Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
This article was downloaded by: [Universiteit Twente]On: 12 December 2012, At: 05:56Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office:Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Digital CreativityPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscriptioninformation:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ndcr20
Artful surfaces: an ethnographic studyexploring the use of space in design studiosDhaval Vyas a & Anton Nijholt aa Department of Computer Science, University of TwenteVersion of record first published: 17 Aug 2012.
To cite this article: Dhaval Vyas & Anton Nijholt (2012): Artful surfaces: an ethnographic study exploring theuse of space in design studios, Digital Creativity, 23:3-4, 176-195
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14626268.2012.658522
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantialor systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, ordistribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.
The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that thecontents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae,and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall notbe liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever orhowsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of thismaterial.
Artful surfaces:an ethnographicstudy exploring the use ofspace in design studiosDhaval Vyas and Anton Nijholt
Department of Computer Science, University of Twente
[email protected]; [email protected]
Abstract
A largely overlooked aspect of creative design practices ishow physical space in design studios plays a role in sup-porting designers’ everyday work. In particular, studiosurfaces such as designers’ desks, office walls, noticeboards, clipboards and drawing boards are full of informa-tive, inspirational and creative artefacts such as, sketches,drawings, posters, story-boards and Post-it notes. Studiosurfaces are not just the carriers of information but impor-tantly they are sites of methodic design practices, i.e. theyindicate, to an extent, how design is being carried out. Thisarticle describes the results of an ethnographic study onthe use of workplace surfaces in design studios, fromtwo academic design departments. Using the field studyresults, the article introduces an idea of ‘artful surfaces’.Artful surfaces emphasise how artfully designers integratethese surfaces into their everyday work and how theorganisation of these surfaces comes about helpingdesigners in accomplishing their creative and innovativedesign practices. Using examples from the field study,the article shows that artful surfaces have both functionaland inspirational characteristics. From the field study,three types of artful surfaces are identified: personal;shared; and project-specific. The article suggests that agreater insight into how these artful surfaces are createdand used could lead to better design of novel display tech-nologies to support designers’ everyday work.
Keywords: ethnography, design studio culture, artefacts,space, design
1 Introduction
‘Space is a resource that must be managed,much like time, memory, and energy. Whenwe use space well we can often bring thetime and memory demands of our tasks downto workable levels. We can increase thereliability of execution, and the number ofjobs we can handle at once’ (Kirsh 1995,p. 32).
Space and spatial arrangements play an importantrole in our everyday social interactions. The waywe use and manage our surrounding space is notcoincidental; on the contrary, it reflects the waywe think, plan and act. Within collaborative con-texts, its ability to support social activities makesspace an important component of human cognitionin the post-cognition era. To some extent space canbe seen as a technology that we use to support ouractions. The use of space has become so implicit inour everyday lives that we do not realise how ithelps in our thinking, planning and other behav-iour. Kirsh’s (1995) work has been very muchfocused on the way we intelligently utilise phys-ical space. His findings highlight the fact that intel-ligent use of space can lead to effectiveperformance by humans by providing selectiveattention, longer memory span, facilitated percep-tion and choice. Humans intelligently adopt
Digital Creativity2012, Vol. 23, Nos. 3–4, pp. 176–195
ISSN 1462-6268 # 2012 Taylor & Francishttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14626268.2012.658522http://www.tandfonline.com
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
iteit
Tw
ente
] at
05:
56 1
2 D
ecem
ber
2012
environmental resources as a means of bridgingthe gap that separates them from a desiredsolution.
For the purpose of informing the design of col-laborative tools in design studios, an ethnographicfield study was carried out in two educationalindustrial design studios. This article presents theresults of the field study, specifically focusing onthe spatial aspects. The design studio is an interest-ing case for studying the use of space. The conceptof studio-based work has been central to practicesas well as education within design disciplines suchas architecture and industrial design for over acentury (Fallman 2007). A typical design studio(Figure 1) has a high visual and material charac-ter—in the sense that it is full of material objectsand design artefacts; studio walls and other lesspermanent vertical surfaces are full of Post-itnotes, sketches, posters and magazine clips forsharing ideas and inspiration; physical modelsand prototypes are lying on the desks. Many of
the objects in a design studio may have seeminglylittle to do with the projects on hand, but in factserve to challenge and inspire new ideas, tocreate cross-contextual reminders that lead tobreakthrough thinking and conceptualisation(Blevis et al. 2007). The physical surroundingsof a design studio and the persistence with whichdifferent material artefacts are arranged and rep-resented are important to the design activity andserve as ‘organisational memory’ (Ackerman andHalverson 1999) and ‘distributed cognition’(Hutchins 1995) for design teams. This ecologicalrichness of design studios stimulates creativity in amanner that is useful and relevant to the ongoingdesign tasks. The studio space is important forsupporting and inviting design critiques (Uluoglu2000) and the strongly ingrained designerly prac-tice of showing work and eliciting feedback earlyand often (Cross 2006). Such practice encouragesdiscourse and reflection during the design process(Schon 1983). Moreover, in design studios much
Figure 1. A studio workspace full of artful surfaces.
An ethnographic study exploring the use of space in design studios
177
Dig
italC
rea
tivity,V
ol.
23
,N
os.
3–
4
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
iteit
Tw
ente
] at
05:
56 1
2 D
ecem
ber
2012
of the design work is collaborative and group-oriented and the physical nature of designstudios can easily afford group-orientation andcollaborations. Overall, the physical setting ofthe design studio is typically meant to emphasiseand stimulate communication, collaboration andsharing. The spatial aspects of design studiospromote a style of learning that is based on con-tinuous dialogue, conversation and critiquingeach other’s work.
Additionally, designers do not work in a stereo-typical or mechanical fashion when designing inter-active products. Designers tend to be innovative,creative and often playful in order to collaborateand successfully meet the demands of buildingnew products and services. As Lawson (1979)puts it, designers use ‘synthesis’ when it comes toproblem-solving, whereas traditional scientists use‘analysis’. Designers’ way of thinking focuses onquickly developing a set of satisfactory solutions,rather than producing prolonged analysis of aproblem (Cross 2006). Keeping this in mind, thedesign community has been working on developingtools—e.g. Electronic Cocktail Napkin (Gross1996)—that do not demand great effort, commit-ment or precision and allow quicker production oftheir design ideas. Instead of using optimisation intheir work, designers use methods by which theycan produce a set of results, all of which mightsatisfy a given problem or a problematic situation.As a result, designers frequently use and producea relatively high number of representations, suchas design sketches, drawings, storyboards and col-lages, amongst other things. Moreover, methodsfrequently used by designers such as role playing(Boess 2008), body storming and design choreogra-phy (Klooster and Overbeeke 2005) are not limitedto problem-solving but also include understandinginteractional, aesthetic and experiential qualities indesigning interactive products.
Studies on the role of physical space in designstudios have been rare in the design community.This is not because spatial aspects in designstudios are less relevant or important; on the con-trary, the use of physical space has been so implicitin this context that it has for long been taken forgranted in the design discipline. In this article,
the results of an ethnographic field study in twoacademic industrial design departments are pre-sented, where we studied the role of physicalspace—in particular studio surfaces. We believethat there are three main advantages of carryingout such a study. First, we can collect a muchricher understanding of design practices—especially getting access to more implicit andtacit phenomena such as the use of physicalspace. The article strongly emphasises the role ofsurfaces in offering resources for social, organis-ational and individual activity that designers routi-nely encounter and use on an everyday basis.Studio surfaces are not just the carriers ofdesign-related information but importantly theyare sites of methodic design practices. Hence, anunderstanding of the use of space can tell us howdesign is practised. Second, a study about physicalspace would bring new insights into how creativitycan be fuelled into work organisations, not only inthe design studio context but also for otherdomains of work. Due to globalisation and inter-national competition, organisations’ performanceis becoming increasingly dependent on creativityand innovation. An increasing number of studieshave shown that the physical setup of work organ-isations plays an important role in supportinginnovation and creativity (e.g. McCoy and Evans2002, Kristensen 2004). It might not be easy toestablish a ‘direct’ connection between designers’creativity and their physical space, but such astudy could provide some useful insights into theconnection itself. Third, from a Human–Compu-ter Interaction (HCI) perspective, an understand-ing of studio surfaces can lead to thedevelopment of new technological tools that cansupport ‘designerly’ communication. With abroader aim, we are also interested in exploringthe possibilities of new technologies that couldtake into account the social practices of designers.Our main intention for carrying this kind of fieldstudy is to inform the design of new display tech-nologies by learning lessons about how physicalsurfaces in the design studios are used.
Using the field study results, in this article weintroduce the idea of artful surfaces—surfacesthat designers create by externalising their work-
Vyas and Nijholt
178
Dig
italC
rea
tivity
,V
ol.
23
,N
os.
3–
4
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
iteit
Tw
ente
] at
05:
56 1
2 D
ecem
ber
2012
related activities, to be able to effectively supporttheir everyday way of working. From longitudinalfield study in two academic departments of indus-trial design, a simple classification of artfulsurfaces is developed: personal; shared; andproject-specific surfaces. Using examples fromthe field, the article explores what these surfacesare like and what purpose they serve. Secondly,the article illustrates the dual nature of these sur-faces. On the one hand these surfaces helpdesigners to organise their work and be accounta-ble to it through allowing them, for example, tocreate to-do lists, to write timetables, and tomake charts for the division of work. On theother hand, these surfaces also have an inspira-tional role as they allow designers to reflect theirsocial identity, and to collect inspirational, per-sonal and creative sources of information.Hence, artefacts in general not only improve effi-ciency or have a purely functional role, but thepresence and different manifestations of these sur-faces bring quality and richness to designers’ per-formance and help in making better sense of theireveryday lives. For designers this inspirationalrole of artful surfaces is as important as the func-tional and productivity-related role. The formeris often neglected in the study of design practices.
In the rest of this article, we first describe asubset of related literature, focusing on the roleof physical space in work organisations, and inparticular design studios. Next, we discuss theapproach and methods used in our ethnomethodo-logically informed field study. Next, the results ofthe field study are described and three classes ofartful surfaces are identified. Finally the articleprovides a short discussion on our results.
2 Related work
The role of physical space in design studios andhow it affects design practices has not beenstudied in detail within the design discipline,with a few exceptions, described in the following,where this topic is merely touched in a periphery.
Tom Allen (1993) studied the effects of phys-ical layout on the probability of interaction inresearch laboratories and product development
firms. His results showed that the relationshipbetween the probability of two people interactingand the physical distance between them wasstrongly negative (r ¼ –0.84). In some cases,research has also illustrated that ill-consideredconstruction of design studio space could lead toa negative impact on designers’ creativity(Leonard and Swap 1999). As John Seiler pointsout, ‘buildings influence behavior by structuringrelationships among members of the organization.They encourage some communication patternsand discourage others. They assign positions ofimportance to units of the organization. Theyhave effects on behavior, planned or not’ (Seiler1984). Agility and flexibility in design studiosare also found to be important in some of thestudies. The book by Horgen et al. (1999) refersto the flexibility in design studios as ‘workplacemaking’. The authors suggest that workplacemaking is a continuing effort of improving andchanging basic assumptions about work practicesand physical workspace to suit the current needsof design projects. They call for design studiosthat are much more flexible and adaptive todesigners’ needs. Agility is another aspect that isseen as designers’ ability to quickly respond andeffectively make rapid changes in an uncertainsituation. In the design studio context the readi-ness-to-change physical settings is seen to beimperative. Exploring the success of a well-known design company called IDEO, Kelley andLittman (2001) suggest that despite the fact thatall IDEO offices have a similar feeling andlayout, ‘each office creates and enacts a distinctiveenvironment. The team dynamics changes withprojects, and thus, there is a continuing rearrange-ment of teams, project spaces and neighborhoods.’To the authors, the flexibility of physical studiospaces is enough to support IDEO’s creative prac-tices.
Kuhn (1998) suggests that the physical spacein architectural studios should be arranged insuch a way that designers can (1) deal withopen-ended problems; (2) carry out rapid designiterations; (3) use heterogeneous media; (4)support formal and informal critiques; and (5)make creative use of constraints. Schon’s (1983)
An ethnographic study exploring the use of space in design studios
179
Dig
italC
rea
tivity,V
ol.
23
,N
os.
3–
4
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
iteit
Tw
ente
] at
05:
56 1
2 D
ecem
ber
2012
seminal work conceptualises designing as a kindof experimentation that consists in reflective ‘con-versation’ with the materials of a design situation.He suggests that this reflective practice involves acontinuous process of seeing–moving–seeing(Schon and Wiggins 1992). Schon’s work doesnot explicitly make a case for the importance ofthe physical space in studios, but a certain organ-isation and arrangement of design studio spacescan greatly support reflective practices. Thestudy by Sachs (1999) suggests that in traditionalpractices of architectural and design students, theemphasis is placed on the progress of creatingmultiple design artefacts and representations.Hence, progress is expected to be visible as asequence of design artefacts such as drawings,sketches storyboards and models—each expand-ing upon the information in its predecessors.Design artefacts often used and produced duringdesign practices such as paper drawings, physicalor graphical models can serve as representations ofcooperative work. Once design artefacts areattached to the space, the materiality, stigmergy,public availability and knowledge landmarks ofthese artefacts help in supporting communicationand coordination amongst design teams. Europeanprojects such as DESARTE (Buscher et al. 1999)and ATELIER (Schmidt and Wagner 2002,Jacucci and Wagner 2007) have been primarilyfocusing on understanding the role of physicalspace within design and architectural studios.Results of their ethnographic studies have pro-vided useful insights into the ‘customisability’ ofphysical workspaces. These studies focusing onarchitectural design studios explore the ‘commu-nicational’ role of space in design studios.
It is also important to understand how thenotion of space is utilised in other domains ofwork. The following is a very brief accountof the related literatures found in the fields ofHuman–Computer Interaction and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW).
Several ethnographic studies have demon-strated the importance of vertical and horizontalsurfaces in professional and domestic environ-ments. One of the most influential studies relatedto the use of physical space was carried out by
David Kirsh (1995). Drawing results from videosof cooking, assembly and packing, interactionsin supermarkets and experimental studies of com-puter games, Kirsh proposed three main advan-tages of utilising space: simplify choice; simplifyperception; simplify internal computation. Hesuggested that people utilise techniques whichwould reduce the memory load of tasks, theamount of internal computation necessary, orwhich simplify the visual search and categoris-ation that might inevitably be involved in perform-ance. Perry and O’Hara (2003) studied display-based activities in various office spaces and devel-oped a taxonomy characterising three valuableaspects of these displays: ready access to infor-mation; social orientation; and coordination andplanning. Within the domain of healthcare, it hasbeen shown that vertical displays such as noticeboards in the public environment of hospitalshelp medical doctors and nurses to coordinatetheir work (Bardram and Bossen 2005). Thepublic availability supported by these vertical dis-plays has proved to be useful also in other pro-fessional domains. A large corpus of researchrelated to public availability and use of situateddisplays can be found in O’Hara et al. 2003). Inthe case of domestic environments, Swan andTaylor (2005) have studied fridge surfaces andhave shown that the re-configurability and port-ability of different informational artefacts on thefridge surface have strong implications for sup-porting and negotiating family relationships. Theauthors’ ethnographic studies of photo displaypractices in homes have shown that the waypeople organise their vertical photo displays inhomes also reflects the expressions they want toconvey (Swan and Taylor 2008). Kidd’s (1994)classical study on knowledge workers shows thatthe spatial layout afforded by horizontal surfaces(in her case, populated with different material arte-facts; for example, papers and files) such as officedesks and office floors work as holding patternsand provide contextual cues about the overall pro-gress of work. Sellen and Harper (2002) show thatprofessionals prefer to organise papers by pilingthem on horizontal surfaces rather than filingthem. This way of storing information makes
Vyas and Nijholt
180
Dig
italC
rea
tivity
,V
ol.
23
,N
os.
3–
4
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
iteit
Tw
ente
] at
05:
56 1
2 D
ecem
ber
2012
specific papers visible, which in turn serves areminding function. A review on the importanceof papers in professionals’ everyday work is pro-vided in (Randall et al. 2007). Hutchins’s (1995)work on distributed cognition also suggests thatthese kinds of artefacts serve as external memoriesthat could help professionals to make better senseof their work in progress.
3 Approach and methods
To be able to understand the role of physical sur-faces in design studios, one needs to get a natura-listic view on how design is practised in designstudios. Ethnography (Button 2000, Ball andOrmerod 2000) is often used to study social inter-actions and work practices in organisations. In thisfield study, we have used a particular form of eth-nography, called ethnomethodology (Garfrinkle1967). Ethnomethodology, as Button (2000,p. 325) puts it, ‘shifts the emphasis away fromthe production of sociological accounts and the-ories of social doings to an emphasis upon thedescription of the accountable practices involvedin the production of naturally organised phenom-ena’. Ethnomethodology provides a particular‘lens’ to understand work practices as they mani-fest themselves in the real world, without usingany preconceived notions. We have used an ethno-methodological approach for understanding howindustrial designers work, how they communi-cate with each other, and what tools, methodsand approaches they use for design. The ethno-methodologically informed approach helps inunderstanding the ‘instances’ of observable prac-tices and methods that designers apply in theireveryday work which could help uncovermundane and everyday social facts.
We studied industrial design departments attwo technical universities in the Netherlands.Both universities had studio-based learning facili-ties. In our investigation, we studied designers anddesign researchers as well as students who wereinvolved in Master’s programmes. Our ethno-graphic field study lasted approximately eightmonths, with nearly 250 hours spent in the field.We used three methods for studying designers’
everyday practices: naturalistic observations; con-textual interviews; and video-recorded collabora-tive design sessions of designers and designstudents. In the naturalistic observations, the colla-borative aspects of the design studios werestudied. Our goal here was to understand thenatural circumstances of designers’ collaboration,the tools and methods they use, and how the crea-tive process of design is achieved. In this case, oneof the authors spent several hours observingdesigners’ work and their collaborative design ses-sions, by taking notes and pictures. In the contex-tual interviews, ten Master’s students of industrialdesign and five designers/design researchers wereasked to participate in the study. The interviewquestions were devised to focus on participants’individual ways of designing and on understand-ing their creative processes. We also wanted toexplore how the participants brainstormed, whatmethods they used to come up with a designconcept, how they conveyed ideas to each other,their preferred tools for designing, the perceivedadvantages of using such tools, and so on. Someof the group design sessions were also recordedto gain detailed insights into their collaborativeprocesses. In some cases, the first author wasalso a participant observer, collaborating withdesign students and recording their designproceedings.
4 Artful surfaces
Through a qualitative analysis of our field study1
we explored an interesting aspect of design prac-tice: the use of studio surfaces. For us, the concep-tualisation of studio surfaces is not limited todifferent physical locations or physical objectsand their placement, but is more a phenomenologi-cal notion of ‘place’ that interweaves the material,social and situated view of studio surfaces. Hence,when we talk about design surface, we do not talkabout the mere physical space but an appropriateddesign workplace that has design artefacts such assketches, posters, drawings and story-boardsattached to its surfaces. We introduce a notion ofartful surfaces (Vyas 2009). The notion of artfulsurfaces emphasises how artfully designers inte-
An ethnographic study exploring the use of space in design studios
181
Dig
italC
rea
tivity,V
ol.
23
,N
os.
3–
4
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
iteit
Tw
ente
] at
05:
56 1
2 D
ecem
ber
2012
grate these surfaces into their everyday work andhow the organisation of these surfaces helpsdesigners in accomplishing their creative andinnovative design practices. We discovered threetypes of artful surfaces: personal; shared; andproject-specific. The analysis on surfaces is cate-gorised as a set of functionalities, setup, place-ment, timeline and ways of using these surfaces.The analysis of different artful surfaces showsthat there is something unique about each andevery surface, even within these categories. Thethree classes of surfaces that we will discuss inthis section are only generalisations of these sur-faces. In the following section we will discussthese surfaces in detail.
4.1 Personal surfacesPersonal surfaces are created and utilised by indi-vidual designers. These surfaces can be in a verti-cal or horizontal form, or as a mix of both. In thetwo industrial design departments we observedthat personal surfaces were incorporated intooffice desks, walls, private whiteboards and otherindividually used places in design studios. Thedesign artefacts that were commonly seen attachedto these surfaces were design sketches, ongoingproject-related information, physical models andprototypes, as well as other inspirational and per-sonal information. The artefacts that were associ-ated with these surfaces varied in theirmateriality, multi-modality, size and temporality.As we observed, the arrangement of these surfaceswas quite diverse. Figure 2 shows an example of apersonal surface belonging to a design student thatis full of different design artefacts. In the example,one can see how cardboard is used vertically tohold different paper-based design artefacts suchas inspirational images and drawings, wherePost-it notes are kept as reminders and somesketches related to ongoing design projects. Onecan also see a large sheet of paper, at the back ofan adjacent pillar, where some design guidelinesare written to constantly inform and inspire thedesigner. On the desk, there are several itemsthat are not directly related to design, with somefoam models, design magazines and a stack ofdesign sketches. Presumably, the student has
taken his laptop with him while he is away fromhis desk.
From our study, we observed that one of themain reasons for having personal surfaces was tosupport work organisation. The design artefactsthat we commonly found on these personal sur-faces had different sets of functionalities rangingfrom reminders and/or occasional communi-cations with colleagues, to time management forindividual projects. These surfaces were generallycreated and used on a long-term basis. But thearrangement of different artefacts on personal sur-faces would change in their lifetime. The place-ment and setup of personal surfaces was seen tobe based on the principle of bricolage (Buscheret al. 2001). Bricolage means accomplishing anactivity with whatever available tools andresources at hand. As can be seen in Figure 2,the design student has not used any specialisedtools to build his personal surface, rather usingwhatever resources he could get his hands on.This does not mean that the arrangement ispurely ad hoc. In other cases, we observed thatthese artefacts were also indicative of different
Figure 2. Personal Surfaces at a designer’s private workspace.
Vyas and Nijholt
182
Dig
italC
rea
tivity
,V
ol.
23
,N
os.
3–
4
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
iteit
Tw
ente
] at
05:
56 1
2 D
ecem
ber
2012
phases in the design process: past ideas; thecurrent state; future planning; and so on. Duringthe interviews, one designer commented, ‘depend-ing on the phase of the project, I arrange my sur-roundings. It’s important for me to have theseartefacts around so that I can register where I amat in the project.’ Hence, these design artefactsare also the markers for reminding. Anotherdesign student commented, ‘the space allows meto organize my work and get reminded what Iam doing daily. Also for the purpose of communi-cating with my peers I can very easily show what Iam doing.’
The personal surfaces also included objectsfrom designers’ past projects. When faced with adesign problem, designers apply knowledge thathas been acquired in previous situations to drawreferences to existing solutions as inputs for theiridea generation (Muller and Pasman 1996).Similar patterns were also seen in our findingswhere designers utilised product samples, catalo-gues, photographs, slides and so on from theirpast work and organised them into mood-boards,collages and folders. In many cases, we observedthat designers and design students were workingon several projects at the same time. Anotherreason for organising the personal space in sucha way was that unless certain design artefacts arevisibly placed on these surfaces, they tends toget ‘lost’ in the muddle of tasks and parametersthat are normally considered simultaneously. Forsome of these designers, even a slight or unin-tended change can lead to problems in theirdesign practices, and in some cases once adesign artefact is lost from the ‘sights’ of designersit would eventually mean that the design artefactmay never be retrieved again in the near future.In these cases, such an organisation of personalsurfaces would lead to quick response fromdesigners in a time-pressured situation.
We now explore the communicative role ofthese personal surfaces. The purpose of these per-sonal surfaces was to have a quick look at differentartefacts on these surfaces and to provide ease to‘bystanders’ while communicating on specificdesign issues. The communicative role of personalsurfaces, in fact, leads to utilising the vertical sur-
faces such as walls, notice boards and drawingboards, compared to horisontal surfaces such asdesks. We observed that certain design artefactswere placed in such a way that others could ‘flythrough’, take in ‘at a glance’, and ‘recogniseimmediately’ what was going on. These selectedreminders of the context of a project, which isone of many, are different in kind from the detailedview needed for completing particular designtasks. During our interview session, a designercommented, ‘within a project I need a strong foun-dation to start with. So, when I am communicatingmy ideas I need to have several different aspectsabout my design. Because when the foundationis strong it helps in convincing people. Thesevisual objects around me show my foundationalwork and work as strong building blocks.’
The construction of these kinds of artful sur-faces is not only for the purpose of organisingand accounting for different design projects; it isalso about developing new ideas, inspiration andsupporting creative thinking.
Richard Coyne (1997) suggests that the designstudio culture thrives on the rhetoric of feeling andimagination, and organising personal space withinspirational objects becomes a mundane activityin design practice. Certain organisation of personalsurfaces allows designers to carry out their designwork more effectively. One of the reasons toutilise space in such a way was to elaborate anddivide design challenges so that detailed descrip-tions of different aspects of design could be gener-ated, which in turn would help in resolving aparticular situation. The way physical spaceallows the representation of design tasks canaffect designers’ reasoning abilities and perform-ance. As one designer suggested, ‘I normally tryto visualize all the material and data that I collectedfrom my user studies and try to find out patterns andexplore design opportunities from this data. I thenmake my own sketches and models and keep allthese in a way that can help me find out newideas.’ In a similar study (Jacucci and Wagner2007) it has been shown that material artefactscould have experiential and performative rolesand support collaborative creativity in a group ofdesigners. Echoing this, in our work we also dis-
An ethnographic study exploring the use of space in design studios
183
Dig
italC
rea
tivity,V
ol.
23
,N
os.
3–
4
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
iteit
Tw
ente
] at
05:
56 1
2 D
ecem
ber
2012
covered some subjective purposes behind usingthese personal surfaces to express a designer’ssocial identity, personal history and experiences.
Figure 3 represents an example of one suchpersonal surface. A designer organised his work-place by sticking different images, sketches andposters on two of walls at his office. In the follow-ing we provide an excerpt of the contextual inter-view he gave us:
Designer: ‘I like this room, because I can work in asilent environment. I can also turn on music.Sometimes, it is very stimulating to have musicin the background. On the other hand, this spaceallows me to organise my work and get remindedwhat I am doing on the daily basis.’
Interviewer: ‘What are these images on the wall?’
Designer: ‘I have actually two walls. This is amore dynamic wall (Figure 3a), here you can seea design project that I am currently working on,involving digital photo frames. So, here are someobjects related to that project. On this wall thingsgo off and on from time to time.’
Interviewer: ‘What about the other wall?
Designer: ‘This [Figure 3b] is more like the tracesof my design carrier. You can see all kinds of pro-jects that I have worked on. Here you see [bypointing fingers] a project where I developed aset of personas, in the middle you see mygraphic design work that I have done for others.And in the bottom you see other projects that Ihave worked on’
Interviewer: ‘What about this big poster?
Designer: ‘This is something very special to myheart. It has a spiritual significance in my lifeand gives me a good feeling when I start my day.And then here are some pictures of people whoinspire me.’
One of the walls in this designer’s office was moreor less static (Figure 3b) and the other wasdynamic (Figure 3a)—in the sense that its contentswere changed over time. The static wall had arte-facts ranging from inspirational sources to infor-mation about successful projects—representing aportfolio-type appearance summarising the
Figure 3. Walls inside a designer’s office, representing inspirational and project specific artefacts.
Vyas and Nijholt
184
Dig
italC
rea
tivity
,V
ol.
23
,N
os.
3–
4
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
iteit
Tw
ente
] at
05:
56 1
2 D
ecem
ber
2012
designer’s interests and achievements. This was anexample of creating and displaying ‘social iden-tity’. On the other hand, the dynamic wall hadinformation about current projects and thearrangement of these items was a bit messy. Inaddition, he also kept documents about his planswithin projects on his office desk. Overall, theportability and flexibility of these material arte-facts help designers to personalise their workenvironment.
4.2 Shared surfacesOne limitation of a large-sized design organisationis the difficulty of having a single physical placefor sharing between all the designers. In the twoindustrial design departments we studied, it wasobserved that many surfaces were specificallycreated and shared amongst a group of co-located designers and design students. The mainpurpose of using these kinds of surfaces was toshare resources and information amongst relevantgroups of people. Here, the surface itself wasshared but not necessarily the informational andinspirational artefacts on it. However, there weresome examples of jointly owned artefacts onthese shared surfaces.
These shared surfaces were created and usedover a long period of time. They were mainly inthe vertical form and very rarely in the horizontalform. Most shared surfaces were large noticeboards, clipboards or physical walls withindesign studios. They carried both informationaland inspirational design artefacts. Typical candi-dates were informative artefacts such as designsketches, scenarios, use-cases, design principlesand guidelines. And inspirational artefacts suchas posters, magazine cuttings and related materialwere also used. Importantly, artefacts like sketcheshave an inherent nature of sharability. For example,as shown by Baskinger (2008), two-dimensionaldesign sketches are useful not only to develop adesign idea, they are also used for envisioning,recording and narrating ideas, sharing and reflect-ing both at an individual level as well as at sociallevels. These design artefacts can be pointed to,talked about or annotated. Sometimes, agreementsare reified on artefacts. Design artefacts can func-
tion as mediators between different individuals orgroups in design. As an example of shared sur-faces, Figure 4 shows a part of an office wall clut-tered with different artefacts that was sharedbetween three to four design students in a co-located setting. Since these surfaces were used byseveral people for different purposes, these sur-faces had some form of loose organisation. It isdocumented in several design studies (e.g. Perryand Sanderson 1998) that, because of their materialproperties, design artefacts such as sketches playan important role in supporting communicationbetween different designers. In Bruno Latour’s(1986) terms, these artefacts have the character-istics of immutability and mobility. In otherwords, these artefacts can work as a persistentform of information as well as a carrier for infor-mation that can be moved in or out of the work-space in order to support efficient collaborationamongst different co-workers. Figure 4 showsdifferent labelling and patterning schemes inorder to allow clear understanding of the infor-mation. It also shows coloured Post-it notes indi-cating categories of the artefacts and annotationsand comments made by co-inhabitants. In thiscase, the shared surface is used in a multilayeredway and the portability of these artefacts helps in(re)arranging them. The intention of creating andusing shared surfaces is not necessarily to supportcoordination of ongoing work but to make othersaware of certain ongoing activities.
Figure 5 shows two examples of shared spacethat we captured during our ethnographic fieldstudy. The first example shows a shared surfaceartfully created by a group of designers workingat a co-located space. Making this a ‘tea-corner’,a group of design students had developed multi-layered shared surfaces using wooden panels.The purpose of these surfaces was mainly edu-cational as it included visual design guidelinesand best practice schemes. This was an exampleof a creative use of surfaces and it showed howdesign students wanted to influence and learnfrom each other’s design knowledge. AsDowning (2003) suggested, humans learn tovalue certain things from their communal net-works. His notion of transcending memory
An ethnographic study exploring the use of space in design studios
185
Dig
italC
rea
tivity,V
ol.
23
,N
os.
3–
4
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
iteit
Tw
ente
] at
05:
56 1
2 D
ecem
ber
2012
becomes very relevant and important here. For stu-dents, when they share their design artefacts suchas sketches and posters in a visual public space, itnot only helps them to understand the essence andmeaningfulness of these artefacts but also helpsthem imagine the future concepts and designideas by referring to those original design arte-facts. In Figure 5, the second example shows ashared surface at a studio of senior designers. Ona large common wall, designers kept informationabout their individual project works, somedesign posters, their calendars and work schedulesand some design prototypes of interactive photoframes. Interestingly, one can see commonlyused tools such as a printer, cupboards and postboxes aligned with these design artefacts on theshared surface. This in fact increases designers’interaction with the shared surface.
We observed that the physical and publicnature of shared surfaces encouraged designers
and design students to easily discuss and manip-ulate the contents incorporated into these sharedsurfaces. It was seen that these kinds of arrange-ments were configured and re-configured in aseries of different situations to which the designerscould react. The examples in Figure 4 and 5showed a mix of different types of design artefactsplaced for different purpose. By mixing narrativeelements with descriptions of design ideas asensibility for the actual context at hand can besupported.
4.3 Project-specific surfacesThese types of surfaces are created by a team ofdesigners when they work on a collaborativeproject. These surfaces are normally away fromdesigners’ personal workspaces. The organisation,placement and interaction with these surfacesdepend on the kind of project on which thedesigners are working. The surfaces are developed
Figure 4. A shared wall, full of sketches, design ideas and other informational artefacts with an added layer of Post-it notes and otherannotations.
Vyas and Nijholt
186
Dig
italC
rea
tivity
,V
ol.
23
,N
os.
3–
4
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
iteit
Tw
ente
] at
05:
56 1
2 D
ecem
ber
2012
using movable whiteboards, wooden walls, tablesor more fixed placeholders such as walls. Thesesurfaces hold artefacts that are relevant to aspecific project. Informational artefacts related to
project definition, project schedule, to-do list, div-ision of work, design concepts and sketches andthe like are normally seen on these surfaces. Asthe project progresses the contents of these artful
Figure 5. Shared surfaces: at students’ workspace (a) and at a designers’ workspace (b).
An ethnographic study exploring the use of space in design studios
187
Dig
italC
rea
tivity,V
ol.
23
,N
os.
3–
4
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
iteit
Tw
ente
] at
05:
56 1
2 D
ecem
ber
2012
surfaces emerge or change, but also diverge.Figure 6 shows two examples of project-specificsurfaces. The first shows a workspace made ofsoft wooden sheets (created for temporary pur-
poses) that carries information about a particularproject that deals with designing an Instant Messa-ging (IM) system. On these surfaces one can findinformation related to project description and
Figure 6. Project-specific surfaces.
Vyas and Nijholt
188
Dig
italC
rea
tivity
,V
ol.
23
,N
os.
3–
4
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
iteit
Tw
ente
] at
05:
56 1
2 D
ecem
ber
2012
goal, a detailed project schedule, initial sketches,related literature information and possible designconcepts. Interestingly, the physical space is inten-tionally used to create a rich ecology of where agroup of designers can completely focus on theproject. The second shows another example of aproject-specific surface, where office walls areused to contain information related to a specificdesign project—designing for bus stop passen-gers. On the wall one can see images of differenttypes of bus stops, sketches about design ideas,some scenarios and a project schedule.
An important aspect of project-specific sur-faces is its support for planning and organisingongoing design projects. As can be seen in bothof the examples in Figure 6, as a project progressesdesigners add and change new information on thesurface and the new schema of the surface pro-vides an overview of the work-in-progress infor-mation. Project-specific surfaces are explicitlyintended to capture or summarise the point that aproject or part of a project has reached. Such anenvironment helps during the time when nego-tiation needs to take place or agreement needs tobe obtained from within the design team or fromoutside parties. The design artefacts on these sur-faces can be referred to as ‘boundary objects’ asthese artefacts serve as a common ground for sup-porting group related activities (Star and Griese-mer 1989). Latour (1986) has argued thatvisualisations simultaneously support construct-ing the artefact and staging its performance andunderstanding by others. In this case, project-specific surfaces serve as a visualisation of differ-ent activities and form assemblies of artefactswhich tell a ‘story’, such as the story of thedesign concept or of a particular choice of materialand product. On the other hand they enrich theimagination space both of the design team itselfand of the audiences to which the project will bepresented. Although not all the material createdin the design process will be published, it is hardto distinguish at this point between different usesand audiences. All of the representational materialwill be used by the team itself—creating a rep-resentation always means taking a step forwardin the common understanding of the design.
Another important use of project-specificsurfaces can be seen in second photograph inFigure 6, that of maintaining a connectionbetween the rich context of a given problemdomain. As we mentioned earlier, designers usecontextual and in-situ methods such as ethno-graphic studies and participatory design to ‘stepinto the users’ shoes’ and get an insight of users’world. And often, it becomes difficult to communi-cate this experiential and contextual information toco-workers by verbal means. Keeping visualinformation about study contexts helps designersto ease communication difficulties and helpsremind them about their work. So in this examplethe images of different bus stops and differentdesign sketches related to them can provide contex-tual sensibilities and allow designers to focus onthese contextual cues. Secondly, this also helps invisualising and coming up with new conceptsabout their design solutions. The physical spaceallows people a kind of flexibility by whichdesigners can make connections and associationsof design sketches, images and other visual rep-resentations. Association of objects helps designersto grasp ‘abstract’ concepts. Mitchell observed thatalthough an image (or idea) may be ‘abstract’,‘language, narrative, and discourse can never—should never—be excluded from it’ (Mitchell1994, p. 226). In this sense, association objectsare used for bringing the narrative element in aconcept to the fore. And obviously, language andmetaphors are also used for emphasising specificdesign qualities.
In addition, we also observed that design teamsused other forms of horizontal as well as verticalsurfaces to support their collaborative designactivity within an ongoing project. Figure 7shows two examples of movable whiteboards,where, in the first image, a group of design stu-dents working on developing ‘an interactive toyfor kids’ have kept different concept sketches,time-schedules and scribbles about desired func-tionalities. This kind of artful surfaces can betaken to different meeting places, where designers,using pens, can add or change their details. Simi-larly, in the second imageis a whiteboard withwritten information about the project schedule,
An ethnographic study exploring the use of space in design studios
189
Dig
italC
rea
tivity,V
ol.
23
,N
os.
3–
4
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
iteit
Tw
ente
] at
05:
56 1
2 D
ecem
ber
2012
deliverables, plans and the current status of theproject. Indications of changes by co-membersof the team can also be seen here. This kind ofarrangement allows team members to construc-tively criticise as well as to build on each other’swork throughout the duration of a project.
It can be seen from all these examples that thefunction of project-specific surfaces is largely pro-ductivity-focused. Time-management, scheduling,work progress and division of workload were themost important functions of these artful surfaces.A normal timeline of this kind of artful surface isthe duration of the project (two to six months) inthe case of the students we observed. During theproject, these surfaces allow a team to organise,manage and reflect on their work in an effortless,visual manner. The informational artefacts thatare attached to these surfaces are used both in asynchronous and an asynchronous manner.During a group meeting, for example, designerscan easily refer to or demonstrate particulardesign phenomena by showing or pointing tospecific artefacts. On the other hand, it allows indi-vidual members of a team to leave traces of theiractions when not all members are present.
In both cases, this type of artful surface serves asa mediator of social coordination.
5 Discussion
In this article, we have described a relativelymundane but inevitably important practice of uti-lising design studio surfaces to support everydaydesign work. We have provided insights into theeveryday ways in which designers and design stu-dents externalise their design activities through theuse of these ‘artful surfaces’. Using examples fromour ethnographic field study we provided a simpleclassification of artful surfaces that demonstratedtheir nature and purposes. In the analysis we con-sidered the qualities of different surfaces andshowed how these qualities help designers toincorporate their design-related artefacts intotheir surfaces in an artful and meaningful way.For example, a two-dimensional sketch can beeasily attached to a wall, notes and annotationscan be easily written on a whiteboard or 3-Dsketches can be put on a table for comparison pur-poses. An emphasis is placed on the manner inwhich designers continually develop, arrange and
Figure 7. Movable whiteboards full of design artefacts.
Vyas and Nijholt
190
Dig
italC
rea
tivity
,V
ol.
23
,N
os.
3–
4
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
iteit
Tw
ente
] at
05:
56 1
2 D
ecem
ber
2012
integrate different artefacts to create these artfulsurfaces.
The observations and results discussed in thisarticle provide insights into how design studentsand design researchers use their physical space asa resource to support their ongoing design activi-ties. It is important to note a limitation, however;that our field study was carried out mainly in theacademic environments and focused on the indus-trial and product design. Hence, it might not beuseful to generalise our results to other fields ofdesign (graphics, interior, architecture and so on).Secondly, our intention for carrying out such afield study was focused on generating ideas fordesigning a tool2 for supporting designerly com-munications within the design studio culture.Hence, our overall aim was not to contributetowards the design practice literature but to bringforward an area that is under-studied—namelythe use of physical space. Our approach can beseen in line with the work of Kruger et al. (2004),where the researchers studied different orientationstyles of people while they collaborate on thesurface of tables in order to develop implicationsfor the design of tabletop interfaces. In our work,we do not focus explicitly on collaboration. Weillustrate the situated character of different physicalsurfaces; in other words, how these surfaces arecreated and used to suit designers’ ongoing workand overall situation. It is not the physical and geo-metrical aspects of the design studio space that wefocus on; in fact, we are interested in exploring howthe presence, placement and interrelationship ofdifferent design artefacts that are attached to thestudio space help designers to accomplish theirtasks. Key features of the artful surfaces in thedesign studio context provide support for theassembly, arrangement and manipulation ofmaterials, as well as for acting on them with appro-priate tools. The article suggests that the visualnature of these artful surfaces helps designers forthe following:. establishing a common understanding of a
complex design idea or a task;. organising and planning design activities;. describing design in a rich, narrative and meta-
phorical way;
. preserving the memory of a design project andthe ‘reasoning’ behind it.
We also demonstrated that these artful surfaceshave a dual nature. On one hand, these surfacescan be seen as organising systems as they help insupporting practical aspects of design practices,such as communicating design ideas to others,reminders of certain work-related issues, andmanaging projects (e.g. using to-do lists, timeta-bles). On the other hand, these artful surfaces canalso be seen as inspirational systems as they helpin supporting a designer’s social identity andwork as a carrier of inspirational materials thatconstantly help designers’ creative thinking. Inother words, in a subtle way, these surfaces helpto (re)shape a designer’s professional relationshipswith other members.
Understanding the role of surfaces becomesespecially relevant in the field of HCI, wherethe desktop metaphor used in the current Graphi-cal User Interfaces (GUIs) is heavily influencedby workplace surfaces (Melone 1983). Addition-ally, it has frequently been suggested that materialartefacts that populate the workspace ecologyneed to be taken into account while understand-ing group work (Heath and Luff 1992, Shapiroet al. 1994, Hutchins 1995, Robertson 1997,Sellen and Harper 2002). In the case of designpractices, different workplace surfaces becomean important resource for understanding every-day design activities that take place in designstudios and related organisations. We want topoint out some issues about the orientation andinteraction with these different types of artful sur-faces.. Artful surfaces are created by designers keeping
in mind different public and private environ-ments. Of the three types of artful surfaces con-sidered in this article, personal and sharedsurfaces are used for long-term purposes atplaces that are within a close proximity ofdesigners’ own desks. This allows designers tokeep inspirational and private items on these sur-faces. On the other hand, project-specific sur-faces, because of their shorter lifetime, mainlysupport team productivity and instrumentalknowledge incorporated into them.
An ethnographic study exploring the use of space in design studios
191
Dig
italC
rea
tivity,V
ol.
23
,N
os.
3–
4
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
iteit
Tw
ente
] at
05:
56 1
2 D
ecem
ber
2012
. Horizontal surfaces (such as a table) have gener-ally a shorter lifetime than vertical surfaces (suchas a wall). Because of limitations of the physicalspace, horizontal surfaces are mainly used forreal-time, instantaneous work. In contrast, verti-cal surfaces can be easily incorporated intoreadily available physical places such as officewalls.
. Horizontal surfaces are especially useful for syn-chronous working whereas vertical surfaces areused both for asynchronous and synchronouswork. Horizontal surfaces can easily holdthree-dimensional objects such as physicalmodels, something vertical surfaces cannoteasily allow. During a design meeting a tableor a desk can easily help a group of designersto discuss, refer and point to these three-dimen-sional objects.
. The ways of interacting with vertical and hori-zontal surfaces differ based on the nature andpurpose of these surfaces. Clearly, a relativelylarge group of people within a close physicalproximity can easily discuss and point tocertain artefacts on a vertical surface; whereaswith horizontal surfaces designers have to useother ways of interacting with these artefacts.Hence, the orientation and interactions these sur-faces afford play a role in how designers usethese surfaces in their everyday work.
. This study shows that the kinds of material arte-facts incorporated into different artful surfacesare common in most cases. We frequentlyobserved the use of two-dimensional paper-based artefacts such as sketches—representingdesign ideas, use-cases and interaction mechan-isms of products to be designed. Similarly, anorganisational artefact such as a project schedulewas seen frequently. Further research is neededto look into these specific artefacts and under-stand how they help in forming a particularartful surface.
Our work also points to some important designopportunities. The kind of ethnomethodologicalapproach that we applied in our investigationallowed us to understand designers’ everydaypractices as they happen in the real world. Newtechnologies to support collaborative design
should be designed in a way that they can beeasily and effortlessly integrated into designers’everyday practice. The current use of surfacesshows that they are placeholders for design arte-facts, markers of reminders and carriers of organ-isational and inspirational objects that designersuse in their everyday work. Hence, new technol-ogies to be designed should, in a sense, providea set of resources for designers to organise theirown everyday arrangements and at the same timeallow them to be creative and playful with thesetechnologies. Technology should not attempt toinstitute organising systems in themselves.
6 Conclusions
In this article, we have discussed the results of ourethnographic field study in the design studioculture, specifically focusing on the physical sur-faces of designers’ workspace. Physical space indesign studios and its resourcefulness havehardly been studied within the design community(with few exceptions such as [Buscher et al. 1999,Spinelli et al. 2005]). This article shows that a rel-evant and observable aspect of designers’ practiceis the way they organise and personalise theirworking space, especially their surfaces. Fromthe field study we report that workplace surfacesare important for supporting designers’ everydaydesign work, communication within a designteam, and play an important role in designers’ per-formance and creativity. Designers keep informa-tional and inspirational artefacts such assketches, drawings, pictures and models on theirphysical surfaces in a way that constantlyinforms and inspires their design work. Designers’work is visible from these ‘artful’ surfaces evenwhen the designers are not present. Lookingclosely into these surfaces allowed us to under-stand the functions, orientations, timeline and theinteraction styles these artful surfaces afforded.Based on these categories, we identified threetypes of artful surfaces: personal; shared; andproject-specific surfaces. The main outcome ofthis article is how lessons can be learnt from thecurrent practice of creation and use of these sur-faces for designing new display technologies.
Vyas and Nijholt
192
Dig
italC
rea
tivity
,V
ol.
23
,N
os.
3–
4
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
iteit
Tw
ente
] at
05:
56 1
2 D
ecem
ber
2012
Acknowledgements
This work is supported by the European IST Pro-gramme Project AMIDA (FP6-0033812). Thisarticle only reflects the authors’ views and fundingagencies are not liable for any use that may bemade of the information contained herein. Wethank Kees Overbeeke, Caroline Hummels, MarkBaskinger, Mascha van der Voort and the Master’sstudents of Industrial Design at Technical Univer-sity of Eindhoven and University of Twente for par-ticipating in our study. Thanks also to LynnPackwood for proof reading.
Notes1 This article discusses only a subset of our field study
results. Elsewhere we have discussed how physicalartefacts support coordinative (Vyas et al. 2008)and experiential (Vyas et al. 2009a) roles andelaborated on the specific practices designers applyto support creativity (Vyas et al. 2009b) in thedesign studio culture.
2 One such tool that we have designed using theresults of this field study is called CooperativeArtefact Memory (CAM) that allows designers tocollaboratively store relevant information on totheir physical design artefacts in the form ofmessages, annotations and web links. A detaileddescription and use of this tool was presented in aNordiCHI conference in 2010 (Vyas et al. 2010).
ReferencesAckerman, M.S. and Halverson, C., 1999. Organis-
ational memory: processes, boundary objects, andtrajectories’. In: Proceedings of the 32nd annualHawaii international conference on system sciences.Volume 1. HICSS. Washington, DC: IEEE Compu-ter Society, 1067.
Allen, T., 1993. Managing the flow of technology. Cam-bridge, MA: MIT Press.
Ball, L. and Ormerod, T., 2000. Applying ethnographyin the analysis and support of expertise in engineer-ing design. Design Studies, 21 (4), 403–421.
Bardram, J.E. and Bossen, C., 2005. A web of coordina-tive artifacts: collaborative work at a hospital ward.In: Proceedings of the 2005 international ACMSIGGROUP conference on supporting group work(GROUP ’05). New York: ACM, 168–176.
Baskinger, M., 2008. Pencils before pixels: a primer inhand-generated sketching. Interactions, 15 (2),28–36.
Blevis, E., Lim, Y., Stolterman, E., Wolf, T.V., and Sato,K., 2007. Supporting design studio culture in HCI.In: CHI ‘07 extended abstracts on human factorsin computing systems (CHI ’07). New York: ACM,2821–2824.
Boess, S.U., 2008. First steps in role playing. In: CHI ’08extended abstracts on human factors in computingsystems (CHI ’08). New York: ACM, 2017–2024.
Buscher, M., Mogensen, P., Shapiro, D., and Wagner, I.,1999. The Manufaktur: supporting work practice in(landscape) architecture. In: S. Bødker et al., eds.Proceedings of the sixth conference on europeanconference on computer supported cooperativework (ECSCW ’99). Norwell, MA: Kluwer Aca-demic Publishers, 21–40.
Buscher, M., Gill, S., Mogensen, P., and Shapiro, D.,2001. Landscapes of practice: bricolage as amethod for situated design. Computer SupportedCooperative Work, 10 (1), 1–28.
Button, G., 2000. The ethnographic tradition anddesign. Design Studies, 21 (3), 319–332.
Coyne, R., 1997. Creativity as commonplace. DesignStudies, 18 (2), 135–142.
Cross, N., 2006. Designerly Ways of Knowing. London:Springer.
Downing, F., 2003. Trascending memory: remembranceand design of place. Design Studies, 24 (3), 213–235.
Fallman, D., 2007. Supporting studio culture in designresearch. In: Proceedings of the international associ-ation of societies of design research, Hong KongPolytechnic University School of Design, 12–15November.
Garfinkel, H., 1967. Studies in ethnomethodology. Eng-lewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Gross, M.D., 1996. The electronic cocktail napkin – acomputational environment for working withdesign diagrams. Design Studies, 17, 53–69.
Heath, C. and Luff, P., 1992. Collaboration and control:crisis management and multimedia technology inLondon underground line control rooms. ComputerSupported Cooperative Work, 1 (1), 24–48.
Horgen, T., Joroff, M., Porter, W., and Schon, D., 1999.Excellence by design, transforming workplace andwork practice. New York: John Wiley.
Hutchins, E., 1995. Cognition in the wild. Cambridge,MA: MIT Press.
An ethnographic study exploring the use of space in design studios
193
Dig
italC
rea
tivity,V
ol.
23
,N
os.
3–
4
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
iteit
Tw
ente
] at
05:
56 1
2 D
ecem
ber
2012
Jacucci, G. and Wagner, I., 2007. Performative roles ofmateriality for collective creativity. In: Proceedingsof the 6th ACM SIGCHI conference on creativity &cognition (C&C ’07). New York: ACM, 73–82.
Kelley, T. and Littman, J., 2001. The art of innovation:lessons in creativity from IDEO, America’s leadingdesign firm. New York: Doubleday, Currency Books.
Kidd, A., 1994. Marks are on the knowledge worker.Proceedings of the conference on human factorsand computing systems (CHI ’94). New York:ACM Press, 186–191.
Kirsh, D., 1995. The intelligent use of space. ArtificialIntelligence, 73 (1–2), 31–68.
Klooster, S. and Overbeeke, C., 2005. Designing pro-ducts as an integral part of choreography of inter-action: the product’s form as an integral part ofmovement. In: Proceedings of 1st European work-shop on design and semantics of form and move-ment. Newcastle, 23–35. Eindhoven: TechnischeUniversiteit Eindhoven, Fac. Industrial Design.
Kristensen, T., 2004. The physical context of creativity.Creativity and Innovation Management, 13 (2),89–96.
Kruger, R., Carpendale, S., Scott, S.D., and Greenberg,S., 2004. Roles of orientation in tabletop collabor-ation: comprehension, coordination and communi-cation. Comput. Supported Coop. Work, 13 (5–6),501–537.
Kuhn, S., 1998. The software design studio: an explora-tion. IEEE Software, 15 (2), 65–71.
Latour, B., 1986. Visualization and cognition: thinkingwith eyes. Knowledge and Society - Studies in theSociology of Culture Past and Present, 6, 1–40.
Lawson, B., 1979. Cognitive strategies in architecturaldesign. Ergonomics, 22 (1), 59–68.
Leonard, D. and Swap, W., 1999. When sparks fly: ignit-ing creativity in groups. Boston, MA: HarvardBusiness School Press.
McCoy, J. and Evans, G.W., 2002. The potential role ofthe physical environment in fostering creativity.Creativity Research Journal, 14 (3–4), 409–426.
Malone, T.W., 1983. How do people organize theirdesks? Implications for the design of office infor-mation systems. ACM Transactions on InformationSystem, 1 (1), 99–112. New York: ACM.
Mitchell, W.J.T., 1994. Picture theory. Essays on verbaland visual representation. The University ofChicago Press.
Muller, W. and Pasman, G., 1996. Typology and theorganization of design knowledge. Design Studies,17 (2), 111–130.
O’Hara, K., Perry, M., Churchill, E., and Russell, D.,2003. Public and situated displays: social and inter-actional aspects of shared display technologies.Norwell, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Perry, M. and O’Hara, K., 2003. Display-based activityin the workplace. In: M. Rauterberg, et al., eds. Pro-ceedings of human–computer Interaction confer-ence (INTERACT ’03). Zurich, Switzerland: IOSPress, IFIP, 591–598.
Perry, M. and Sanderson, D., 1998. Coordinating jointdesign work: the role of communication and arte-facts. Design Studies, 19 (3), 273–288.
Randall, D., Harper, H., and Rouncefield, M., 2007.Fieldwork for design—theory and practice, CSCWseries. London: Springer-Verlag.
Robertson, T., 1997. Cooperative work and lived cogni-tion: a taxonomy of embodied actions. In: Proceed-ings of the 5th conference on european conferenceon computer-supported cooperative work (ECSCW’97). Norwell, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers,205–220.
Sachs, A., 1999. Stuckness in the design studio. DesignStudies, 20 (2), 195–209.
Schmidt, K. and Wagner, I., 2002. Coordinative arte-facts in architectural practice. In: M. Blay-Fornarino,et al., eds. Proceedings of the fifth international con-ference on the design of cooperative systems (COOP’02). Amsterdam: IOS Press, 257–274.
Schon, D.A., 1983. The reflective practitioner: how pro-fessionals think in action. New York: Basic Books.
Schon, D.A. and Wiggins, G., 1992. Kinds of seeing andtheir functions in designing. Design Studies, 13 (2),135–156.
Seiler, J.A., 1984. Architecture at work. HarvardBusiness Review, September–October, 111–120.
Sellen, A.J. and Harper, R.H.R., 2002. The myth of thepaperless office. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Shapiro, D., Hughes, J.A., Randall, D., and Harper, R.,1994. Visual re-representation of database infor-mation: the flight data strip in air traffic control. In:M. Tauber, et al., eds. Cognitive aspects of visuallanguages and visual interfaces. The Hague:Elsevier, 349–376.
Spinelli, G., Perry, M., and O’Hara, K., 2005. Under-standing complex cognitive systems: the role of
Vyas and Nijholt
194
Dig
italC
rea
tivity
,V
ol.
23
,N
os.
3–
4
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
iteit
Tw
ente
] at
05:
56 1
2 D
ecem
ber
2012
space in the organization of collaborative work. Cog-nition Technology and Work, 7 (2), 111–118.
Star, S.L. and Griesemer, J., 1989. Institutional ecology,translations’ and boundary objects. Social Studies ofScience, 19 (3), 387–420.
Swan, L. and Taylor, A.S., 2005. Notes on fridge sur-faces. CHI ‘05 extended abstracts on humanfactors in computing systems (CHI ’05).New York: ACM Press, 1813–1816.
Swan, L. and Taylor, A.S., 2008. Photo displays in thehome. In: Proceedings of the 7th ACM conferenceon designing interactive systems (DIS ‘08).New York: ACM, 261–270.
Uluoglu, B., 2000. Design knowledge communicated instudio critique. Design Studies, 21 (1), 33–58.
Vyas, D., 2009. Artful surfaces in design practices. In:Proceedings of the 27th international conferenceextended abstracts on human factors in computingsystems (CHI EA ’09). New York: ACM, 2691–2694.
Vyas, D., Heylen, D., and Nijholt, A., 2008. Physicalityand cooperative design. In: Andrei Popescu-Belisand Rainer Stiefelhagen, eds. In: Proceedings ofthe 5th international workshop on machine learningfor multimodal interaction (MLMI ’08). Heidelberg:Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 325–337.
Vyas, D., Heylen, D., Nijholt, A., and van der Veer, G.,2009a. Experiential role of artefacts in cooperativedesign. In: Proceedings of the fourth internationalconference on communities and technologies (C&T’09). New York: ACM, 105–114.
Vyas, D., Heylen, D., Nijholt, A., and van der Veer, G.,2009b. Collaborative practices that support creativityin design. In: Proceedings of 2009 11th Europeanconference on computer supported cooperativework (ECSCW ’09). Vienna: Springer-Verlag,151–170.
Vyas, D., Nijholt, A., and van der Veer, G.C., 2010.Supporting cooperative design through ‘living’artefacts. In: Proceedings of the 6th Nordic confer-ence on human–computer interaction: extending
boundaries (NordiCHI ’10). New York: ACM,541–550.
Dhaval Vyas is a post-doctorate researcher in theHuman Media Interaction group at the Universityof Twente, the Netherlands. His research interestsare in the fields of Human–Computer Interaction(HCI) and Computer Supported Cooperative Work(CSCW). Dhaval has a PhD in HCI from the Uni-versity of Twente and a Master’s degree from Lan-caster University, UK. He has recently returnedfrom a visiting researcher position from NokiaResearch Center, Helsinki (December 2011). Inthe past, Dhaval has worked at the design groupsof Elsevier Science, Satama Interactive (now LBiLost Boys) and at the Intelligent User Interfacesgroup of DFKI Saarbrucken, Germany. Dhavalhas over forty publications in well-known HCIvenues, including, CHI, ECSCW, UbiComp, Nordi-CHI, MobileHCI, MLMI, INTERACT, DUX, andBritish-HCI.
Anton Nijholt received an MSc in Mathematicsand Computer Science (1974) at the Delft Univer-sity of Technology and a PhD in Computer Scienceat the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. He has heldpositions at various universities in Canada,Belgium and the Netherlands. Since 1989, he hasbeen a Full Professor of Computer Science at theUniversity of Twente (Enschede, The Nether-lands). Anton has chaired several conferencesand workshops on entertainment computing,Human–Computer Interaction and affective com-puting, and he has been guest editor of journalswith special issues on these topics. His currentresearch interests include entertainment comput-ing, multimodal interaction and brain–computerinterfacing.
An ethnographic study exploring the use of space in design studios
195
Dig
italC
rea
tivity,V
ol.
23
,N
os.
3–
4
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Uni
vers
iteit
Tw
ente
] at
05:
56 1
2 D
ecem
ber
2012
