UX as Knowledge Work

transcript

Thomas WendtSurrounding Signifiers@thomas_wendtthomas@srsg.cosrsg.co

UX as Knowledge WorkA Few Things About UX You Won’t Learn from Practice Alone

Thomas Wendt Surrounding Signifiers @thomas_wendt

Thomas Wendt

UX Strategist and Researcher

Founder of Surrounding Signifiers, a strategy and design consultancy

Background in continental philosophy, psychology, and literary theory

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“We live in a world where there is more and more information, and

less and less meaning.” Jean Baudrillard

Theory and Practice

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Theory? Practice?

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Theorythought

disengagedfrivolousvirtual

Practiceaction

investedproductive

Colloquially...

Theoryfoundational

Practiceperformative

Traditionally...

Theoryfoundational

Practiceperformative

Traditionally...

Praxisinformed

action

“Apart from inquiry, apart from the praxis, individuals cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry

human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.”

Paulo Freire

Ancient Greeks

Theory

Practice

Technology Design

Ancient Greeks

Theory

Practice

Technology Design

Praxis

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http://beautifultrouble.org/wp-content/uploads/Beautiful%20Trouble/PRINCIPLE%20Praxis%20Makes%20Perfect/PR_Praxis%20Makes%20Perfect_Praxis

Framing UX

Semiotics

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“A linguistic system is a series of differences of sound combined with a series of differences of ideas.”

Ferdinand de Saussure

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Thomas Wendt Surrounding Signifiers @thomas_wendt http://beautifultrouble.org/wp-content/http://fanart.tv/fanart/music/382f1005-

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West sideUrban culture

Teenage rebellionGangsta rap

MTVRural/suburban white kids

Conspiracy theory

UItacticaltangiblesignifier

UXstrategic

conceptualsignified

UItacticaltangiblesignifier

UXstrategic

conceptualsignified

Not that simple

Framing UX

Phenomenology and Embodiment

“Intelligence and understanding are rooted not in the presence and manipulation of explicit,

language-like data structures, but in something more earthy: the tuning of basic responses to a real world that enables an embodied organism to sense,

act, and survive.” Andy Clark

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Design for Dasein

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Framing UX

Psychoanalysis

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“If knowledge about the unconscious were as important for the patient as people inexperienced in psychoanalysis imagine, listening to lectures or reading books would be enough to cure him. Such measures, however, have as much influence on the symptoms of nervous illness as a distribution of menu-cards in a time of famine has upon hunger.”

Sigmund Freud

Research and Strategy

restaurant pic

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Onward

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Thanks

Thomas WendtSurrounding Signifiers@thomas_wendtthomas@srsg.cosrsg.co