Lataa ilmaiseksi

I furniture (321)
II lamps (168)
III decorative objects (142)
IV utensils (127)
V dishes (126)
VI works of art and graphic design (111)
VII ICT’s (108)
VIII clothes, textiles, surface materials (78)
IX devices other than ICT’s (73)
X baby stuff (19)
XI storage piles (10)
Figure 5. At first I
cropped products from
photographs and sorted
products to 11 folders.
Number is the amount
of files in folder.
2 D E F I N I N G D E S I G N
69
During the interviews, I photographed the products that the interviewees
talked about. One of the first things that I did with the data was to sort the
products in order to get a rough overview of the information. It turned out that
sorting the designed products is not a simple matter. Forks, kitchen appliances
and sofas are (comparatively) easy to sort, but some products hover somewhere
between, for example, dishes and utensils, such as the Bialetti espresso pan that
several of the interviewees owned. My initial research set-up of focusing on
functional products did not make the categorisation any easier. I used quite a
lot of time trying to understand what to think of products like the Sarpaneva
OPA steel plate, which was used as a prominent decorative element in Hannele’s
living room and for daily cooking purposes in Laura’s kitchen. Should I
think about it as a decorative or functional item? Or, for example, Janne’s lamps,
which mostly, according to Janne, did not give much light. One would think
that a lamp is a functional item, but if it does not give light, should I then categorise
it as a decoration? Since I was in serious need of some sort of organisation,
after some trials I came up with a list based on the products that were
visible in the photographs (Figure 5). Some products were photographed twice,
once during each interview. Screenshots from the folders on lamps and ICTs
illustrate how the products appear when isolated from the context (P 94–95).
This categorisation served my initial sorting and handling of the photographs
and product biographies, which at this point took the form of statistical
spreadsheets outlining the properties of the products and their phases of
appropriation. The products could have been sorted otherwise as well, but the
categories used here are quite common. We know what kind of stuff belongs
in the category of “dishes”, even though disagreements might arise in terms of
some finer distinctions. But something was wrong. Try as I might, I could not
reach any real insights about the role or meaning of design based on categoris-