Abstract
This paper aims to foster a paradox lens on competing demands to ensure their productive engagement in design. Competing demands are inevitable and ubiquitous features of today’s systems. Thus, being subject to competing demands is a pervasive and inherent feature of designerly work. Drawing from organizational studies, we first outline four main streams of competing demands underlying today’s systems; related to time, cognition, social interactions, and focus. We demonstrate the importance of a purposeful conceptualization of competing demands by exemplifying how different conceptualizations can lead to different responses. We suggest employing a paradox lens on competing demands, which stresses that seemingly contradictory or even mutually exclusive factors can and should coexist and therefore should be leveraged simultaneously. Through a series of research-through-design experiments, we explore how framing competing demands according to paradoxes impacts the way they are approached in design practice, and how paradoxes can be engaged with through design.
Keywords
design research, system-conscious design, competing demands, paradoxes
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.223
Citation
Neuhoff, R., Harre, O., Simeone, L., Laursen, L.H., and Nielsen, L. (2022) Engaging with competing demands in systems through design: Fostering a paradox lens, 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.2022.223
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Research Paper
Included in
Engaging with competing demands in systems through design: Fostering a paradox lens
This paper aims to foster a paradox lens on competing demands to ensure their productive engagement in design. Competing demands are inevitable and ubiquitous features of today’s systems. Thus, being subject to competing demands is a pervasive and inherent feature of designerly work. Drawing from organizational studies, we first outline four main streams of competing demands underlying today’s systems; related to time, cognition, social interactions, and focus. We demonstrate the importance of a purposeful conceptualization of competing demands by exemplifying how different conceptualizations can lead to different responses. We suggest employing a paradox lens on competing demands, which stresses that seemingly contradictory or even mutually exclusive factors can and should coexist and therefore should be leveraged simultaneously. Through a series of research-through-design experiments, we explore how framing competing demands according to paradoxes impacts the way they are approached in design practice, and how paradoxes can be engaged with through design.