Imaginary design workbooks: Constructive criticism and practical provocations

Blythe, Mark, Encinas, Enrique, Kaye, Jofish, Avery, Miriam Lueck, McCabe, Rob and Andersen, Kristina (2018) Imaginary design workbooks: Constructive criticism and practical provocations. In: Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems: Engage with CHI. Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings . Association for Computing Machinery, New York, pp. 1-12. ISBN 9781450356206; 9781450356213

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Abstract

This paper reports design strategies for critical and experimental work that remains constructive. We describe a design workshop that explored the "home hub" space through "imaginary design workbooks". These feature ambiguous images and annotations written in an invented language to suggest a design space without specifying any particular idea. Many of the concepts and narratives which emerged from the workshop focused on extreme situations: some thoughtful, some dystopian, some even mythic. One of the workshop ideas was then developed with a senior social worker who works with young offenders. A "digital social worker" concept was explored and critiqued simultaneously. We draw on Foucault's history of surveillance to "defamiliarise" both the home hub technology and the current youth justice system. We argue that the dichotomy between "constructive" and "critical" design is false because design is never neutral.

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