Immodest Proposals: Research Through Design and Knowledge

The paper offers theoretical support for research through design (RtD) by arguing that in order to legitimize and make use of research through design as research, HCI researchers need to explore and clarify how RtD objects might contribute to knowledge. Leveraging the tradition of aesthetics in the arts and humanities, we argue that while the intentions of the object's designer are important and while annotations are a good mechanism to articulate them, the critical reception of objects is equally foundational to RtD's broader knowledge impacts within HCI. Such a scholarly critical reception is needed precisely because of the potential inexhaustibility of design objects' meanings; their inability to be paraphrased simply and adequately. Offering a multilevel analysis of the (critical) design fiction Menstruation Machine by Sputniko!, the paper explores how design objects co-produce knowledge, by working through complex design problem spaces in non-reductive ways, proposing new connections and distinctions, and embodying design ideas and processes across time and minds.