Principal Investigator Sherry Turkle
The working group on design explores the role of information technology in the practice of design. Designers are increasingly interacting with design artifacts and collaborators through rich technological interfaces. Simulation, visualization, and communication technologies open new paths of innovation to designers in their analytic, synthetic, and expressive processes. Embedded in these same technologies are concepts and limitations that result from their design and from the digital media in which they are implemented. Creatively or passively used, they transform current ways of seeing and knowing, and change the way designers work, communicate, and ultimately see themselves. The working group seeks to highlight new modes of design practice and explore how they redefine professional activities and relationships, shift responsibilities and skill sets, and foster new conceptions of design and the designer.