Design Rituals Research and Interface
Design Research
Interface Design

Design has become an overarching worldview, a way of relating to and altering culture and environments. Corporations, business schools, and entities worldwide seek to teach design thinking to non-designers, distinguishing the outlook of a designer from that of the rest of the world.

In situating design as a unique way of seeing the world, designers have incorporated ritual elements, specifically props, scripts, and frameworks that the Ritual Design Lab point to as ritualizing human behavior. Many of these rituals begin as personal design rituals. The integration of ritual elements into a design practice has the potential to provide an overarching sense of community and intention to what can be a disparate and disjointed community. These rituals unite members despite time and location divisions.

By exploring the intersection of design rituals and practice, this investigation sought to expand a personal design ritual, specifically concept mapping, to include a larger community. Developing a communal language and script for this ritual allows designers to connect over the process and use it to communicate across the discipline.

This work was part of a presentation at the 2018 Design Research Society conference in Limerick, Ireland. I collaborated with two other designers, Krithika Sathyamurthy and Nida Abdullah, on an exhibition exploring the nature of critique and design rituals. We developed a collaborative website to allow participants to explore the relationship between rituals and critique after the conference.