Meaningful Moments at Work: Frames Evoked by In-House and Consultancy Designers

Abstract

Design is increasingly recognized as a competitive advantage for companies, but we know relatively little of the activities and perceptions of designers in different organizational contexts. Based on 69 semi-structured interviews with 34 in-house and 35 consultancy designers, this study investigates the type and framing of 291 reported meaningful moments. We found different dominant experience frames in the two organizational contexts with different connections to innate needs of competence, relatedness and autonomy. Most meaningful moments in both organizations were related to the social context and implications rather than the design activities themselves. The results highlight professional design being an inherently social and contextual activity, urging more research to take an organizationally situated perspective to design.

Keywords:

• framing
• sense-making
• design practice
• psychology of design
• motivation

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Finnish Work Environment Foundation under Grant 117110.

This work was supported by the Finnish Work Environment Foundation under Grant 117110.

Notes on contributors

Tua Björklund

Tua Björklund is one of the co-founders of Aalto Design Factory, a global platform for interdisciplinary co-creation. She is a professor of practice with a DSc degree in industrial engineering and management from Aalto University, and an MA degree in cognitive science from the University of Helsinki.

Floris van der Marel

Floris van der Marel works as a researcher at Aalto Design Factory and Design Factory Melbourne. He has a master’s degree in Design Research for Interaction from TUDelft and METU and has worked in various cultural contexts across the world.