Meaning, knowledge and artifacts, giving a voice to tacit knowledge

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to describe a co-design methodology aiming to incorporate, synthesise and co-create different kinds of knowledge in the design process. Artifacts are creations of body/mind/thing assemblages (Latour, 2007); their physical structure prescribes technical functions existing within a context of human action (Kroes, 2012). The material, the social and the practical exist within a threefold design semiosis (Zingale & Domingues, 2015). The artifact, a “semiotic organism”, acts as the transmitter of values and as a catalyst in shaping cultural systems. The mediation of each of the facets of the artifact produces different types of knowledge, namely tacit, empirical and scientific knowledge while shaping and being shaped through said mediation. Modernity brought about the rise of scientific operationalism and the adoption of scientific knowledge as the sole bearer of truth. Recent reactions to this modernist doctrine have included in the design semiosis other structures of knowledge sprawling around tacit, embodied, experiential and empirical. The aim of the proposed methodology is to bring the structures associated with tacit knowledge to the forefront and holistically synthesize the three different types of knowledge towards a new, more robust artifact that is the means, not the end, of co-creation of meaning through this threefold design semiosis. In order to achieve this, we expand on the idea of layers of abstraction of information appropriated towards knowledge. By understanding the processes of deduction, induction and abduction, we can co-create shared meaning between all the stakeholders of the design project. These three different ways of knowing, in combination with the designer’s intentionality, work together to bring something into appearance, engaging in a process of “poeisis” (Heidegger, 1977).