Designing is the Construction of Use Plans

  • Wybo Houkes
Chapter

In this chapter, I argue for an intentionalist reconstruction of artifact design, called the “use-plan analysis.” In it, design crucially involves the construction and communication of a use plan. After presenting an outline of the use-plan analysis, I show that it can be used to accommodate four aspects of the phenomenology of artifact use and design: creative use, serendipity, the unread manual, and unknown designers; and I briefly indicate how the analysis facilitates the evaluation of artifact use and design. From this, I conclude that the use-plan analysis provides a phenomenologically viable, evaluatively useful, intentionalist account of use and design.

Keywords

Practical Rationality Artifact Design Professional Designer Artifact Type Evaluative Framework 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Springer Science + Business Media B.V 2008

Authors and Affiliations

  • Wybo Houkes
    • 1
  1. 1.Eindhoven University of TechnologyNetherlands

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