Translational Designers

Reference: Page, R., & John, K. (2019). Commercializing Academic Medical Research: The Role of the Translational Designer. The Design Journal, 22(5), 687-705. https://doi.org/10.1080/14606925.2019.1629776

Abstract: Increasingly universities are seeking to play a more active role in translating their fundamental scientific discoveries into large-scale, practical impact in the world. In the field of medical research, translating discoveries from the bench to the bedside. These processes of research translation are complex and interdisciplinary, involving a combination of research as well as non-research activities that take place both within and outside the traditional boundaries of the university. This complexity leads to many discoveries being ‘lost in translation’. This paper unpacks some of the challenges faced by designers with research translation through a series of case studies from a health care design research lab – Monash University Health Collab. Through these case studies, we highlight the necessary role of the translational designer, a hybrid design practitioner-researcher who brings the strengths of both industrial design practice and design research as a way to help bridge the chasms between research and commercial development.

My notes: I have become quite interested in developing design research methodologies beyond just merely adopting ways of doing things from either science, social studies, humanities, or artistic research. Rowan and Kieran reflect on their extensive experiences working in x-disciplinary projects and offer here valuable ideas that will be of interest to designers who work in similar translation projects from science to product design. But their work is also relevant in the broader context of 'identity formation' for the growing field of 'designerly researchers' and 'researcherly designers' to quote Joyce Yee. I left professional practice in 2000 to pursue philosophical, ethical, and intellectual ideas that advance the field of design, and I am glad that although it has taken 2 decades, there is a clear 'critical mass' today of clever people making these connections. 

Where are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts

Paper: "Where are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts" by Bruno Latour. Link:
www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/50-MISSING-MASSES-GB.pdf

Intro: People are free to interpret the precise meaning of an artifact, but they can’t simply tell an automobile engine that it should get 100 miles per gallon. The laws of nature and the capacities of a particular design limit the ways in which artifacts can be integrated into a sociotechnical system. In this chapter, one of the foremost  contrib-utors to the actor network approach, Bruno Latour, explores how artifacts can be deliberately designed to both replace human action and constrain and shape the actions of other humans. His study demonstrates how people can ‘‘act at a distance’’ through the technol-ogies they create and implement and how, from a user’s perspective, a technology can ap-pear to determine or compel certain actions.

Notes:

1. "There is a problem with doors", the writing style of Latour is clever and engaging, reading this paper is quite an experience in itself, so I will only add my first 5 notes here as it'd be quite a challenge to capture the depth of his ideas in a short list. Just read it.
2. "Every time you want to know what a nonhuman (an object) does, simply imagine what other humans or other nonhumans would have to do were this character not present. This imaginary substitution exactly sizes up the role, or function, of this little character.
3. "A profound temporal shift takes place when nonhumans are appealed to; time is folded"
4. "Prescription is the moral and ethical dimension of mechanisms... We have been able to delegate to nonhumans not only force as we have known it for centuries but also values, duties and ethics"
5. "How can the prescriptions encoded in the mechanism be brought out in words? By replacing them by strings of sentences (often in the imperative) that are uttered (silently and continuously) by the mechanisms for the benefit of those who are mechanized: do this, do that, behave this way, don't go that way, you may do so, be allowed to go there... Another way of hearing what the machines silently did and said are the accidents"