Designing as a conversation withdigital materials
Andy Dearden, Communications and Computing Research Centre,
Sheffield Hallam University, Howard Street, Sheffield S1 1WB, UK
This paper explores Donald Scho¨n’s concept of design as a conversation
with materials, in the context of designing digital systems. It proposes
material utterance as a central event in designing. A material utterance is
a situated communication act that depends on the particularities of
speaker, audience, material and genre.
The paper argues that, if digital designing differs from other forms of
designing, then accounts for such differences must be sought by
understanding the material properties of digital systems and the genres of
practice that surround their use. Perspectives from humanecomputer
interaction (HCI) and the psychology of programming are used to
examine how such an understanding might be constructed.

2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: computer supported design, design tools, psychology of design,
philosophy of design, design theory
D
onald Scho¨n(Scho¨n, 1995; Scho¨n and Bennet, 1996) suggests
a characterisation of designing as a conversation with materi-
als. Digital systems are increasingly common, both as the out-
comes of designing and as artefacts used within designing activity. It is
therefore useful, in developing accounts of digital designing, to consider
the nature of conversations that include the manipulation of digital
materials.
In this paper, I draw upon linguistic accounts of the nature of conversa-
tion and dialogue. Using concepts from linguistic pragmatics and from
literary theory, in particular notions of ‘utterance’ and ‘speech genre’, I
develop an account of designing in relation to ‘material utterance’.
I then use this account to review relevant research in humanecomputer
interaction (HCI), and the psychology of programming. Specifically, I
consider research that examines the experience of interacting with
Corresponding author:
Andy Dearden
a.m.dearden@shu.ac.
uk
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0142-694X $ - see front matter Design Studies 27 (2006) 399e421
doi:10.1016/j.destud.2005.11.004 399
2005 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved Printed in Great Britain

notational systems and aspects of interacting with formal systems. I sug-
400gest that these areas of research provide a useful resource from which
more detailed accounts of digital designing in particular domains might
be constructed.
1 Pragmatic accounts of conversation
The use of linguistic pragmatics to support the development of theories
of designing is well established (Lloyd, 2000; Bucciarelli, 2002; Coyne
et al., 2002). Linguistic pragmatics takes as its subject of study, the ac-
tual use, co-ordination and interpretation of language in practical inter-
action between people (Levinson, 1983). From a pragmatic perspective,
the key elements of language are not words and sentences. Instead, prag-
matics introduces techniques such as ‘conversation analysis’ (Hutchby
and Wooffitt, 1998), the study of ‘speech acts’ (Searle, 1969), or analysis
of ‘discourse’ (Yates et al., 2001). A key concept in pragmatics is the ut-
terance (Austin, 1962; Fish, 1980). To contrast with a sentence, an utter-
ance is a specific instance of a specific speaker addressing specific
audience (that may be immediately present or otherwise). An utterance
is always situated in a particular context. An utterance always includes
some expectation of the response from the audience. Such discussions
draw attention to the way in which the form and meaning of our utter-
ances depend upon the context in which the utterance is made.
In considering how the experience and history of speaker and audience
impact on the form of utterances, the Russian literary theorist Mikhail
Bakhtin (and colleagues) propose the concept of speech genre (Bakhtin,
1994; Morris, 1994). Bakhtin contrasts the example of military com-
mands with their archetypal intonation and tightly defined expectation
of audience response (obedience), from the very different utterances,
open to much broader interpretation, shared between intimates. Speech
genres are learned socially through interaction. Bakhtin’s speech genres
can be related to Wittgenstein’s language games (Kerry, 1994). Speech
genres (and language games) are more than merely styles of speaking.
Different speech genres lend themselves to expression of different facets
of our experience; they are associated with particular ways of seeing the
world, highlighting certain aspects whilst ignoring others (Morson and
Emerson, 1990).
Bakhtin argues that the meaning of an utterance can never be finalised,
that is, there is no final oracle to which we can appeal to identify a cor-
rect, incontestable interpretation of the utterance. Instead, every utter-
ance implicates a field of answerability, a social and historical space in
which the factors that shaped the utterance and the consequences of
Design Studies Vol 27 No. 3 May 2006