Ron Wakkary is a professor of design at Simon Fraser University’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology in Canada. He is also a professor, holding the Chair of Design for More Than Human-Centered Worlds, in the industrial design department at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands.
Ron is the founder of the design research studio Everyday Design Studio (EDS). At EDS, he works with Will Odom and an evolving cast of students to produce multi-disciplinary design research that is highly engaged with the practice and craft of design. For UX designers and industrial designers looking for ideas and inspiration from social sciences, humanities, and philosophy executed in design artifacts, the work from EDS is a fantastic resource.
Ron recently published the book Things We Could Design: For More Than Human-Centered Worlds via MIT Press. The book packages his research focused on “post-humanist design” rather than human-centered design, bringing non-human stakeholders like nature, climate, and biological diversity into the focus of design methodology.
Chapters
00:00:00 Intro
00:01:26 Ron's Story
00:13:35 Research through Design
00:18:54 Ron's Practice
00:22:26 The Core Message in Ron's Book
00:27:30 How To Put the Book in Practice
00:34:45 "Designer as Biography / Force / Speaking Subject / Intensities and Origins"
00:51:57 The Scope of Design vs. Other Disciplines
00:58:50 "Nomadic Practice"
01:21:55 Book Recommendations
01:27:00 What's Next for Ron
01:33:00 Closing
From the conversation:
Books
• Design Research through Practice by Ilpo Koskinen et al. — https://link.amazon/B02hdAQb6
• Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault — https://link.amazon/B0asOrupJ
• In Praise of Shadows by Junichiro Tanizaki — https://link.amazon/B09yXSjxh
• Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux — https://link.amazon/B0cdRGQTB
• Staying with the Trouble by Donna Haraway — https://link.amazon/B0iIv3QUl
• The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff — https://link.amazon/B0206hvgO
• The Overstory by Richard Powers — https://link.amazon/B04BRVpHg
• The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram — https://link.amazon/B0cpnOAai
• Things We Could Design by Ron Wakkary — https://link.amazon/B0ezV4soQ
• Vibrant Matter by Jane Bennett — https://link.amazon/B045970iT
• What Things Do by Peter-Paul Verbeek — https://link.amazon/B08F8uiRe
Articles and episodes
• Design-oriented human-computer interaction by Daniel Fällman — https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/642611.642652
• Research through design as a method for interaction design research in HCI by John Zimmerman et al. — https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1240624.1240704
• Research through Design explained — https://designdisciplin.com/p/rtd-origin
Films
• Helvetica by Gary Hustwit — https://www.hustwit.com/helvetica
• Objectified by Gary Hustwit — https://www.hustwit.com/objectified
• Rams by Gary Hustwit — https://www.hustwit.com/rams
Artists, designers, and researchers
• Bjarke Ingels Group — https://big.dk
• Char Davies — https://www.immersence.com
• Dieter Rams — https://www.vitsoe.com/rams
• Eduardo Kac — https://www.ekac.org
• Gerhard Richter — https://gerhard-richter.com
• Roy Ascott — https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/staff/roy-ascott
• Thecla Schiphorst — https://www.sfu.ca/~tschipho/html
• Virgil Abloh — https://virgilabloh.com
• Will Odom — https://www.willodom.com
Institutions and tools
• Arduino — https://www.arduino.cc
• ArkDes — https://arkdes.se/en
• Moderna Museet — https://www.modernamuseet.se
• Planetary Collegium — https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/research/planetary-collegium
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https://x.com/ronwakkary | https://eds.siat.sfu.ca
