Abstract > Introduction
There are a variety of ways to know and understand people. Embedded observation, interventions and interviews are all ways of working that characterize social scientific inquiry. Professional storytellers such as journalists and documentary filmmakers also use these same methods.
As a media designer, I too use the techniques of embedded observation, interventions and interviewing in my design work. However, I feel that these tactics of people knowing, as they are traditionally employed in the academic social sciences, while affirmative are inflexible. As a media designer, I am also able to work across a range of media platforms. This ability frees me from the constraints of a particular designed outcome such as a book, film or exhibition and allows the information to dictate the appropriate media type to tell the story.
For me, media design offers the framework for working between the disciplines of people-knowing and storytelling. For the past two years, I have been exploring different tools for media designers to know people and tell stories. I call this method of working Portraits in People-Knowing.
Specifically, these portraits mine the idiosyncratic and everyday for multiple purposes. On one hand, this approach is a direct response to the self-affirming tests often employed by traditional user testing which portray people as superficial and one-dimensional. Portraits in People Knowing offers tools to media designers to get involved with people, cultivate relationships and understand a lived life.
On the other hand, this approach is a direct reflection in a process of “knowing through making” and represents and inclination to grow personally. These insights into people and everyday life provide a platform for telling stories, asking questions as part of critical design practice and speculating about new methods for invention within the design industry.
As a mode of representation, the tropes of portraiture offer a frame of reference for understanding this body of work. It should be noted that Portraits in People-Knowing is not a critical take on portraiture. Rather, portraiture offers a lens for explaining the complex relationships involved in a practice of designing for and with people. Central to the task are the dynamic relationships found in all portraits: the subject, the viewer and the artist.