Framework of emergence: from chain of value to value constellation

ABSTRACT

For academic design programmes and research councils, finding mechanisms to measure impact and valuate co-design research projects is very difficult. The metric parameters – number of attendees, volume, shape, length – have shown to be insufficient. The subject matter, the subjects and matters, do not easily fit within these parameters, which fail to translate the value of a ‘constellation of affections’ that emerge throughout co-design processes. Emphasis on quantifiable impact derives from particular ways of understanding production, reproduction, and dissemination of knowledge. This paper understands academic design programmes as a technology to discuss axiology in co-design practices. This paper re-configures a techno-logic of value; from chain of value to value constellation, intersecting a co-design case study with readings of Simondon’s philosophy of technology and Barad’s agential realism. Ageing Playfully was a knowledge exchange project from The Creative Exchange programme, that involved people living with dementia and their caregivers co-designing interventions to boost mobility and well-being. At the core, this paper, explores an axiological move that informs a framework of emergence, a way of thinking in methods to account for the value of co-design as site of emergence.

KEYWORDS:

• Generative differentiation
• catalytic encounter
• Barad
• Simondon
• co-design axiology
• value constellation

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge all the Lancaster University co-investigators of Ageing Playfully Project, and thank all the people who took part in the various workshops and events organised by the Ageing Playfully project at Dolphinlee House and the Neuro Drop-In Centre; the Age UK Lancashire (Lancaster office) team and community support staff; and our funders, the Arts and Humanities Research Council Creative Exchange Research Project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The original texts of Simondon were both his PhD theses, Du mode d’existence des objets techniques (Méot, 1958; second ed. Paris: Aubier, 1989). L’individu et sa genèse physico-biologique (l’individuation à la lumière des notions de forme et d’information) (Paris, 1964; second ed. J.Millon, coll. Krisis, 1995). In which same theories are applied to both bio-social and technical systems.

2. Reading together Barad and Simondon to think with and through value in co-design sits in the last ‘turn of design’ in social sciences, specifically in co-design processes as a establishing method of Science, Technology and Society (STS) studies (Ward and Wilkie 2009; Büscher and Urry 2009; Rosner et al. 2014; Lindström and Ståhl 2015. de la Rosa, Kohler, and Ruecker 2017). Specifically, this approach is mainly inspired by Actor Network Theory and New Materialisms, focusing on generative powers of design sites, prototypes and the use of figurations to understand the complexities of design processes. In parallel, there has been a ‘philosophical turn in Design Research’, specifically empirical philosophy of teckné (van Eijk et al. 2012; Dorrestijn and Verbeek 2013; Stam and Eggink 2014a, 2014b; Wiltse, Stolterman, and Redström 2015; Gualeni 2015; Verbeek 2015; Mulder 2016), concerned with creating frameworks to approach design of technologies, human–computer interaction, with an emphasis on values and responsibility. Prophet and Pritchard (2015) have used Barad’s and Simondon’s theories together to think about making and co-making. They use them in the context of what they call technosphere.2.0. The references to Simondon’s individualisation theory in their paper are taking from Stengers (2010), relating making and collaborative making with what Simondon called the process of transduction. Prophet and Pritchard also find convergences between Simondon’s idea of transduction Barad’s idea of intra-action. I agree with that relation and develop it in terms of affection and value in the context of co-design.

3. https://ahrc.ukri.org/innovation/knowledgeexchange/hubsforthecreativeeconomy/.

4. Learn more about the CX http://www.thecreativexchange.org/#/.

5. For Derrida (1977) performativity is iterable; in this sense, it repeats previous moves, but never in duplicate. Performative practices are, then, transactions that pre-suppose repetition-with-difference, quotation, and re-insertions, without (contextual) boundaries.

6. Intra-action is considered as the inseparability between objects, subjects, discourses, and apparatuses of observation (and agencies of observation). In contrast to ‘interaction’, which assumes the prior existence of distinct entities, Intra-action opposes the uni-directionality of ‘interaction’. Intra-action is about ontological powers of humans and things becoming together through ongoing generative encounters. Its emphasis is not on the force in between, but on the force within the enactment of sociotechnical encounters.

7. For a discussion of value constellation in the context of marketing and business studies, see Norman and Ramirez (1998).

8. The REF is the UK’s system for assessing the quality of research in UK higher education institutions. It first took place in 2014. The next exercise will be conducted in 2021. (https://www.ref.ac.uk/about/).