Re-framing design and designers : Studying design processes through a pragmatist lens

Abstract

Becoming a competent professional entails both developing scholarly knowledge, learning the craft, and developing the social skills demanded in the profession. In this paper I provide insight into how studying professionals at work can be understood as a continuous social inquiry where both researcher and the professionals reflect on reflection-in-action. Embedded in a performative process approach based on the temporal and transactional understandings of John Dewey and George Herbert Mead, and Donald Schön’s understanding of the reflective practitioner, research on product design processes are discussed and explored as a mutual process of becoming. This paper proposes that studying professional work is a collaboration between professionals and the researcher where both work- and research activities are made possible by the temporal re-framings of social identities and of situations.