-01 13:38:26 +0200 +0200
projects How would our world look like 20, 30, 40 or 50 years from now? Will we monitor each individual on the planet to live a low-risk life? Will we replace organs, eyes, or other parts of our body with artificial alternatives? Will we upload our brains and live on a server? Or do we seek ways to embrace a life more related to mother earth? In this Design Fiction project, several potential healthcare futures are explored. The project is a collaboration between Philips Design, Eindhoven University of Technology, Design Academy Eindhoven, and Frank Kolkman.
When designing and developing for an audience, as was done in this project, a wide range of different opinions have to be dealt with. A well-known example are robots and Artificial intelligence (AI). Some people only see the positive side and potentials: what if robots could take over all our work so we have full-time vacation? Others only see the downsides and risks: what if robots become smarter than people and start attacking us? Either way, the truth will be somewhere in the middle, but it is very important to capture such opinions and discover what society thinks of current developments. The goal of this project was to do exactly that by developing design probes for four potential healthcare futures – based on a framework by Philips Design – and exhibiting them during the Dutch Design Week (DDW) and within Philips to provoke a debate.
During the first part of the project, four teams each developed a design probe for one of the potential futures, which were exhibited at the Dutch Design Week.
The project was continued within another team and a fifth probe was designed based on the insights gathered at the DDW. This time, the focus was laid on preventive healthcare in the present time, which led to the design of a fictive device that helps parents to monitor their baby’s health and aids them in growing a healthy child.
2019-09-03 16:27:15 +0200 CEST
projects Stewart has received:
the Core77 award for best interaction design student work the Golden A’ design award in engineering and technical design Stewart is a tactile interface designed for a fully autonomous car. Self-driving cars offer obvious benefits such as faster travel and enhanced safety. However, they also eliminate a sense of freedom, expression, and control while driving.
Stewart’s objective is to accommodate a healthy relation between man and machine, to be achieved by an intuitive and expressive form of interaction.
Stewart provides you with constant updates about the car’s behaviour and its intentions. If you don’t agree on the car’s next course of action, you can manipulate Stewart to change this. Stewart will learn from you as you can learn from Stewart, hopefully resulting in a mutually trustful relation.
Interaction through Stewart will bring about a haptic discussion about what the car’s next move will be. Who will win this discussion? Who knows best?
Stewart is on: core77 | Design News | BBC | Creative Applications Network | and many other places…
2019-09-03 16:27:15 +0200 CEST
projects The prototype was inspired by the moment of perceptual crossing that occurs when you meet a stray cat in the street, and a moment of anticipation makes time stand still, as you and the cat try to figure each other out.Using a single sheet of folded paper and embedding it with motors and custom-built touch-capacitive sensors, an object which breathes and responds to the presence of human touch was designed, creating the perception that the Kinetic Fold is alive.
2016-02-03 16:27:15 +0200 +0200
projects Nobody ever said that defying gravity is easy!
The aGravity is a device which lets one experience the challenge of levitation. The fingerboard allows one to float over a straight platform, while experiencing a constant evolving environment within. It creates unique interactions that makes one able to develop a new skill and improve over time. The aGravity aims to make more aware and sensitive to what is being perceived and how the slightest movement can influence the whole system.
To get the board hovering, requires focus, concentration and some skill. Though once it is learned to hover the board, it is up to the user how far he or she can go. Giving no precise guidelines, the only rule is to explore, interact and challenge yourself.
- Alex Jurtan -
2014-09-03 16:27:15 +0200 CEST
projects What does data feel like? Data Resonance makes the table resonate with surrounding Wi-Fi traffic. Qualities of the digital signals are translated to something you can feel. This gives you a sense of activity at the workplace that is otherwise quiet and hidden. It creates a feedback loop about your own network usage, and a new connection with the activity of colleagues.
Data Resonance is inspired by how the traditional shared workshop acted as an extension of the craftsperson’s body. You saw and heard your colleagues work, and awareness of their activity influenced what you did. Now that much of our creative work happens on the screen, we lost something. With Data Resonance, we become more aware again of colleague’s work in a calm way: we notice when someone is dealing with heavy traffic and when people are taking a break, or just tune in to the rhythms of data that flow through space.
- Sander Dijkhuis -
2014-06-03 16:27:15 +0200 CEST
projects Prior to interaction, there is perception. Perception is intrinsically rising from one’s actions and from what one senses. These are the way one is connected to the world: acting is the way one impacts the world, sensing is the way one captures it. At this level, in direct contact with the world, there is no information, but energies (or forces). It is these energies and these forces that designers deal with (consciously or unconsciously) when putting a new artefact in the world. This primacy of perception towards interaction is the main focus of this workshop, proposing an approach to effectively taking it into consideration in the design process.
For design practical reasons, design should focus on qualities of senses. For example, touching is local, reciprocal, and private. It is where I touch, I am touched by what I am touching, and nobody else can touch what I touch. On the other hand, smell is at a distance, possibly unidirectional, and public. These are qualities of senses that can be useful for design. To be so, these qualities need to determined and mapped. Moreover, we may seek differences between static and dynamics qualities of senses.
Finally, designers should comprehend these qualities and engage them in order to find opportunities for design - how can I make something private at a distance? How can techno challenge these qualities (e.g. headphones make sound private)? What implications for design?
2013-09-03 16:27:15 +0200 CEST
projects We are accepting technology more and more into our lives as means to enhance the experience of the everyday. Intelligent products and systems are omnipresent, weave into our everyday life, and consequently have the power to transform our society. Adoption of these systems in our environments invites for exploring further how we interact with our environment.
This research is grounded on the phenomenology of perception and ecological psychology, considering perception to be active. Perception is result of the dynamic coupling between a person’s action in relation to her or his environment and the sensory input this environment provides. In other words, we have to act to perceive and we concentrate our senses in the direction of the stimuli: e.g., turn our body around to see what is behind us, in order to perceive.
The research focuses on how interaction with interactive artefacts can add intrinsic value on space being experienced as a transitory space. Four topics are introduced to investigate our experience of space as transitory space: ritual, space, light and craft. They serve as the backbone of the project and we could say that the ritual is the means for the technology (light) to enable the value (sense of place) to emerge in interaction with (hand) crafted artefacts. In this project I investigate if an interactive lighting installation can trigger our sense of place and belonging in spaces.
Throughout this project I follow a ‘research-through-design’ approach. This is an approach where products are designed to explore implications of theory in context. The idea of perceptive qualities in interactive lighting installations is explored, and I question if an interactive artefact contributes to the experience of transition and allows for a greater feeling of involvement in the space. The project is divided into three cases:
In the first case (Homelab), different light behaviours and interaction in a home situation are explored. Simultaniously, we investigate the relationship with an interactive artefact in context. In the second design case (Videolab), the influence of an additional object on the space being experienced as transitory space is explored. In the third design case (Mirror), the gained relevant designknowledge is united and expressed in a concluding interactive light object. With this project I aim to get a grip on how interaction with interactive artefacts can add intrinsic value on space being experienced as transitory space.
- Nadine Amersvoort - 2012-09-03 16:27:15 +0200 CEST
projects This research project focuses on how to design for perceptive activity in artifacts in order for crossing in perception of expressivity between person and artifact to happen. It is part of the research of Deckers et al (2011), on designing for perceptual crossing between person and artifact. In their work they propose a series of design notions which are meant as a tool for synthesis when designing for perceptive activity in artifacts. In this research we follow a research through design approach in order to generate design specific knowledge on the application of these design notions when designing an artifact capable of showing expressivity through its perceptive behavior. We designed LUMA, an dynamic light design capable of expressing a variable level of excitement thought its perceptive actions. We conducted research using the LUMA design in order to investigate how the stage of perception of expressivity can be reached in an artifact and if crossing of perception of expressivity can happen over the course of interaction between person and artifact. For this we specifically investigate the relation between the perceived expressivity and the occurrence of a cross-influential interplay of expressivity between person and artifact. The results of our experiment show that clarity in variability of this expression is essential for this interplay to occur. We discuss possible changes to the design to improve the clarity in variability of expressivity as well as further research steps.
- Koen Beljaars -
2012-09-03 16:27:15 +0200 CEST
projects Monty a curious entity that has the ability to perceive activity within its field of vision. When Monty detects activity it will gradually move towards the activity until it is in centre of its perception. If its interest is kept on the activity long enough, Monty becomes engaged and will start taking pictures of the activity.
The envisioned environment in which Monty can be used is a designer’s working environment. Here Monty will mainly be interested in the activity of the designer which will lead to process pictures of all the activities performed by this designer. This in turn gives the designer the possibility to reflect on his own process by scrolling through the visual representation of his activities. And will give him process pictures that can be used for communicative purposes.
Due to its curious nature Monty might not always be focused on what you are doing. He can however be temporarily motivated to move towards a particular area on your desk.
- Rens Alkemade -
2012-09-03 16:27:15 +0200 CEST
projects Excerpt from my [Habilitation](/publications/time-of-experience/
Passage is a project carried out in 2012 by Gracia Goh, Chiyong Lim, and Kate Vermeyen at the Eindhoven University of Technology. Passage focuses on the place of transition between two physical spaces, i.e. their inter-space. The project statement invites students to create a design for the inter-space without influencing the experience of either space. This statement seems a priori phenomenologically incoherent, since the experience of something external to oneself necessarily takes place in a space and requires that the user’s attention be directed at least partially towards this thing. Yet, not only does the inter-space not seem to be a space (but rather a surface), and the attention of a person passing through a door is most often directed towards the space in which they intend to travel.
After multiple iterations including prototype production, situation tests, reflections based on the Kansei context, etc., a remarkable design has gradually taken shape. Passage is an installation mounted on the frame of a door. This installation consists of a line of light-emitting diodes (RGB LEDs) projected on a thin aluminium foil that reflects light back towards the door once it is ajar. The diodes very slowly change the emitted color. The aluminium foil undulates depending on how the door is opened: a quick opening will create much more turbulence than a slow opening. The light impression projected on the door is therefore unique with each opening and closing.
What is remarkable about this design is that the light projection is not visible to the passer-by when the door is fully closed or open, so that interaction only takes place in the action of the door opening. The experience begins as soon as you start opening the door and ends before you finish opening it. Not only is the installation (almost) located in this inter-space, but the experience is also located in this inter-space: it almost does not interfere with the passer-by’s intentionality to pass into the next space. The design objective is thus achieved.
In addition to certain “classical” kansei descriptors, such as the grain, the light-shade interaction or the feeling of an invitation to appreciate this inter-space, kansei descriptors specific to this project have been established: instantaneity and the elusive, and even more so their couple. What is remarkable is that this experience is engaging from the point of view of its expression, engaging by the gesture, and that its intensity comes from the fact that it is very short, unavoidable, and elusive: in an instant it engages us then liberates us, without us being able to really escape it, or do anything about it. That is the beauty of this design.
2012-09-03 16:27:15 +0200 CEST
research La question du quotidien est remarquable le sujet du quotidien n’étant que très peu, et souvent assez mal traité en design. Le terme quotidien est beaucoup utilisé dans la littérature en design (e.g., (Hallnäs & Redström, 2002; Norman, 2013; Saito, 2007; Wakkary & Maestri, 2007)), mais la notion elle-même est très peu traitée. Pour illustrer cela, on pointera par exemple la simple omission de la description de cette notion dans l’ouvrage classique du Design de tous les jours de Don Norman (2013) ou encore dans celui sur l’Esthétique de tous les jours de Yuriko Saito (2007). Utilisant ces exemples, j’ai initié une discussion sur la liste de diffusion PhD-Design mailing list (P. Levy, personal communication, April 4, 2017) faisant appel à la communauté de la recherche en design pour déterminer les directions possibles en vue de clarifier le concept de quotidien. Cette discussion a permis à la fois de confirmer le flou entourant la notion du quotidien en design, et de désigner des directions pour une telle clarification, et nous en emprunterons certaines par la suite. Mais au-delà de ces deux points, elle a également contenu une remarque qui a retenu mon attention. Un chercheur émérite a indiqué que tout en ayant cherché à comprendre la façon dont le design interroge le quotidien, il a en même temps renoncé à essayer de le définir. Pour lui, ce terme fait partie d’un ensemble de termes tellement constitutifs du design qu’il varie avec la perspective prise sur le design. Définir le quotidien nécessiterait de définir le design.
Je suis en désaccord avec cela. Certes, tenter de définir le design est un travail qui s’est toujours révélé insatisfaisant, et est a priori problématique. Mais ces tentatives sont aussi en soi une force pour la discipline car la pluralité des perspectives s’est avérée être utile pour une remise en question continue de la discipline, de son évolution, et surtout de la considération de sa propre complexité. Elle a également contribué à porter un échange sérieux et constructif avec les disciplines connexes. Redström (2017) suggère même que « la présence de différentes définitions est instrumentale puisque nous essayons de comprendre et d’articuler ce que sont les choses telles que design et designer ; l’absence de cette définition unifiée n’est pas un vide conceptuel de notre pensée mais en fait une stratégie effective pour surmonter certains types de complexité ». A l’instar du design, étudier le quotidien et tenter d’en formuler une description n’a pas pour but de figer la notion par une formulation que l’on aimerait salvatrice. Bien au contraire, elle a pour ambition première une exploration, c’est-à-dire un voyage dont la destination est inconnue et en fait secondaire. Explorer le quotidien au travers du design, c’est avant tout tenter de créer une perspective sur nos vies et nos expériences, sur le banal, et sur le design. Elle invite à développer une approche par laquelle le design pourra transformer le quotidien, ressaisissant sa beauté profonde sans le dénaturer. Étudier la vie quotidienne afin de la transformer, afin de l’enchanter.
Cet axe de recherche tente donc d’ouvrir le territoire du quotidien et de ses valeurs, le territoire de nos vies dans ce qu’elles ont de plus réel, éloignées de ces expériences que l’on nous dit être extraordinaires parce qu’en fait inatteignables, et que l’on ne peut donc qu’en rêver. Ma proposition est de se pencher sur ce qui est là, tous les jours, et bien souvent oublié ou ignoré dans nos vies et dans le design (Pérec parle d’anesthésie). S’intéresser au design pour le quotidien, c’est chercher dans le banal, dans le commun, dans l’endotique ce qui est beau ou ce qui peut le devenir.
Le temps de l’expérience, enchanter le quotidien par le design La cérémonie japonaise du thé est un moment d’expérience esthétique et éthique du quotidien, une harmonie entre objets, êtres, lieux et pratiques. Elle nous rappelle que les objets du quotidien, cœur même de notre culture matérielle, sont d’une beauté profonde et porteur d’une éthique admirable, et passent pourtant le plus souvent inaperçus. À la croisée d’une réflexion sur une approche « japonaise » en design au travers de l’étude du kansei, et d’une réflexion sur le design en IHM portée par les théories de l’embodiment, cette recherche interroge d’abord l’hégémonie culturelle occidentale du design en IHM, et établie ensuite un décentrage culturel de la discipline en prenant la philosophie et la culture japonaise comme théorie. Il en résulte un nouveau regard sur le design, autant en réception qu’en production, porté par une éthique de la relation, une expérience de l’ainsité, et une esthétique de l’irrégularité. Ce regard invite le design à enchanter le quotidien, lui proposant de considérer les détails de la réalité telle qu’elle est vécue, et de créer des moments d’inattendus, sources d’étonnement et de nouveaux possibles. Invitant donc à un décentrage culturel du design, cette recherche propose une approche originale pour un design du quotidien, et contribue à voir en lui une source esthétique et éthique majeure, pour développement de l’être, de sa sensibilité, et de ses valeurs.
2020-10-16 20:04:12 +0200 CEST
research La question du quotidien est remarquable le sujet du quotidien n’étant que très peu, et souvent assez mal traité en design. Le terme quotidien est beaucoup utilisé dans la littérature en design (e.g., (Hallnäs & Redström, 2002; Norman, 2013; Saito, 2007; Wakkary & Maestri, 2007)), mais la notion elle-même est très peu traitée. Pour illustrer cela, on pointera par exemple la simple omission de la description de cette notion dans l’ouvrage classique du Design de tous les jours de Don Norman (2013) ou encore dans celui sur l’Esthétique de tous les jours de Yuriko Saito (2007). Utilisant ces exemples, j’ai initié une discussion sur la liste de diffusion PhD-Design mailing list (P. Levy, personal communication, April 4, 2017) faisant appel à la communauté de la recherche en design pour déterminer les directions possibles en vue de clarifier le concept de quotidien. Cette discussion a permis à la fois de confirmer le flou entourant la notion du quotidien en design, et de désigner des directions pour une telle clarification, et nous en emprunterons certaines par la suite. Mais au-delà de ces deux points, elle a également contenu une remarque qui a retenu mon attention. Un chercheur émérite a indiqué que tout en ayant cherché à comprendre la façon dont le design interroge le quotidien, il a en même temps renoncé à essayer de le définir. Pour lui, ce terme fait partie d’un ensemble de termes tellement constitutifs du design qu’il varie avec la perspective prise sur le design. Définir le quotidien nécessiterait de définir le design.
Je suis en désaccord avec cela. Certes, tenter de définir le design est un travail qui s’est toujours révélé insatisfaisant, et est a priori problématique. Mais ces tentatives sont aussi en soi une force pour la discipline car la pluralité des perspectives s’est avérée être utile pour une remise en question continue de la discipline, de son évolution, et surtout de la considération de sa propre complexité. Elle a également contribué à porter un échange sérieux et constructif avec les disciplines connexes. Redström (2017) suggère même que « la présence de différentes définitions est instrumentale puisque nous essayons de comprendre et d’articuler ce que sont les choses telles que design et designer ; l’absence de cette définition unifiée n’est pas un vide conceptuel de notre pensée mais en fait une stratégie effective pour surmonter certains types de complexité ». A l’instar du design, étudier le quotidien et tenter d’en formuler une description n’a pas pour but de figer la notion par une formulation que l’on aimerait salvatrice. Bien au contraire, elle a pour ambition première une exploration, c’est-à-dire un voyage dont la destination est inconnue et en fait secondaire. Explorer le quotidien au travers du design, c’est avant tout tenter de créer une perspective sur nos vies et nos expériences, sur le banal, et sur le design. Elle invite à développer une approche par laquelle le design pourra transformer le quotidien, ressaisissant sa beauté profonde sans le dénaturer. Étudier la vie quotidienne afin de la transformer, afin de l’enchanter.
Cet axe de recherche tente donc d’ouvrir le territoire du quotidien et de ses valeurs, le territoire de nos vies dans ce qu’elles ont de plus réel, éloignées de ces expériences que l’on nous dit être extraordinaires parce qu’en fait inatteignables, et que l’on ne peut donc qu’en rêver. Ma proposition est de se pencher sur ce qui est là, tous les jours, et bien souvent oublié ou ignoré dans nos vies et dans le design (Pérec parle d’anesthésie). S’intéresser au design pour le quotidien, c’est chercher dans le banal, dans le commun, dans l’endotique ce qui est beau ou ce qui peut le devenir.
La cérémonie japonaise du thé est un moment d’expérience esthétique et éthique du quotidien, une harmonie entre objets, êtres, lieux et pratiques. Elle nous rappelle que les objets du quotidien, cœur même de notre culture matérielle, sont d’une beauté profonde et porteur d’une éthique admirable, et passent pourtant le plus souvent inaperçus. À la croisée d’une réflexion sur une approche « japonaise » en design au travers de l’étude du kansei, et d’une réflexion sur le design en IHM portée par les théories de l’embodiment, cette recherche interroge d’abord l’hégémonie culturelle occidentale du design en IHM, et établie ensuite un décentrage culturel de la discipline en prenant la philosophie et la culture japonaise comme théorie. Il en résulte un nouveau regard sur le design, autant en réception qu’en production, porté par une éthique de la relation, une expérience de l’ainsité, et une esthétique de l’irrégularité. Ce regard invite le design à enchanter le quotidien, lui proposant de considérer les détails de la réalité telle qu’elle est vécue, et de créer des moments d’inattendus, sources d’étonnement et de nouveaux possibles. Invitant donc à un décentrage culturel du design, cette recherche propose une approche originale pour un design du quotidien, et contribue à voir en lui une source esthétique et éthique majeure, pour développement de l’être, de sa sensibilité, et de ses valeurs.
2020-10-16 20:04:12 +0200 CEST
research The aim of our research program is to foster social resilience by focusing on transforming practices and societies. We do so by designing and evaluating in complex socio-technical systems.
2020-09-16 20:03:12 +0200 CEST
research The notion of perceptual crossing indicates the experience of interplay between perceptive activities of multiple beings (train anecdote). Charles Lenay explained the importance of perceptual crossing in the encounter of the other’s perceptual intentionality, in the mutual attraction of perceptual activities (“they come to start a sort of a dance together”), leading to the constitution of a shared world of emotions. Creating such a connection between beings is often experienced, and it is (and it has been for a long time) a quest in design to build such connection between a being (or user) and an artefact: how to design for perceptual crossing?
2015-10-16 20:03:12 +0200 CEST
research For over three decades, kansei engineering has expanded greatly and has become a significant discipline both in the industrial and the academic worlds. In this paper, I present the current situation of kansei engineering, and plead for the emancipation of other disciplines, as part of kansei research as well. By reconstructing the historical path of kansei research and exploring the variety of disciplines within kansei research, I point out the opportunities for kansei design to emerge. Whereas kansei engineering and kansei science have found their roots in scientifically established approaches (respectively engineering and brain science), kansei design intends to return to earlier Japanese philosophical or cultural works to rediscover the essence of kansei, and to use them as inspirational means for design. This new discipline certainly needs to be elaborated further.
2003-10-16 20:03:12 +0200 CEST
publications Table of content Estelle Berger, Pierre Lévy. Ouverture: Je, nous, ils·elles : le·la designer, ses collectifs et les écosystèmes de conception, pp. 10-15
Céline Monvoisin. Le corps apprenant et la matérialité des choses : une recherche par le corps sur l’acte de design, pp. 16-26
Nizar Haj Ayed et Tomás Dorta. L’agentivité des systèmes immersifs de réalité virtuelle en situation de codesign : étude comparative entre le Hyve-3D et un environnement traditionnel, pp. 27-41
Caroline Gagnon, Valérie Côté, Daphney St-Germain et Lynda Bélanger. Le design comme posture méthodologique : de l’ambiguïté de la recherche-projet, l’expérience du projet INSÉPArable, pp. 42-59
Alice Martin. Impulser et accompagner la collaboration dans la conception des politiques publiques : le regard des agents publics sur la démarche de design, pp. 60-71
Nesrine Ellouze, Randolf Ramseyer et Daniela Brisolara. Design social dans la région de Tataouine : une démarche pragmatique et interdisciplinaire de codesign, pp. 72-83
Delphine Saurier et Clémence Montagne. L’expérience culturelle en prison: réflexions sur une évaluation par le design, pp. 84-93
2021-07-04 16:28:08 +0100 +0100
publications Transcription of my defense for Habilitation
I would like to thank you for being here today.
I am very happy and honoured to be able to defend my HDR at the Compiègne University of Technology, for several reasons.
First of all, because UTC has put Technologies and Human Sciences at the centre of its pedagogical project in engineering, and has dedicated one of its educational programme to industrial design. A vision in which I find myself completely.
Also because it was at UTC that I started my studies and obtained my engineering degree in 2001.
It was also through UTC that I set foot in Japan, through my final year project by becoming head of innovation for Decathlon in Japan.
It was also at UTC that I was introduced to research, under the supervision of Anne Guénand.
It was also at UTC that I first met Prof. Yamanaka in 2002, and I had the honour of having him become my thesis director during my doctoral thesis at the University of Tsukuba in Kansei Science obtained in 2006.
It was also at UTC that I first met Prof. Overbeeke, from the Eindhoven University of Technology, in 2003. During my visits to Europe, I never stopped visiting UTC and TU/e, immersing myself in a reflection on design and theories related to embodiment. And in 2009, I had the honour of becoming an assistant professor at TU/e in the Designing Quality in Interaction research group then headed by Prof. Overbeeke.
Later, once settled in TU/e, collaborations continued with UTC, particularly on the subjects of cross perception and sensory substitution with Prof. Lenay.
It is therefore in a form of continuity that I am happy to support my HDR today.
Plan My presentation is structured in four parts.
I will first explain my approach to research through design, an approach that structures my activity.
I will then present what I call my Japanese experience, which comes from my experience in Japan and my reflections on Japan, which has been decisive for a turning point in my perspective on design.
It is this turning point that I will then explain, as well as what it has led to in my research.
And finally, I will explain the consequences of this turning point for design, and in particular about everyday life rituals.
Research through design Design research invites the participation of the designer’s skills and attitude in the research activity. The participation of design in the research activity is relevant if it is accompanied by a reflection associated with the action, allowing the creation of knowledge.
This research, linking action and reflection, is based on reflection in action and on action proposed by Schön (1983).
This approach is also in line with embodiment related theories, brilliantly brought to design by Dourish (2001).
The research through the design I conduct is mainly structured on two elements:
Constructive design research, which invites experimentations with devices designed for research. Research-through-Design (Koskinen et al., 2012) is a major marker. The development of the annotated portfolio research tool proposed by Bill Gaver (2012), which structures an analysis of a corpus of artefacts either designed as part of the research project or external to it. The role of the prototype is central to this approach, but changes in nature compared to what is traditionally considered in design: it is not a first model, close to what will be produced in series, but what Frens (2006) calls a physical hypothesis, and Hengeveld (2011) an experiential hypothesis, a very eloquent barbarism which I think corresponds entirely to the role of the prototype.
Finally, this approach also requires a project so that design can act and contribute to research. In Sennett’s words and adapting them to design, Hummels describes this request to localize the research question, which can then be followed by a reflection in action allowing it to be questioned, and a reflection on action to inquire the research question a fortiori, beyond the project itself.
This is my approach to design research.
Japanese experience Before becoming an assistant professor at the Eindhoven University of Technology, I spent about 9 years in Japan, mainly affiliated with the University of Tsukuba, at the Kansei Information Science Laboratory, directed by Prof. Yamanaka, who was also my thesis director during my doctoral studies.
The study of Kansei has been for me a guiding principle that allowed me to progress on two fundamental subjects in my research:
A deepening of my interest in the affective relationship to the lived world, which gradually led me to also become interested in notions related to embodiment. A personal and intellectual curiosity for the Japanese culture, and for what it reveals about the beauty of the everyday. Concretisation of the beautiful In particular, I have been interested in the Way of Tea, which Okakura (1906) describes in his famous book The Book of Tea as the cult of the beautiful of the ordinary in the everyday. And I have been especially interested in the Japanese tea ceremony, which is a ritualized experience of the Way of Tea, established by Rikyu in the 16th century.
To illustrate what I saw there, I would like to take the example of a short moment during the ceremony, illustrated by the photo you see here. Once the light tea has been served, the main guest asks the host if he or she could view objects used for tea. The host then introduces him to the chashaku and the chaire, the chashaku being the small spatula to take tea out of the chaire, which is the tea container. The chaire diameter is about one third the length of chashaku. The host places the chashaku two mats apart from the edge of the tatami in front of the main guest, and aligns the centre of the chaire with the centre of the chashaku. Once the host has withdrawn into the water room, i.e., the kitchen, the guest approaches the two objects so that his knees are two mats from the chashaku. Sitting in seiza, he will then be able to comfortably manipulate and contemplate the two objects presented to him, in a culturally Japanese comfort.
What impressed me here is that Rikyu has made an aesthetic proposition towards harmony that corresponds to a system of values (not aimed at effectiveness or efficiency), with aesthetic, ethical and social concerns, and that enables the realization of beauty.
The tea ceremony as a design This led me to consider that Rikyu (1522-1591) transformed a proposal of values, those of Buddhism and the Wabi etiquette of his time, into a situated system of artefacts, social actors, and signs enabling an engaged and social experience of these values.
This transformation is based on the development of the technology of his time in response to a social expectation of his time. This system is an aesthetic proposal.
The idea that the formalization of the Japanese tea ceremony responds to a “social expectation of its time” already invites us to rethink the ritual not as a fixed repetition of a sequence of actions, but as a practice of daily life re-interpretable in a time and place.
Moreover, the realization of an aesthetic proposal enables the perspective of this aesthetic proposal by Japanese thought, and opens on the notions of contexture and temporality of the daily experience, notions that we will question later.
Mujirushi ryohin This aesthetic proposal is still found in contemporary design, as for example in mujirushi ryohin, better known simply as muji. If we analyse what has been written about the brand, as well as what the main actors who have participated in the development of the brand and design – notably Kenya Hara and Naoto Fukasawa – have explained about muji’s philosophy and vision, we find most often three key concepts that characterise muji’s design and seem to be in line with the values embodied by the Japanese tea ceremony:
The simple invites to consider what is obvious or essential, stripped of all superfluity. The ordinary focuses on what appears classic or usual, and useful for everyday life. It also invites to consider habitability, a concept dear to Alain Findeli. Finally, the void concerns a space of possibilities left open by the design, to be filled by the user (or interactant) with the artifact, in order to adapt the value proposal to one’s place and time within one’s daily life. The aesthetic proposal proposed by Rikyu is reflected in a contemporary design, that of muji.
Turning point From this observation on tea, and by observing a corpus of artefacts from the work of contemporary Japanese designers, this aesthetic proposal aiming at a form of harmony between values, bodies, gestures, etc. has caused a turning point in my view on design.
Looking at the Japanese tea ceremony through the lens of design, I saw the tea ceremony as prototypical of design based on Japanese culture, which has deeply shaken my perspective on design.
So I turned the lens over and looked at design through the lens of the tea ceremony, and saw a lack of a theoretical framework for design to explain the tea ceremony. And this absence gave way to a gap to be filled by a cultural decentration of design.
This decentration invites us to redefine the ritual not as an identical repetition of a sequence of actions, but as an aesthetic proposal that allows us to be reconsidered every time in our daily lives.
It also appears that the ritual is both social and singular, and always reinterpretable by those who propose it, the designers, and those who live it.
Design is therefore questioned in the light of the ritual, and the ritual is questioned through design.
Japanese philosophy and culture To achieve this decentration, I studied Japanese philosophy and culture. Although I do not have time here to present the details of this study, I list here the main topics on which my attention has been focused:
Watsuji’s ethics on relationship, published in 1934; Nishida’s philosophy (and a little more generally of the Kyoto School) on experience, whose main work was published in 1911; The writings of Dōgen on time, dating from the 13th century; And the work on the Buddhist idea of beauty proposed by Yanagi and published more recently in 1972. Framework for design From this study, it results that the aesthetic proposal of the Japanese perspective studied here is based on two notions on which design can act:
Thusness, or suchness, which proposes to look beyond human-machine interaction, considering a maximum of elements that constitute the lived world, as well as their relationships and the global harmony. Therefore, it suggests a method that takes the lived world as a starting point, and not the human-machine relationship as it is traditionally done, and aims to a harmonious integration of the designed artefact. Irregularity offers an ethical vision for the design of everyday life. It does not aim for a form of perfection – very often considered in industrial design – but goes beyond it by presenting itself as a source of freedom and opening up fields of possibilities through interaction. The two photos shown on the left of the screen are, at the top, an embroidered pattern designed by Akira Minagawa in 2005, and at the bottom a set of chasen handles (the whisk used to mix tea during the ceremony) 3D-printed during Shigeru Yamada’s master project that I supervised in 2016.
The irregularity shown in Minagawa’s design is made through a large number of embroidery stitches intended to be made at the same place, so that the machine can no longer make the stitch because of too high thread density. This causes the needle to twist to continue making the required stitch. This results in one or more embroidery stitches being made in an unplanned location, and therefore in an irregularity.
The chasen handles were based on a parametric design (the shape is described by a mathematical formula). The six models were produced at different printing speeds. From right to left, the first print was made at the standard machine speed, as indicated by the machine manufacturer, then 2, 3, 4 and 6 times faster. When we showed these chasen handles to a group of tea masters, considered experts in this experiment. The second was significantly more appreciated. This chasen handle has both a possibility to be used properly, and also a subtle irregularity that makes the object beautiful. We see in this experiment that irregularity is perceived as beautiful.
The contexture of everyday life What thusness and irregularity enabled is to reopen the question of everyday life, and in particular the rituals of everyday life. We question here what people feel in their daily lives, especially in terms of aesthetics. The everyday ritual is precisely an interesting moment for design as it gives everyday practices a space for attention.
However, the idea of an aesthetic proposal that was discussed earlier brings us to an aesthetic view of the experience in the here-and-now, and therefore to what I call a contexture.
In this space (or moment) of attention that is the ritual, there is a texture, i.e., an inquiry on form by the organization of space, by the choice of objects, of gestures and practices… This texture is concretized by the ritual. Therefore, our approach questions the contexture delivered by the aesthetic proposal of the ritual and aims at a balance that allows a form of harmony.
Moreover, the ritual includes aspects that are social and singular. To understand it, it is therefore necessary to question it both on its social and singular aspects. To capture the singular, for about two years I have been asking my students, who have sufficient skills to make small films of this nature, to do one on one of their own daily rituals. These films are then viewed, discussed and analysed. This is one method, among others, to capture elements of the complex, intimate and implicit experience of everyday life, which are singular and aim at harmony within this experience.
The temporality of everyday life I also conducted another experiment to explore a daily ritual, which was based on my personal morning hot chocolate. This experiment has shown that the question of the contexture, enabling to approach the aesthetic proposal, also questions our temporal values, most often in opposition to efficiency that often imposes itself on any question of temporality, especially in industrial design and interaction design.
This raises the question of the time values that are given to these everyday experiences.
How can the temporality of the ritual be characterized, for example differently from the flow theory, proposed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, also aiming at efficiency? We are aiming here at an aesthetic proposal that questions temporality, that invites us to take time: in this proposal, what values stopping to listen to music, contemplating a landscape, etc. This is another major issue addressed by this research program.
Enchanting everyday life through design My research is therefore a design research, based on the contexture, a questioning of the temporal value, and a structured theoretical framework on thusness and irregularity.
The aim is to use the questions of contexture and temporality to invite the composition of a daily experience. And I like to borrow Bart Hengeveld’s words, who compares such a composition to that of music.
This is done in resistance to the Western culture of industrial design, which focuses almost exclusively on efficiency and effectiveness, and which seems to resist questioning emotion and irregularity. The Design&Emotion Society, established about a dozen years ago and mainly led by the Department of Industrial Design at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, which first worked well, and is currently in standby to discuss and to understand why it didn’t work so well in the end. I hope that this research brings an original perspective to this discussion.
Irregularity is at the heart of the approach. The irregularity enables an absence of fence, avoids a design that would aim at a controlled behaviour by an optimization of the means for a predetermined goal. It contributes to a better understanding of design, and to suggest an epistemology of design on the fact that a totally predictable and regulating system – whether social, cultural or technical – prevents invention or transformation.
Therefore, irregularity prevents us from falling into the trap of industrial production aiming at perfection and infinite reproduction, and enhances the idea of surprise, accident, openness to possibilities, both in the design and manufacturing processes and in the results.
And this research program aims to enchant everyday life through design.
One last thought This brings me to a final reflection on this research program.
The opening made by my inquiry on the Japanese tea ceremony through design proposes something different to design. It questions the subject and the place of design research afresh, as it raises the question of everyday rituals.
Design research must be reappropriated by a design that is close to the thinking of Art&Craft and the decorative arts, i.e., by a thought that focuses on the arts of living, and that reflects aesthetic values and proposals for balance in the sensitive experience. This ambition to propose balances has rather been forgotten in current design research – and I am referring here to the research communities to which I belong, especially SIGCHI and DRS – which comes rather from industrial design and aims at a form of perfection, i. e., to an end of any reinterpretation.
The objective of design must be to propose aesthetic arrangements aimed at proposals for harmony between artefacts, spaces, gestures, values, etc., and not exclusively to promote effectiveness and efficiency, yet a dominant effort in contemporary design research and particularly in technological education places.
Therefore, I see this research as a form of resistance to functionalism, so well established in the culture of design research, inspired by industrial design.
What is important for such a design is the enchantment of everyday life, that is, an attention to a harmonious aesthetic arrangement made visible by the contexture: questioning again norms that are no longer visible by design, seeking an overall aesthetic balance in everyday life that allows the experience of beauty.
Thank you very much.
2018-11-18 13:00:33 +0100 CET
publications Table of content Patrizia Marti, Joep Frens, Bart Hengeveld, Pierre Levy. Preface, pp. 3-14.
Raúl Tabarés-Gutiérrez. Approaching maker’s phenomenon, pp. 19-29.
Julian Stubbe. Material Practice as a Form of Critique, pp. 30-46.
Katrien Dreessen, Selina Schepers, Danny Leen. From Hacking Things to Making Things. Rethinking making by supporting non-expert users in a FabLab, pp. 47-64.
Yana Boeva and Ellen Foster. Making: On Being and Becoming Expert, pp. 65-74.
Patricia Wolf, Peter Troxler. Community-based business models: Insights from an emerging maker economy, pp. 75-94.
Antonio Rizzo, Giovanni Burresi, Francesco Montefoschi, Maurizio Caporali, Roberto Giorgi. Making IoT with UDOO, pp. 95-112.
2016-03-22 23:38:46 +0100 CET
writings L’enseignement du design et des métiers d’art a significativement évolué ces dernières années. Si la création du DNMADE en est probablement le porte-drapeau, l’augmentation des thèses et des HDRs liées à la recherche en design, le développement de masters dans plusieurs institutions en sont d’autres éléments significatifs. L’évolution du public apprenant est aussi remarquable. Depuis la création du DNMADE, il semble par exemple y avoir une augmentation importante du nombre relatif d’étudiant.e.s venant du baccalauréat général par rapport au celui venant baccalauréat ST2A pourtant dédié à ces études. On note aussi l’accroissement statistiquement non-négligeable et sociologiquement bruyant des premiers de la classe (pour reprendre l’expression de Jean-Laurent Cassely), c’est-à-dire des diplômés de filières plus classiques, qui reprennent une formation dans un métiers d’art. Il est donc bon de réfléchir régulièrement sur ces évolutions et d’inviter l’ensemble des perspectives engagées de le faire.
Il m’est donc opportun d’exposer ici une perspective à laquelle j’adhère, tout en soulignant que la pluralité des perspectives est une force en design, et un atout dans son enseignement. La multiplicité des perspectives est de fait constitutive du design et de ses pratiques. Comme nous le rappellent la professeur en design Alethea Blackler et ses collègues, l’ambition de vouloir définir le design est une vieille aventure et semble être une interminable discussion au sein de ses communautés. Si elle paraît alors être une quête inatteignable, et probablement naïve, elle est toutefois très utile. Elle nous permet d’entretenir ensemble, au sein des communautés du design et entre celles-ci, un dialogue constitué d’une multitude de perspectives, d’une richesse de désaccords constructifs, et de propositions toujours mises au défi et renouvelées. Cela nous permet alors de faire avancer ces perspectives, et de comprendre comment elles peuvent contribuer aux pratiques du design, et donc au domaine du design et des métiers d’art dans son ensemble, et bien évidemment à son enseignement. La multiplicité des perspectives et les dichotomies qu’elles créent ne sont donc pas qu’une force pour la recherche et la réflexion sur le design et les métiers d’art, elles le sont également pour leurs pratiques professionnelles et pour leur enseignement.
Le philosophe du design Johan Redström nous montre d’ailleurs que le design est fondamentalement et historiquement structuré sur des dichotomies. Pour penser son enseignement, nous nous intéressons entres autres aux relations dichotomiques entre méthodes et pratiques qui prennent forme entre la salle de cours et l’atelier, entre quotidien et enjeux globaux qui différentient le design pour l’expérience et le design de système, entre arts et industrie qui impactent les ingénieries sous-jacentes.
Ces dichotomies sont des lieux de frictions qui invitent le design à questionner en permanence son positionnement et son action. La pratique du design est donc fondamentalement réflexive. Comme pratique située dans un contexte complexe et toujours changeant par cette pratique même, le design est insaisissable. Autrement dit, et en complétant les propos de Johan Redström, le design est complexe et coloré, c’est-à-dire riche de sa variété de pratiques, résilient et apprenant, engagé et transformant.
Ces couleurs du design ainsi révélées induisent la possibilité une grande variété d’approches pour l’enseignement du design et sa nécessité de pouvoir toujours évoluer. J’ai eu la chance dans mon parcours de faire l’expérience de plusieurs approches, de plusieurs logiques, qui visent différentes pratiques de design qui trouveront leur place dans différents lieux de la société et de l’industrie. Mon parcours explique en effet en partie mon positionnement. J’ai étudié et travaillé dans le domaine du design pendant de nombreuses années dans 4 pays sur 3 continents (France, Canada, Japon, Pays-Bas), le plus souvent aux frontières interdisciplinaires entre le design et l’ingénierie, le management, les sciences cognitives, les sciences de l’information et de la communication, ou les métiers d’arts. J’ai fait l’expérience d’enseigner le design dans des formats, des contextes et des traditions académiques et industrielles différents, au travers desquels je retiens une force dans chacun de ces lieux et une richesse dans leurs différences.
Le paysage français, dans lequel je suis depuis peu revenu, semble intégrer cette diversité. Ce qui marque en premier lieu est en fait l’écartèlement que subit le projet national de la formation en design et métiers d’art. Quatre ministères au moins gèrent une formation en design et métiers d’art. Autant de focales institutionnelles qui impactent la formation et les pratiques par des forces disparates, parfois contradictoires. Et tant mieux!, car le design est cette variété.
La volonté d’harmoniser, et l’idée même d’une harmonisation sont à mon sens une erreur et une mécompréhension de ce que peut être le design. Encore une fois, la variété des enseignements, des approches, des visions du design mises à disposition des apprenants eux-mêmes venants d’horizons différents ne peut être qu’une force pour le développement des métiers liés au design et aux métiers d’art.
Il y a alors cinq points auxquels il va falloir prêter attention dans les développements à venir des formations en design et métiers d’art.
Il faut d’abord s’assurer de la grande variété des pratiques en design et métiers d’arts. Tous ont en commun l’ambition d’une transformation de la matière. Mais la nature des matériaux, les techniques de transformation et les visions engagées dans leurs pratiques peuvent varier. La pluralité de l’enseignement permet l’expression de la pluralité des perspectives. Une harmonisation des formations induirait un appauvrissement des pratiques. L’objectif d’une communauté enseignante et apprenante est de mettre en valeur cette variété. On peut déjà différentier les formations en design dans les écoles des métiers d’arts et du design (e.g. Ensaama ou Lycée Renoir), de celles ayants lieu dans les écoles du ministère de la culture (e.g., Ensad et Ensci), et celles enfin ayant lieu lieux dans les écoles plus orientées vers l’ingénierie (e.g. UTC ou CY école de design). Il faut également différentier la formation professionnelle et la formation académique. Elles n’ont pas les mêmes contraintes ni les mêmes ambitions. Dans ce sens, tenter d’aligner toutes les formations du supérieur à un parcours LMD est contre-productif pour le design et les métiers d’art. De façon peut-être simpliste, une formation professionnelle devrait viser en premier un savoir et un pouvoir de la main, une formation académique ceux de la réflexion critique.
Bien évidemment, cela n’implique pas que les apprenants doivent choisir strictement l’un ou l’autre. Des ponts entre les formations sont une force supplémentaire pour chacune des formations. J’ai déjà mentionné ces diplômés du monde académique qui reprennent des études en formation professionnelle. Cela devrait être également possible dans le sens inverse. Parmi les meilleur.e.s étudiant.e.s avec lesquel.le.s j’ai travaillé à l’Université de Technologie d’Eindhoven aux Pays-Bas, une quantité non négligeable venait d’une formation professionnelle. Des mains compétentes et une tête pensante sont ce que l’on peut espérer de mieux pour un artisan ou un designer. Si elles sont pensées et organisées correctement, ces formations peuvent être également suivie en parallèle, l’une venant en complémentarité de l’autre. Ainsi, la possibilité d’organiser une double-diplômation offre une véritable opportunité d’apprentissage riche et complet aux apprenants. Le Cnam et des écoles engagées dans la formation en DSAA travaillent aujourd’hui à la mise en place d’un double diplôme qui proposera aux étudiants qui le souhaitent de compléter leur formation en DSAA par des enseignements du Cnam en parallèle. Cette structure leur permettra à la fois de valoriser leur formation professionnelle au travers du DSAA et leur formation académique au travers du master design du Cnam.
De plus, la formation initiale en design et métiers d’art devrait clairement pouvoir commencer en CAP et finir en DSAA ou master en formation professionnelle, et en doctorat en formation universitaire. La formation continue est elle aussi multiforme, dont le GRETA CDMA est la probablement la forme la plus visible. La structure globale de la formation a donc deux défis temporels : assurer la continuation de la formation initiale et permettre à tous de repasser par une formation au cours de la carrière professionnelle. Assurer la continuation de la formation suggère simplement qu’une personne débutant un CAP devrait connaître et avoir confiance dans l’existence et dans la faisabilité d’un chemin lui permettant d’atteindre le DSAA ou le doctorat. Une formation coupée en morceaux disjoints ne devrait plus être acceptable. Tout professionnel du design et des métiers d’art devrait de plus pouvoir revenir en formation, qu’il s’agisse d’artisans souhaitant suivre une formation en ingénierie culturelle ou en entreprenariat lié à l’artisanat; qu’il s’agisse de designers souhaitant suivre une formation de remise à jour des outils et techniques liés à leur domaine ou une formation en recherche en design; qu’il s’agisse d’un enseignant en design et métiers d’art souhaitant mettre à jour ses connaissances et ses outils pour la formation et éventuellement pour acquérir de nouvelles possibilités d’évolution de carrière. Nombreuses sont les raisons pour lesquelles il ne faut plus penser la formation en design et métiers d’art de façon séquentielle, mais l’envisager comme un continuum sur l’ensemble du spectrum de la formation initiale, elle-même étant un déploiement se prolongeant tout au long de la vie.
Enfin, il faut continuer à ouvrir les formations. Cela passe bien évidement par des formations en alternance comme une des possibilités offertes à la formation dans les métiers d’arts et du design. Multiplier les formes de formation ne fera qu’enrichir les apprentissages et donc les pratiques.
Cela passe également par l’internationalisation des formations. L’ouverture culturelle et technique qu’offre l’internationalisation bilatérale, c’est-à-dire avec l’envoi d’apprenants à l’international et l’accueil d’apprenants internationaux, impacte à la fois à la fois la qualité de la formation et le développement professionnel, intellectuel et culturel des apprenants. Cela passe enfin par des parcours mutualisés de formation. Un apprenants en métiers d’art travaillant sur du métal et souhaitant recevoir une formation technique sur les différant métaux devrait pouvoir le faire là où le savoir technique est central, e.g., dans une école d’ingénieur. Et du fait que cette formation vient enrichir sa formation initiale, elle devrait être comptabilisée dans sa formation d’artisan, dans son école d’origine pour le diplôme qu’elle délivre. Inversement, un étudiant en ingénierie textile devrait pouvoir suivre une formation en art textile ou mode qui serait intégré dans sa formation technique. Cela implique un effort d’ouverture et de mutualisation des ressources de formation, au service de l’apprenant et de son développement professionnel, intellectuel et culturel.
À un moment où l’effort d’une réindustrialisation doit se conjuguer avec des enjeux écologiques et des défis de vitalité culturelle, les métiers du savoir-faire ont le double défi de contribuer aux enjeux économiques, écologiques et culturels d’une part, et de revaloriser le savoir de la main et la connaissance technique et matérielle d’autre part. Là où l’éclatement de ces formations pourrait être considéré comme une faiblesse, autant dans leur structure administrative que dans leurs formes pédagogiques, je le soutiens comme une force potentielle entretenir et travailler. La pluralité des disciplines engagées dans ces pratiques, la pluralité des pratiques et de leur contexte de déploiement, et la complexité dans laquelle elles évoluent sont tous autant d’arguments pour revendiquer la multiplicité des formations et des formes de formations, et pour promouvoir une cohérence de cette multiplicité au travers de parcours riches verticalement (du CAP au doctorat) et horizontalement (entre formations artistiques et techniques). L’harmonisation est un danger pour les formations aux métiers d’arts et au design. C’est une intelligence collective entre les institutions, permettant la richesse d’une diversité cohérente et entrelacée, qui donnera toute la place aux formations aux métiers d’arts et du design, lesquelles joueront alors un rôle significatif dans les défis industriels, économiques, écologiques et culturels de notre temps.
2023-05-20 13:38:26 +0200 CEST