On Bill Gaver's Designing for Homo Ludens, still...
This paper is very much oriented to object design. As an architecture student I would add that these objects can also be seen as part of an overall 'environment'. Thus the critical approach to design presented by Gaver can also be extended to design at larger scales i.e. the room, the house, and surely the city.
What is interesting about the projects presented by Gaver is that they seem to be the result of a design process that has one foot in theory and the other one in 'making'. During the class discussion the question of whether these projects are art or design came up. It is probably better to think of them as being in both design and art, as they seem to be engaged in both critiquing and making a statement about what technology should do, but in the end they end up constituting a design artifact in their own right.
The lesson I would take from these objects as a designer is that they allow for a feedback loop between the critical ideas informing the project and the unexpected ways the object's intended audience or users finally engage with it.
This relates to one of Agre's concluding ideas:
“A critical technical practice will, at least for the foreseeable future, require a split identity -- one foot planted in the craft work of design and the other foot planted in the reflexive work of critique.”
I would add that both papers argue for a blurry line between theory and practice. It is very difficult if not impossible to make a design or technical artifact that is a direct representation or embodiment of a critical idea or theory.
AL
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