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Handle With Care

Prototype: Extending the Dialogue is a book based on the international research symposium held in Dundee in June 2010. Co-convened by DJCAD, University of Dundee & the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, the symposium explored the radical and multiple ways creative practioners and research scholars from across the globe are experimenting with prototypes and methods of prototyping. The book includes a range of essays on these themes with contributions from designers, fine artists, engineers, anthropologists, art historians and theorists.

White’s chapter explores how a craft approach – knowledge gained through understanding of context of use and materials, can be used to develop artefacts which ask questions about how we might use technology in the not too distant future. The objects and interactions created in the projects discussed are not ‘prototypes’ in the traditional product development sense: steps on the way to the manufacture of a final product, but speculative objects which engage people in conversations about how technology might be usefully integrated into their lives. The chapter builds on a keynote presentation given at Prototyping, Craft in the Future Sense symposium, in June 2010. Keynote speakers included: Michael Schrage (MIT Sloan School’s Center for Digital Business), Simon Starling (Turner Prize Winner), Constance Adams (NASA) and Peiter Jan Stappers (TU-Delft).

The chapter draws on interaction design and craft theoretical frameworks to contextualise this approach to prototyping. It also discusses and extends on Charmed an AHRC funded research project conducted by White in 2007 which explored the value of synthesising craft and user-centred design methods in the development of mobile and personal communication devices.