[Y]OURS: Distributing Design Agency through Multi-Modal Interactors

How might the design fields critically and playfully approach the question of customization? While user-driven customization experiences are becoming increasingly commonplace, barriers to their mainstream adoption remain, as well as critical questions surrounding the aesthetics and politics of their implementation. This paper is premised on the idea that re-imagining design processes as highly inclusive of, and partially directed by, users, has the potential to enable practitioners in architecture and product design to build on and help shape a growing movement toward collaborative creation. It documents a series of concepts and a prototype for a novel design workflow enabled by playful multi-modal “interactors” linked to materially-informed parametric descriptions which can be produced physically through digital fabrication methods. Through playful interactions combining visual and tactile feedback we show how the prototypes stoke the imagination of designers and users, and offer opportunities for design pedagogy, research and practice. Tapping into the spirit of play, the concepts and prototype suggest new avenues for designers and users to collaborate in the creation of architectural spaces and products.