Emily Carr University of Art & Design is a learning community devoted to excellence and innovation in art,

media and design.

Design at Emily Carr University is modelled on context informed practice that is ever responsive to human and

ecological needs. We are a community of educators, practitioners, students and staff engaged in new models

and networks of communication, interaction and industrial design

Learn about your program

Learn about your leaders

Over the past two decades, designers of all stripes have begun integrating the lessons of ethnography into their academic research and professional practices. Under the rubrics of “reflexive,” “participatory,” “human-centred,” “contextual,” and “transformation design,” the relationship between design studies and ethnographic approaches to cultural analysis has been progressively deepened and, at the same time, grown more complex.

During this same period, key developments in anthropology, sociology, and studies of material and technological culture have transformed our understanding of both the context and the subject matter of ethnographic investigations

David Bogen, Vice-President Academic & Provost

Practice-based research; research-based practice

The beauty of research is that it trains the minds of learners, researchers, and teachers and provides everyone

with the intellectual and practical tools they need to pursue their interests and their passions...

Learn about your courseCore Studio II

Learn about Team 200Celeste Martin (01), Deb Shackleton (02),

Helene Day Fraser (03),Jill Anholt (04) + 06) and Christian Blyt (05)

Mike Culverwell 07

• Things have beauty... not because they are ‘well-designed’, or because they are universally recognized as beautiful, or as transcendent of the messy social actuality of life... the sociality of the object is it’s value or the direct connection to this actuality of context... (Csikszentmihalyi, 1991:34 paraphrase)

Design Challenge One Objects of Personal Significance

Design Challenge One Object Semantics

• We think with the objects we love; we love the objects we think with. Studies of scientists, humanists, artists, and designers teach us the power of everyday things. Objects are emotional and intellectual companions that anchor our memory, sustain our relationships and provoke new ideas. A focus on everday riches-- an apple, a datebook, a laptop computer--show us how objects bring philosophy down to earth. Objects carry both ideas and passions. Sherry Turkle (2007), Evocative Objects.

• “In Evocative Objects, Turkle collects writings by scientists, humanists, artists, and designers that trace the power of everyday things. These essays reveal objects as emotional and intellectual companions that anchor memory, sustain relationships, and provoke new ideas.These days, scholars show new interest in the importance of the concrete. This volume's special contribution is its focus on everyday riches: the simplest of objects--an apple, a datebook, a laptop computer--are shown to bring philosophy down to earth. The poet contends, "No ideas but in things." The notion of evocative objects goes further: objects carry both ideas and passions. In our relations to things, thought and feeling are inseparable.Whether it's a student's beloved 1964 Ford Falcon (left behind for a station wagon and motherhood), or a cello that inspires a meditation on fatherhood, the intimate objects in this collection are used to reflect on larger themes--the role of objects in design and play, discipline and desire, history and exchange, mourning and memory, transition and passage, meditation and new vision.In the interest of enriching these connections, Turkle pairs each autobiographical essay with a text from philosophy, history, literature, or theory, creating juxtapositions at once playful and profound.

• So we have Howard Gardner's keyboards and Lev Vygotsky's hobbyhorses; William Mitchell's Melbourne train and Roland Barthes' pleasures of text; Joseph Cevetello's glucometer and Donna Haraway's cyborgs. Each essay is framed by images that are themselves evocative. Essays by Turkle begin and end the collection, inviting us to look more closely at the everyday objects of our lives, the familiar objects that drive our routines, hold our affections, and open out our world in unexpected ways.” Helene Day Fraser, 2011

As an object of Transition and Passage The Melbourne Train is a rich discussion of language as a liminal object, standing outside and

within the self, as a vehicle for bringing what is outside within. In the interpretation to follow we see the headphones as a metaphor for the travelling environment and the learning that the author engaged with

in observing both the interior and exterior landscapes of a specific time and place in the authorʼs life; one in which he learns to read

Design Challenge TwoWord, Image, Object Relationships

• Things and theories in design research attempts to bring to design:

• a comprehensive and interdisciplinary understanding of the meanings of objects

• a better understanding of how objects are theorized in other disciplines

• a higher awareness of the role of objects as signifiers of culture, human relations and society

• a better understanding of the social and cultural impact of design and manufacturing

• a pedagogical tool for use in design practice and design education

• a better understanding of design as a cultural and material/virtual practice in which new models have and are emerging (Prasad Boradkar)

Design Challenge 2

Design Challenge Three:What Makes an Evocative Object?

Projects from 2nd to 4th Year, all majors

• Design and other difficult problem solving is punctuated by moments of discovery...

• These are the moments when something new and important is suddenly “seen.” (Kant & Newell)

• ...the boundaries between conventional design disciplines are blurring...(Rodgers, 2008)

• from product focus to purposeful focus

• traditional focus:

• visual communication design

• industrial design

• interior design

• architecture

• Purposeful design:

• experience design

• service design

• interaction design

• transformation design

• sustainable design

• Designers are increasingly exposed to various disciplinary influences through diverse teams that coalesce for a project...it is increasingly common to find new hybrids of designers working on projects...(T.H. Dykes et al., 2009)

• ...reality is mobile. There do not exist things made, but only things in the making, not states that remain fixed, but only states in process of change...(Bergson as cited by Grosz in The Thing, in The Object Reader, 2009)

• The objects that we create are embedded in people’s actions and situations. They become contextualized, redefined, and transformed through use. (Frascara & Winkler, 2008)

• We must be sensitive to the environments where our design products come to life and to the people who use them. (Frascara & Winkler, 2008)

• ...design as an agency is capable of helping us shape, in humane and sustainable directions, our relations with the artificial and natural worlds... (Clive Dilnot, 2009)

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