A creative designerly touch: Nurturing transformation through creativity in the meaning-mattering of design processes

Abstract | Abstract

Creative methods can nurture meaning-making and reframing activities during a design process by supporting designers in externalizing and sharing their experiences and observations from field studies and transforming them into new insights. In this article we demonstrate how the method, Object theatre, can be applied as a meaning-making activity and we coin the term ‘meaning-mattering’ based on the theories of Heron & Reason (2006) and Barad (2007). The meaning-mattering merge the designerly way of thinking and working with creativity to bridges the gap between the experiential knowing obtained through field study observations and the propositional knowing of conceptual reflection as the onto-semantic configuration of Object theatre allows direct verbal and tactile references to be made during the dialogue among designers. This meaning-mattering practice can in a creative manner effectively support the novel development and refinement of both the problem formulation and the future solution.