When design of everyday things meets lifelong learning…

Abstract

The present article deals with how the processes of learning and development can be taken into account in the design of everyday things. The objective is to encourage designers to consider the role of appropriation in their work in order to anticipate: (1) the integration of technical tools, objects and devices into a variety of spheres of activity; and (2) the long-range transformations initiated by the use of these things. We hope that this article will encourage exchanges between designers and researchers in the field of lifelong learning, as we are firmly convinced that mutual enrichment is likely and certainly desirable between the fields of design and learning theory. We also assume that making appropriation the basis for design will encourage reforms in the design of training situations.

Notes

1. From a design perspective, it is important to note that a usability component addresses this issue: learnability. An object, tool or device should be easy to learn so that the user can rapidly start working with it (Nielsen 1993). This concept of learnability is also not completely independent from the process of appropriation insofar as it is an important factor that influences the user’s decision to adopt and continue using a technology (Mendoza et al. 2010).

2. This assumes ‘pre-individual fields’ whose individuation does not use up all potentials at once.

3. The fact is that learning occurs all the time as we engage in activities and interactions in our homes, with our families, with our friends and acquaintances, in our work, in our workplaces, in our community engagements, in the everyday tasks in which we engage, and when we are alone (Billet 2010).

4. It is in fact interesting that the lifelong learning community has opened up to design issues that go far beyond the issue of learning technologies.

5. Here we mean by ‘technology’ the set of tools, instruments, utensils, appliances, machines and automatons, and more broadly all technical objects and artifacts. Note that these technical objects and artifactual mediation exist only in and through procedures, usages, practices and action modes, culturally and socially incorporated even though they technically cannot be reduced to this.

6. See the research of Simondon (1989b) on technical lineages.