A Framework Towards Understanding the Performativity of Products

Abstract

Products embody possibilities for performativity in everyday actions. These are eliminated in the design process to create usage scenarios. But users interpret product use in terms of performativity. Product use cases are discussed in performativity terms borrowed from performance art literature: iterability, referentiality, delegated performance, performance as a set of task-based instructions outsourced to other people, allowing construction, enabling improvisation, plurality of meanings, collective body, and dependence on time and space. The methodology is structured on applying these to critical design (CD) and activity-centred design (ACD); because while CD bears resemblances to performance art with its position on the subjects of design, ACD focuses on the activities of the user’s body as it performs with products. Body-product relations are considered in the design process; but the potential is greater in terms of performativity. So, the design process can include consideration of the users’ actions and of performativity terms.