Agency sensitive design: a relational understanding of design

Abstract

A relational view of agency advocates that agency is neither an attribute of subjects nor of objects; rather, it is a dynamic attribute of the relations between the entities. A growing body of research recognises the embodied, situated and relational characteristics of agency in the fields of human-computer interaction and interaction design. The research presented in this dissertation develops a relational understanding of design referred to as Agency Sensitive Design (ASD) that enables designers to incorporate a relational view of agency in their design thinking and their thinking of design. It draws on the situated perspectives and recent developments in actor-network theory, feminist technoscience, relational sociology, and phenomenology. Questions of how a relational view of agency can contribute to design, and how design can recognize and support relational agency are explored in detail through the development of three participatory design workshops employing ASD. The workshops act in two ways: first, they serve as test beds for exploring how ASD concepts and qualities can be employed in the design process; and second, they act as generative cases for advancing and refining ASD concepts and qualities. Workshop 1 and 2, in which a navigation-oriented exercise is performed in four activities by different configurations of the same collective of humans and technologies, investigate how different relational possibilities emerge and evolve by manipulating the ways in which humans and technologies come together. Workshop 3 continues with the investigation by extending the scope of configurations and increasing the variety of activities and the size of the design collective. The research methodology employs the analytical lenses of actor-network theory (ANT) and phenomenology. The methodology combines the strengths of approaches based on ANT and phenomenology to explore both general patterns of relations and the details of specific relationships between humans and non-humans. The research makes two contributions to the field of interaction design: the first is the theoretical development of ASD with five strategicgenerative concepts and six qualities produced out of a large body of relevant studies. The second is an empirical investigation of some of the qualities of ASD using design workshops situated in the early phase of design.