Designing for wellbeing

can be described as design ethnography 6 . Design ethnographers aim at an
empathetic dialogue with people and their “aim is to turn fieldwork into
an exercise of imagination rather than mere data gathering” 7 . Similarly,
trend forecasting is about the imaginative interpretation of data 8 . Forecasters
typically work by combining statistics and ethnographic material.
But while designers with an empathetic stance towards users interpret
data in the present tense, forecasters build visions of future. They do this
by having an understanding of possible future developments in society,
economics, technology and politics. We were also aware of the downsides
of emphasising methodology 9 . Sometimes the methods become a barrier
behind which it is easy to hide and we wanted to avoid building them.
Therefore, we experimented with the idea of the user and aimed to see
whether it is possible to act as a designer without “configuring users” and
instead just try to build a dialogue between fellow people. Consequently,
we felt that we did not need to teach any specific collaborative methods.
And indeed, students’ spontaneous use of their existing knowledge proved
to be enough, and released their attention for the design work. The design
studio brought people together to work with a shared agenda and, simple
as it may sound, it is such design work that should take place more often.
A peculiar set of temporal dimensions was one of the main reasons
why we think our design studio managed to bring people together. First,
the far-reaching future, the year 2072, on which we aimed to shed light
vis-a-vis suburban developments and their long-term consequences. At
the same time we had to be present in the here and now in order to find
6 Koskinen, I., Zimmerman, J., Binder, T., Redström, J., & Wensveen, S. (2012). Design research
through practice. From the Lab, Field, and Showroom. Waltham, MA: Morgan Kaufmann.
7 Koskinen et al. 2012: 76
8 Brannon, E. L. (2000). Fashion Forecasting. New York: Fairchild publications.
9 Redström, J. (2006). Towards user design? On the shift from object to user as the subject of
design. Design Studies, 27(2), 123–139. The article is critical towards user-centred design and
claims that even the most empathic designers all too often use user-centred methods to
configure imaginary users as opposed to encountering real people.
94 · Design studio in the field