The contemporary landscape of design practice, education, and research is in a constant state of flux. Cox (2005) underlines how designerly creativity can propel innovative business strategies and help to revive the British
economy, whilst Norman and Verganti (2012) distinguish between incremental and radical forms of technological innovation. Framing human-centred design as a philosophy, they set out its iterative qualities of
observation, ideation, testing, and 'getting close to users' (2012: 2, 11).
Designers engage with societal complexities on a local and global scale, embracing increasingly collaborative ways of working.
Many attempts have been made to demystify the human-centred designer's role and responsibilities within interdisciplinary relationships (Julier, 2007; Manzini, 2009; Inns, 2010). Kelley (2008), for example, presents ten diverse personas commonly adopted by designers, such as the anthropologist, the set designer, and the storyteller. These multiple roles evoke Steen’s discussions of two tensions arising from human-centred design approaches: the decisions that designers must make when balancing
user needs with their personal expertise, knowledge and intuition; and their aims to understand contexts as they currently exist, with the goal to inspire innovative change. Steen poses reflexive practice as a means of navigating
these tensions and engaging in mindful and socially inclusive design practice (2011: 46–48).
The proposed workshop will create a space for a discussion of how practitioners and researchers intuitively mediate diverse cultural settings, artefacts, users, stakeholders, and collaborators. We aim to elicit and
understand the triumphs and tensions inherent in everyday design practices.