Designing Publics

by Christopher A. Le Dantec

Overview

An exploration of design considerations in the design of technologies that support local collective action.

Contemporary computing technologies have thoroughly embedded themselves in every aspect of modern life—conducting commerce, maintaining and extending our networks of friends, and mobilizing political movements all occur through a growing collection of devices and services designed to keep and hold our attention. Yet what happens when our attention needs to be more local, collective, and focused on our immediate communities? Perhaps more important, how can we imagine and create new technologies with local communities? In Designing Publics, Christopher Le Dantec explores these questions by designing technologies with the urban homeless. Drawing on a case study of the design of a computational infrastructure in a shelter for homeless women and their children, Le Dantec theorizes an alternate vision of design in community contexts.

Focusing on collective action through design, Le Dantec investigates the way design can draw people together on social issues and create and sustain a public. By “designing publics” he refers both to the way publics arise out of design intervention and to the generative action publics take—how they “do design” as they mobilize and act in the world. This double lens offers a new view of how design and a diverse set of design practices circulate in sites of collective action rather than commercial production.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262337106
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	09/09/2016
Series:	Design Thinking, Design Theory
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	168
File size:	742 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Christopher A. Le Dantec is Assistant Professor of Digital Media in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Institute of Technology.

Table of Contents

Series foreword ix

Acknowledgments xv

1 Introduction: Social Design in Public 1

2 Publics and Their Issues, Attachments, and Infrastructures 13

3 Articulating Issues 33

4 Identifying Attachments 61

5 Infrastructures and Infrastructuring with Design 85

6 Designing Publics 109

Notes 125

References 129

Index 143

What People are Saying About This

Paul Dourish

How can design processes contribute to questions of social engagement? What happens when we shift our attention from creating artifacts to convening and developing publics? Chris Le Dantec addresses these questions not in the abstract but through detailed and compelling cases and hard-won experience. The result is engaged scholarship of the best kind.

Ron Wakkary

This book is insightful and clear on the emerging field of social design. Christopher Le Dantec persuasively grounds his theoretical work in the commitments of participatory design, ethnography, and design. As a result, he effectively argues for engaging public and social concerns as matters of design and in the process establishes concise language for designers to tackle our social challenges.

Peter Wright

Designing Publics is a landmark contribution to the emerging field of digital civics. The book provides not only a critical exploration of the concepts of publics and civics, but also an extended and detailed description of a design project which makes concrete the rich conceptual landscape that the book maps out. This book will be essential reading for students, teachers, and researchers in the developing field of digital civics.

Endorsement

Designing Publics is a landmark contribution to the emerging field of digital civics. The book provides not only a critical exploration of the concepts of publics and civics, but also an extended and detailed description of a design project which makes concrete the rich conceptual landscape that the book maps out. This book will be essential reading for students, teachers, and researchers in the developing field of digital civics.

—Peter Wright, Professor of Social Computing, Newcastle University