ux as knowledge work

Thomas WendtSurrounding Signifiers@[email protected]

UX as Knowledge WorkA Few Things About UX You Won’t Learn from Practice Alone

mailto:[email protected]




Thomas Wendt Surrounding Signifiers @thomas_wendt

Thomas Wendt

UX Strategist and Researcher

Founder of Surrounding Signifiers, a strategy and design consultancy

Background in continental philosophy, psychology, and literary theory


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“We live in a world where there is more and more information, and

less and less meaning.” Jean Baudrillard

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Theory and Practice


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Theory? Practice?







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Both







Theorythought

disengagedfrivolousvirtual


Practiceaction

investedproductive

real

Colloquially...

Theoryfoundational


Practiceperformative

Traditionally...

Theoryfoundational


Practiceperformative

Traditionally...

Praxisinformed

action


“Apart from inquiry, apart from the praxis, individuals cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry

human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.”

Paulo Freire


Ancient Greeks

Theory

Practice

Technology Design


Ancient Greeks

Theory

Practice

Technology Design

Praxis

Thomas Wendt Surrounding Signifiers @thomas_wendt http://uxmag.com/sites/default/files/uploads/evanswireframing/

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http://beautifultrouble.org/wp-content/uploads/Beautiful%20Trouble/PRINCIPLE%20Praxis%20Makes%20Perfect/PR_Praxis%20Makes%20Perfect_Praxis





Framing UX


Framing UX


Semiotics


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“A linguistic system is a series of differences of sound combined with a series of differences of ideas.”

Ferdinand de Saussure

Thomas Wendt Surrounding Signifiers @thomas_wendt http://beautifultrouble.org/wp-content/http://fanart.tv/fanart/music/382f1005-

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Thomas Wendt Surrounding Signifiers @thomas_wendt http://beautifultrouble.org/wp-content/http://fanart.tv/fanart/music/382f1005-

e9ab-4684-afd4-0bdae4ee37f2/albumcover/all-eyez-on-

West sideUrban culture

Teenage rebellionGangsta rap

MTVRural/suburban white kids

Conspiracy theory






UItacticaltangiblesignifier

UXstrategic

conceptualsignified

So...

?


UItacticaltangiblesignifier

UXstrategic

conceptualsignified

So...

Not that simple

Framing UX


Phenomenology and Embodiment


“Intelligence and understanding are rooted not in the presence and manipulation of explicit,

language-like data structures, but in something more earthy: the tuning of basic responses to a real world that enables an embodied organism to sense,

act, and survive.” Andy Clark


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Design for Dasein

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Framing UX


Psychoanalysis


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“If knowledge about the unconscious were as important for the patient as people inexperienced in psychoanalysis imagine, listening to lectures or reading books would be enough to cure him. Such measures, however, have as much influence on the symptoms of nervous illness as a distribution of menu-cards in a time of famine has upon hunger.”

Sigmund Freud





Research and Strategy



restaurant pic

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Onward



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Thomas Wendt Surrounding Signifiers @thomas_wendt http://0.tqn.com/d/shoes/1/0/o/K/1/alexander_mcqueen_fashion_show_shoes.jpg



Thanks


Thomas WendtSurrounding Signifiers@[email protected]





ux as knowledge work

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