Tracing the tensions surrounding understandings of agency and knowledge in technology design

The literature suggests that prevailing understandings of the makeup ofdesign knowledge and agency in producing design knowledge in technologyis not helpful for design processes and its practitioners.Tensions arise within processes of designing, when design knowledge isunderstood as objective, whilst subjectivity is experienced in the researchmethods employed. In the same time, knowledge production is pursued inan individualist manner, where the situated nature of knowing as aninterplay of factors, likely reaching beyond personal traits and humanintention, is not acknowledged.In this way, design processes are currently working against their inherentpotential with likely effects on designers and subsequently design outcomes.The arising tensions cause issues for practitioners, who are stuck in betweenan objectivity demand and experienced subjectivity, without an alternativeconception of their work.Practice-oriented conceptualisations of social dynamics, how things are, andcome to be, as well as existing research in consumption practices andsustainable design, have shown that agency and knowing conceptualised asemerging from practice might reconcile this tension. It is therefore that weargue for a reconceptualization of the makeup of knowledge and agency inknowledge production, so that these advancements in conceptualisingpractices can be of service to the technology design discipline.