Design for experiencing: New tools

The integration of design with the applied social sciences is relatively new. Design firms began experimenting with the social sciences in the early 1980s. The experiment was design-driven, with social scientists being brought in to serve the design process.

The evolution of influence that the social sciences have had on the design process mirrors changes seen over time in the social sciences. For example, behaviorists believed that only observable behaviors could be studied scientifically. Ethnographic approaches to design research in practice today seem to have their roots in the behaviorist tradition. Later, the cognitive revolution of 1960s and 1970s moved the focus from behavior to the information- processing model of the mind. Much of the usability research within human computer interface design borrowed its theoretical framework from cognitive psychology. The social sciences were slower to suggest methodologies and tools that could help designers access the emotional experience of users in a manner that would support their ideation process (Dandavate, Sanders and Stuart, 1996). The emerging participatory design approach acknowledges that it is possible to gain access to the experiencer’s world only through his/her participation in expressing that experience.

So we can see now, at the end of 1999, that there is a common ground, a new territory being formed by the reciprocal respect between designers and social scientists. It is clear that social science still has much to offer design, just as design has much to offer the social sciences.