Here's the presentation I gave last night at the DEFUSE event, part of Dublin Design Week.
"-ing": new practice development
View more documents from ideasbazaar.
It's a short piece, because of the 20 slides x 15 seconds = 5 minute format, looking at Practice orientated Product Design, or New Practice Design. My simple argument is that people who think of themselves as design should think about designing to enable practice not merely to produce new 'stuff'. Instead, I suggest, if we focus on integrating 'stuff' with skills and stories we can achieve more success, whatever that looks likes to us: selling more things, having people use something more and also using somethings less.
Although this sounds a little heavy i think it's an important set of ideas and their value is much in evidence around us. Some of the most talked about technologies of the day are ones which seem to focus on practice. What, for example, is twitter all about, both the company and the ecosystem around it, if not supporting the practice of tweeting – evidenced by the array of platforms, interfaces, mash up and APIs that making tweeting, twittering and tweeters the talk of the day. Twitter has 'designed for the verb'.
The talk is heavily influenced by the work of sociologist Elizabeth Shove and Mike Pantzer, and their great essay on Nordic Walking which I used as a main example. For those that want the full story take a look at their article Consumers, Producers and Practice in the Journal of Consumer Culture (2005: Vol 5 43-64)