Critical Fabulations: Reworking the Methods and Margins of Design

by Daniela K. Rosner

A proposal to redefine design in a way that not only challenges the field's dominant paradigms but also changes the practice of design itself.

In Critical Fabulations , Daniela Rosner proposes redefining design as investigative and activist, personal and culturally situated, responsive and responsible. Challenging the field's dominant paradigms and reinterpreting its history, Rosner wants to change the way we historicize the practice, reworking it from the inside. Focusing on the development of computational systems, she takes on powerful narratives of innovation and technology shaped by the professional expertise that has become integral to the field's mounting status within the new industrial economy. To do so, she intervenes in legacies of design, expanding what is considered "design" to include long-silenced narratives of practice, and enhancing existing design methodologies based on these rediscovered inheritances. Drawing on discourses of feminist technoscience, she examines craftwork's contributions to computing innovation--how craftwork becomes hardware manufacturing, and how hardware manufacturing becomes craftwork.

Genres: Design, Nonfiction, Research

212 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2018

Reviews

[Becca · Rating 5 out of 5]

A succinct, perfect book. I appreciated the feminist dedication to intellectual lineage (charting the journeys of Haraway & Suchman), as Rosner weaves her own research and experiences into a broader history of critical design. She rejects common design/tech ways of thinking, advocating for: Alliance (not individualism), Recuperations (not objectivism), Interferences (not universalism), and Extensions (not solutionism).

[Renee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very insightful and important book. I loved reading specifically about how Rosner reshaped her practice to more authentically represent her personal and professional values, and the entanglement of craft and design.

[Andrew]

As recommended at https://twitter.com/mcc_cummings/stat...

[Samaa Ahmed · Rating 5 out of 5]

So good! Wish I had it a year earlier to incorporate into my thesis!

[Max · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well worth the read for its survey of design history from a feminist perspective, the origins of design thinking, and applying an anti-hegemonic lens to design.