Designing Publics (Design Thinking, Design Theory)

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.

當代計算技術已經深入融入現代生活的方方面面，包括商業活動、維護和擴展社交網絡，以及動員政治運動，所有這些都是通過一系列旨在吸引和保持我們注意力的設備和服務來實現的。然而，當我們的注意力需要更加關注本地社區時，會發生什麼情況呢？更重要的是，我們如何想像和創造與本地社區相關的新技術呢？在《設計公共》一書中，克里斯托弗·勒丹特通過與城市無家可歸者合作設計技術，探討了這些問題。他以一個無家可歸婦女和兒童庇護所的計算基礎設施設計案例為基礎，理論化了在社區背景下進行設計的另一種視野。

勒丹特專注於通過設計實現集體行動，他研究了設計如何在社會問題上將人們聚集在一起，並創造和維護一個公共領域。他所謂的「設計公共」既指公共領域如何在設計干預中產生，也指公共領域所採取的生成行動，即它們在動員和行動中如何「進行設計」。這種雙重視角提供了一種新的觀點，即設計和各種設計實踐如何在集體行動的場域中流通，而不僅僅是商業生產。