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Developing a design approach, exploring resistance and ambiguity

Trotto, A. , Hummels, C.C.M. & Levy, P. (2012). Developing a design approach, exploring resistance and ambiguity. In the Proceedings of Kansei Engineering and Emotion Research International Conference 2012 - KEER12 ([on CD]). Penghu, Taiwan: Japanese Society of Kansei Engineering.

/ Résumé / Designers face the world’s complexity at an experiential level. We consider Making (synthesising and concretising) an essential activity of designers, prior to Thinking (analysing and abstracting), because only through experience – a result of acting in the world – we achieve meaning, funnelling human intentionality. Making enables designers to explore the unknown by trusting their senses and their kansei, exploring resistance and ambiguity and by tapping into their intuition. Because ‘intuition begins with the sense that what is not yet could be’, it involves skills, as skills are our way to make sense of the world, transform it and to cater for ethics. In this paper we describe a one-day workshop that has been held during the CHItaly conference 2011 in Alghero, Italy. During that day, we explored how the integration of points of view, using intuition through skills can communicate and create a richer meaning. The assignment was to design an empowering and enabling tool that allows a person to begin to experience another person’s skill. To be able to design such a tool, designers had to go through several steps of documenting and reflecting upon their own and each other’s skills. We reflect on the experience and explain how this approach can support the integration of points of view, which is considered to be formed by personal experience, by skills, and by kansei.