karen louise smith

I was in a panel today as part of the design research series at KMDI. The paper (in progress that) I presented is titled: ‘Cloudtags and talk back: Sketches from critical and digital design research practice.’ With this paper, I am interested in asserting two key ideas. First, I consider Schon’s idea of talk back in the design studio. Schon describes talk back as something communicated from the design materials to the designer. I feel this idea can be extended by considering participatory media and web 2.0 technologies where user generated content and contributions are prominent. Second, I discuss how the cloudtag’s status in the design process is fluid. Tagclouds can be a rough sketch or a 'final' design artefact. This panel and the design research series in general, grew out of a reading group. It was interesting to hear the four divergent directions we have taken with papers originating from a common body of literature.