Abstract
Drawing on Goffman’s metaphor of frontstage and backstage, this article analyses the role of materiality in day-to-day work practices of craftspersons. The study is based on an ethnographic study of 17 months at a design firm which was amid a shift from product to service design. This means that instead of tangible products, the designers at the firm created intangible services. This shift in work practices reduced crafting to making visualizations for reports and presentations. As a response, the designers sought ways to spend more time on manually crafting in their work. In the backstage, when among trusted peers and not facing clients and other audiences, the designers spent a lot of time on making new design tools and practicing new techniques even though this did not directly contribute to the success of the design project for their client. It allowed them to practice and develop their craft skills, make sense of requirements of their renewed work context, and replenish emotional energy. The main contribution of this paper is through adding empirical evidence emphasizing the embodied perspective to crafting. Because of the entangled relationship between craftspersons and materiality, crafting practices are enacted as a matter of habit.
Keywords
(changing role of) design in organizations, materiality, identity, ethnography
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.398
Citation
Laurey, N., Huysman, M., and Soekijad, M. (2022) Crafting in the backstage: Materiality and the changing work of designers, in Lockton, D., Lenzi, S., Hekkert, P., Oak, A., Sádaba, J., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2022: Bilbao, 25 June - 3 July, Bilbao, Spain. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.398
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Research Paper
Included in
Crafting in the backstage: Materiality and the changing work of designers
Drawing on Goffman’s metaphor of frontstage and backstage, this article analyses the role of materiality in day-to-day work practices of craftspersons. The study is based on an ethnographic study of 17 months at a design firm which was amid a shift from product to service design. This means that instead of tangible products, the designers at the firm created intangible services. This shift in work practices reduced crafting to making visualizations for reports and presentations. As a response, the designers sought ways to spend more time on manually crafting in their work. In the backstage, when among trusted peers and not facing clients and other audiences, the designers spent a lot of time on making new design tools and practicing new techniques even though this did not directly contribute to the success of the design project for their client. It allowed them to practice and develop their craft skills, make sense of requirements of their renewed work context, and replenish emotional energy. The main contribution of this paper is through adding empirical evidence emphasizing the embodied perspective to crafting. Because of the entangled relationship between craftspersons and materiality, crafting practices are enacted as a matter of habit.