ABSTRACT
This chapter argues a design process can be re-conceptualized to allow for a more open narrative around possibilities and potentials. Typically prototypes have a projective character as a way of exploring an imagined future. Throughout the SPIRE Indoor Climate and Quality of Life (QoL) project one of the research aims was to search for ways of connecting past, present and future practices of designing and using. It focuses on practices of prototyping within user-centred design discourse and how these practices could alter if designers adopted an understanding of designing as a process of growth unfolding over time. It considers as materials within an ongoing flow of relational building between practices of designing and using. Challenging assumptions of prototypes in design as early versions of future products, it discusses the idea of prototypes as prototypes, that is: as materials involved during ongoing practices of collaborative designing.
