Ron Wakkary: Beyond Human-Centered Design

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Ron Wakkary is a professor of design at Simon Fraser University’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology in Canada. He is also a professor, holding the Chair of Design for More Than Human-Centered Worlds, in the industrial design department at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands.

Ron is the founder of the design research studio Everyday Design Studio (EDS). At EDS, he works with Will Odom and an evolving cast of students to produce multi-disciplinary design research that is highly engaged with the practice and craft of design. For UX designers and industrial designers looking for ideas and inspiration from social sciences, humanities, and philosophy executed in design artifacts, the work from EDS is a fantastic resource.

Ron recently published the book Things We Could Design: For More Than Human-Centered Worlds via MIT Press. The book packages his research focused on “post-humanist design” rather than human-centered design, bringing non-human stakeholders like nature, climate, and biological diversity into the focus of design methodology.

Books Mentioned in the Conversation

• Design Research through Practice by Koskinen et al.

• Discipline & Punish by Michel Foucault

• In Praise of Shadows by Junichiro Tanizaki

• Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux

• Staying with the Trouble by Donna Haraway

• The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff

• The Overstory by Richard Powers

• The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram

• Things We Could Design by Ron Wakkary

• Vibrant Matter by Jane Bennett

• What Things Do by Peter-Paul Verbeek

Connect with Ron

Twitter | Everyday Design Studio