Education guide 'Eindhoven designs' - Technische Universiteit ...

Eindhoven designs / volume two 31
Due to the size of the frame and the overall
doughnut-shaped camera as well as the lack
of immediate feedback of the resulting photo,
the frame acts as an intermediate between
the photographer and the person being
photographed. The frame invites to have social
and playful interactions between persons on
both sides of the lens. On the other hand, the
size of the frame inhibits the behaviour of
being an outside observer detached from the
scene, as is often the case with photographers.
The described behaviour was exactly what Bas
Groenendaal found during a user study at an
asylum centre in the Netherlands. Children
started playing with the camera and were
looking actively for social engagement through
the frame.
The influence of the design on people’s
behaviour is present for both the ready-at-hand
and the present-at-hand situation. Scope is
an example of a ready-at-hand device and it
appeared that the device influences people’s
behaviour, both that of the photographer as
well as that of the person being photographed.
But present-at-hand devices also influence
behaviour. A speed pump for example,
stimulates you to slow down.
Materialising morality
in the design process
The mediating role of technology and its
influence on how people act mean that
designers are ‘doing ethics’ often implicitly
and sometimes explicitly through their
designs. So how can designers and our design
students incorporate this dimension in their
design process? Verbeek sees two options. The
minimum scenario would be to assess if the
design has undesirable mediating capacities
and try to reduce or eliminate those. The
second scenario would be to build in specific
forms of mediation which are considered
desirable.
However, the fact that technological mediation
is not objective and detached from the context
of use and the user - on the contrary, it occurs
in the complex interplay between user and
artefact - makes the prediction of desirable
and undesirable very difficult. For example,
is an intelligent toilet that is able to analyse
the user’s faeces after every visit to the
toilet in order to check his health, desirable
or undesirable? And what if it is placed in a
factory and the management gets to know the
outcome too?
Moreover, it becomes even harder when the
focus is on innovative intelligent systems,
products and related services which envision
new and unknown transformations, because
they require an anticipation of future mediation
roles of technology. But products are often
used in unforeseen ways and they stimulate
unforeseen behaviour. So how do we deal
with that kind of complexity during the design
process?
We believe that it requires an integration of the
two ways of analysis that Verbeek proposes.
On the one hand, the designer can use his/her
imagination to envision the transformation and
the desired and undesired impact. In this case,
the designer can also bring in his/her own
value system and invite certain behaviour.