Reading: Towards Use Design?

I liked how the title had a question mark in it as though the question was up for debate.

Experience design/ User experience - expanding the frontier of design beyond the object, and thinking about it's context and how it is used.

Intended Use vs Actual Use = A rejection of that idea as we don't know enough about the people buying our products to have any idea how they are going to use it.

USER-CENTRED DESIGN

Social determinism / transformation through design of objects - efficiency, ease-of-use.

Design moving from function (functionalism) to communication.

Objects as signs communicating a method. Detecting, creating, and controlling cultural, and emotional meanings.

Objects being a transmitter - that you have a receiver/cognition going on.
That designers are trying to create dynamic, multi-sensory experiences, but we don't really know enough about who we are designing for to do that. Designing for a particular user narrows the design scope or uses and creates over determinism.

We can only predict a way and object will be used,but we can never actually know until it is our own or possessed. We can't predict. We can only speculate.
e.g. mac mini hacks

I think it's useful to think of design choices being exclusive (who are you favouring or not favouring?). It makes you think about what your prejudices are.