Appendix > Case Study 1 > Books as a Tool for Conversation
Eventually, this project became the book Me or Meade that I eventually gave to the Society as a way to promote discussion within it. As a physical artifact, this move is consistent with a key characteristic of participatory design that uses “physical artifacts as thinking tools.”
However, the book also provided me with the medium to pose my own questions and share lived-experiences. Using my “expertise” on the Society to author my own material and pose questions are characteristics of an expert mindset and of critical design. Moreover, posing larger questions about social societies and sharing personal experiences was an intentional move to open the book to a larger audience including companies that may view this book as a design brief on social networking. The “explosion of interest” in co-creative marketing is an emerging area of design research “that takes advantage of social networks in harnessing enormous amounts of input at a low cost.”