Dienk Studio Journal
What We Mean by Transformative Situations
A core tenet of Dienk’s work is that we help organisations make sense of and take accountability for transformative situations through human-founded insights and design-led interventions. Here, we discuss what we mean by transformative situations and the role of design as a general social process for transforming perceived situational deficiencies into preferred situational outcomes.
Read post →Strategic Vulgarity
The argument for vulgar competence in uncovering strategic blandness.
Read post →Our Kind of Sociology
Practical sociology offers valuable insights into - and sensitivity towards - real needs when designing systems and product-service solutions.
Read post →Why Design Thinking Might Save You, Yet
Can an ironic perspective on the hype behind design thinking unlock capabilities to address the wicked problems we encounter in a complex world?
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Reflections and insights
What we've been reading
What We're Reading in the Studio: Louw, Elkin & Bruyns' ‘Characterising Centre-Hinterlands: Transition Design as a Framework for the Assessment of Urban Futures’
By exposing “hinterlands within the centre,” the paper shows that urbanisation patterns are more complex and multifaceted than typically assumed. Through questioning and reevaluating traditional conceptual frameworks and assumptions, we can uncover hidden dimensions of lived experience and create new possibilities for inclusive and sustainable co-existence.
Read post →What We're Reading in the Studio: Richard Buchanan's 'Human Dignity and Human Rights: Towards a Human-centred Framework for Design'
Buchanan proposes that design, while grounded in human dignity and human rights, is simultaneously a practical discipline of "responsible action for bringing the high values of a country or a culture into concrete reality."
Read post →What We're Reading in the Studio: Tad Hirsch's ’Practicing Without a License: Design Research as Psychotherapy’
In considering the potential for participants to experience psychotherapeutic effects through their involvement in design research, Tad Hirsch highlights ethical concerns and suggests the need for trauma-informed research practices, updated consent procedures, and revised pedagogy that better support researchers and participants engaged in potentially emotionally charged encounters.
Read post →What We're Reading in the Studio: Hubert L. Dreyfus and Stuart E. Dreyfus' 'Beyond Expertise: some preliminary thoughts on mastery'
Can Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus' reflections on skill acquisition to mastery empower individuals and teams to take risks, explore new perspectives, and push the boundaries of design research and design thinking—through fostering self-understanding and kindness?
Read post →What We're Reading in the Studio: Lucas D. Introna's 'Ethics and the Speaking of Things'
“How might a world be where all things (humans and nonhumans) relate to each other in a comportment of letting-be?” Introna asks us.
Read post →What We're Reading in the Studio: Richard Buchanan's 'Anxiety, Wonder and Astonishment: The Communion of Art and Design'
What are the possibilities for design—as a sensemaking practice—if designers lean into their disciplinary anxiety?
Read post →What We're Reading: Alison Jaggar's 'Love and knowledge: Emotion in feminist epistemology'
Alison Jaggar’s can help us understand that dissenting voices often speak from perspectives that offer less distorted views on the subordinating effects of dominant values. It is from these perspectives that we “stand a chance of ascertaining the possible beginnings of a society in which all could thrive.”
Read post →What We're Reading in the Studio: Lucy Kimbell and Jocelyn Bailey's 'Prototyping and the new spirit of policy-making'
Lucy Kimbell and Jocelyn Bailey explore the characteristics, opportunities and challenges of applying the design practice of prototyping in policy-making.
Read post →What We're Reading in the Studio: ‘Design Thinking: Past, Present and Possible Futures’
In their 2013 article "Design Thinking: Past, Present and Possible Futures," Ulla Johansson-Sköldberg, Jill Woodilla, and Mehves Çetinkaya explore the development of design thinking discourses, identifying a history of interconnected perspectives shaping both academic and management approaches. The authors call for scholarly integration, from which we propose that cross-pollination between designerly thinking and design thinking could revitalise meaningful, inquiry-driven design processes.
Read post →What We're Reading in the Studio: Klaus Krippendorff's 'The Dialogical Reality of Meaning'
Krippendorff proposes that things do not have intrinsic meaning; rather, meanings are attributed to artifacts by people who use them in “particular situations, at particular times, and in interaction with other people,” and these attributions occur in language.
Read post →What We're Reading in the Studio: Susan Spiggle's ‘Analysis and Interpretation of Qualitative Data in Consumer Research’
Susan Spiggle “suggests a vocabulary for describing the analytical operations that undergird inference and a framework for thinking about how researchers construct interpretations as they link empirical and conceptual domains.”
Read post →What We're Reading in the Studio: Nigel Cross and Terry Liddament on Computationalism and Design
Nigel Cross invites us to explore how computational models might help us understand design cognition and to anticipate how we might design more appropriately for designer-computer interaction. Terry Liddament, meanwhile, warns us that the reductionism of the computationalist paradigm risks impoverishing our understanding of how designers respond to - to put it into computational terms - the “informational unencapsulation” of design contexts.
Read post →What We're Reading in the Studio: Gui Bonsiepe: Framing Design as Interface
Hugh Dubberly introduces the expansive career of the designer and design teacher and writer Gui Bonsiepe in an article included in the 2021 book “The Disobedience of Design: Gui Bonsiepe”.
Read post →What We're Reading in the Studio: Jean-Paul Sartre's essay ‘Intentionality: A Fundamental Idea of Husserl’s Phenomenology’
Sartre's ‘Intentionality: A Fundamental Idea of Husserl’s Phenomenology’ briefly explores the concept of intentionality as proposed by Edmund Husserl.
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