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Prototypes as performative

Published: 20 August 2005 Publication History

Abstract

This paper considers performative aspects of prototyping in design. Drawing on STS and a casestudy involving a prototypical disease management technology, it exemplify and discuss prototyping as a performative process that produces specific subjectivities and bodies. Prototypes are not only vehicles for learning or containers of ideas, but material things that prescribe, animate and produce bodies and agencies. Viewed as such perplexity, inconsistency and contradictions is not anomalies in design, but to be expected because users as well as designers are in a process of exploration and experimentation. Equally prototypes are both concrete and present as well imaginary and futuristic. The author argue that designers and researchers should sensitize themselves to performative aspects of prototyping in order to understand the mutually transformative consequences for both artifacts and humans in these processes.

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  • (2021)Watching Myself Watching BirdsProceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3411764.3445329(1-16)Online publication date: 6-May-2021
  • (2020)Prototypes as Objects of DesireProceedings of the 2020 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3357236.3395487(1619-1631)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2020
  • (2015)Building Socially Embedded Technologies: Implications About DesignDesigning Socially Embedded Technologies in the Real-World10.1007/978-1-4471-6720-4_11(217-270)Online publication date: 2015
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cover image ACM Other conferences
CC '05: Proceedings of the 4th decennial conference on Critical computing: between sense and sensibility
August 2005
218 pages
ISBN:1595932038
DOI:10.1145/1094562
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 20 August 2005

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Author Tags

  1. STS
  2. design
  3. materiality
  4. performativity
  5. prototypes

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Cited By

View all
  • (2021)Watching Myself Watching BirdsProceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3411764.3445329(1-16)Online publication date: 6-May-2021
  • (2020)Prototypes as Objects of DesireProceedings of the 2020 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3357236.3395487(1619-1631)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2020
  • (2015)Building Socially Embedded Technologies: Implications About DesignDesigning Socially Embedded Technologies in the Real-World10.1007/978-1-4471-6720-4_11(217-270)Online publication date: 2015
  • (2013)Prototyping as Event: Designing the Future of ObesityJournal of Cultural Economy10.1080/17530350.2013.8596317:4(476-492)Online publication date: 25-Nov-2013

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