A creative designerly touch

Creative methods can nurture meaning-making and reframing activities during a design process by supporting designers in externalizing and sharing their experiences and observations from field studies and transforming them into new insights. In this article we demonstrate how the method, Object theatre, can be applied as a meaning-making activity and we coin the term ‘meaning-mattering’ based on the theories of Heron & Reason (2006) and Barad (2007). The meaning-mattering merge the designerly way of thinking and working with creativity to bridges the gap between the experiential knowing obtained through field study observations and the propositional knowing of conceptual reflection as the onto-semantic configuration of Object theatre allows direct verbal and tactile references to be made during the dialogue among designers. This meaning-mattering practice can in a creative manner effectively support the novel development and refinement of both the problem formulation and the future solution.

创造性方法可在设计流程中赋能意义建构与重构活动，通过支持设计师外化并分享其在田野调研中获得的经验与观察结果，并将其转化为全新洞见。本文将展示如何将对象剧场（Object theatre）这一方法作为意义建构活动加以应用，并基于赫伦（Heron）与里森（Reason，2006）以及巴拉德（Barad，2007）的理论，提出“意义赋能（meaning-mattering）”这一术语。该意义赋能实践将设计师的设计式思维与工作方式与创造力相结合，弥合了田野调研观察所得的体验性认知与概念反思的命题性认知之间的鸿沟——由于对象剧场的存在论语义配置允许设计师在对话过程中进行直接的言语与触觉层面的指涉。该意义赋能实践能够以创造性方式，有效助力问题界定与未来解决方案的全新开发与优化完善。