Phenomenology of the Object in Design Thinking

Abstract

Contemporary academic literature defines design thinking as the innovative activity of creating products that are designed to enhance the experience and empowerment of the user, as well as contribute to the affirmation of values and identity. While European research addresses the creative and value potential of design thinking, researchers from the Far East focus on the using design thinking to add value to cultural heritage objects in contemporary contexts. The question of the socio-cultural status of an already created design object remains under-researched. The article aims to fill this theoretical gap and to identify the characteristics of the design object that distinguish it from everyday objects and cultural artifacts. The method used is a synthesis of the concepts of Buchanan's four orders of design, Beucker's transformational design, and Bjørn and Østerlund's sociomaterial design. At different levels of the socio-material context – the creation of an object according to current needs, the experience of user-object interaction, the participation of the object in the maintenance of social interactions, and the totality of created design objects that form the canon – the object can play the role of an actor, a prop, or a setting. The key features the object of design thinking are relevance, narrativity, and heritability. Relevance refers to the purpose of the design object to provide the "best experience," that is, to meet the user's needs in a way that is valuable within the existing design canon. Narrativity of a design object is a consequence of the unstable boundaries of the canon and the need to explain the meaning and value of a newly created object. Heritability means that the object should explicitly reflect its adherence to the canon without exact replication, so that the inclusion of the object in the canon transforms the latter. The study contributes to the understanding of the specifics of design thinking as a socio-cultural phenomenon.