ABSTRACT
In the introduction to Design Integrations, Sharon Poggenpohl (2009) makes a call for the importance of design and designers moving beyond the heritage of craft and towards a more disciplinary perspective. The activity of reflection, Poggenpohl argues, urges the designer to improve not just on the making of things, but also on the impact of that thing on a larger context which could be audience, environmental, material, or socio-cultural in nature. It forces the designer to contemplate more than just how the object looks and towards how it might be experienced. As we move beyond design as a merely material activity and towards design as an experiential one, the increased focus on the people for whom we are designing is critical. But how we do this is also as critical. The perspective that we take, as designers–whether to lump all people into a single category, or to try to identify the particularities and patterns between individuals experiences–has profound effects on the design solutions that come about. One main assumption driving this chapter is to consider design not as an end goal–something static that a “user” will use (and hopefully love) but to think of it more as an organic set of conditions that people and human beings will manipulate, change, and transform. In reframing design in such a way, we can start to think of it as truly human centered. This chapter on usability is one part champion of it, and one part examination of how we might do it better. As we lose more control over the outcome of our design actions, we must adapt and think about usability not as a way to control the user (and make sure they do what we want them to do) but rather think of it as an activity equally as focused on discovering opportunities for new design possibility.
