Theory Instruments as Tangible Ways of Knowing

Abstract

While ethnographers and the data they produce already play a role in affecting industry practices, there is potential to integrate anthropological ways of seeing and knowing into a shared transdisciplinary design praxis. In a series of design research experiments, we have taken a pragmatic and playful approach to physicalizing theory. The result is a set of ‘Theory Instruments’ that transform theory into tangible interaction. Theory Instruments scaffold knowledge production by encouraging new ways of seeing organizations, products, users, and the relations between them. We present two of these instruments, Actor‐Network Rings and Reciprocity Balance, through a case study with a design team at a health product company that wished to generate new design concepts from field material. Theory Instruments helped bridge the gap between the epistemic modes of knowing employed by ethnography practitioners and the technical and tacit modes of knowing familiar to design practitioners. This new mode of collaboration helped them to cross worlds, cultivating a more resilient, transdisciplinary praxis.