1. CRITICAL
DESIGN
ATTAINING THE PROVOCATIVE IN THE FAMILIAR
5X5 PRESENTATION BY ANNIE CORENO
KMD1001 FALL 2012

2. CONTEXT
Critical design emerged in the the 1990s as a response
to the interactive design field’s overwhelming focus on
usability and user-centered design.

3. CRITICAL DESIGN:
“USER-UNFRIENDLINESS”
>_aims to initiate a dialogue on the ethical implications of
technology with designers, industry, and the public large.
>_draws attention to the ideological make up of design
>_a form of social research
>_end goal is conceptual, not material

4. EXAMPLES
BIOJEWELRY
TEDDY BEAR
BLOODBATH
DUNNE & RABY
NYU’S XCLINIC
NATALIE JEREMIJENKO

5. OBSTACLES AND CRITIQUES
>_doesn’t have a clear market and therefore
remains obsolete to the general public
>_often mistaken for conceptual art
>_hard to achieve the duality of novelty and
familiarity in the same artifact
>_not a lot written on how to actually do
critical design

6. DISCUSSION
>_what are the fundamental differences between
art and design? Why is it so important to
distinguish art and critical design?
>_is critical design a form of design practice or
design research?
>_how can critical design be used as a generative
tool toward commercial products? What part of
the design process would it fall under?
>_how does critical design relate to knowledge
media and/or technology?

7. WORKS CITED:
BOWEN, S. J. (2007). Crazy ideas or creative probes?: presenting critical artefacts
to stakeholders to develop innovative product ideas. In: Proceedings of EAD07:
Dancing with Disorder: Design, Discourse and Disaster, Izmir, Turkey, 11-13 April
2007.
Bardzell, Shaowen, Jeffrey Bardzell, Jodi Forlizzi, John Zimmerman, and John Antanitis. 2012.
Critical design and critical theory: the challenge of designing for provocation. In Proceedings of
the Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS '12). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 288-297.
DOI=10.1145/2317956.2318001
http://doi.acm.org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.1145/2317956.2318001
Dunne, Anthony. "Chapter 2 - (In)human Factors". Hertzian Tales: Electronic Products, Aesthetic
Experience, and Critical Design. The MIT Press. © 2005. Books24x7.
<http://common.books24x7.com.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/toc.aspx?bookid=12928> (accessed
October 27, 2012)
Sanders, Liz. 2008. ON MODELING: An evolving map of design practice and design research.
interactions 15, 6 (November 2008), 13-17. DOI=10.1145/1409040.1409043
http://doi.acm.org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.1145/1409040.1409043