Audiences in Design - from passive consumers to active users:

Understanding of audiences has changed. Former ideas of viewers, spectators and consumers understood audiences as passive. New ideas have shaped more active terms such as users, participants, respondents and ‘prosumers’. New creative strategies and practices have responded to, engaged with, and produced new audiences. In this proseminar we are going to explore the birth of the user as a key category in design production. In particular, we will seek to understand the way technological objects and processes shape the way designers understand and conceive of users. On the one hand, technologies influence the way designers design for, gather information about and imagine their target audiences. On the other, designers create technologies that shape individual behaviour. In this proseminar we will problematise the notion of the ‘user’ and critically examine the agency of users by exploring key design paradigms in a historical context. We will discuss why understanding and engaging your audience is important and explore ideas of audience as spectator and audience as participant or co-creator. Students are encouraged to actively participate in the discussion. Through self-selected case studies students will research how the user in design is connected to subjectivity. 

Language: German

For successful completion of this proseminar the following requirements apply:

• regular, punctual attendance (min. 80% of all sessions)
• active oral participation in each session in form of comments and critique of the readings and the inputs, (30% of grade)
• a short oral presentation (10-15 min.) of the student’s own case study and reflection on a selected subject in relation to the course content +
• submission of the presentation notes (1000 words) with accompanying images and references (https://www.scribbr.de/chicago-zitierweise/zitieren-im-text-chicago-fuss-oder-endnotensystem/); (40% of grade)
• a poster-zine handout (one A3 or A4 sheet, folded into 8 pages + poster); (30% of grade)

Presentation notes + zine must be uploaded to the Base-folder of the course 24 hours before the presentation.

This proseminar is held in German. Presentations, presenter-notes and zines can be delivered in German or English.

This proseminar considers the social model of disability, that people are disabled by barriers in society such as behaviours, processes, attitudes or physical environments, not by their impairment or difference. We will try to do our best to change disabling factors to accommodate impairments. Please get in touch as soon as possible for us to accommodate your needs.

Office Hours

Wednesdays during term-time, 13:00-14:00 (pre-registration necessary, Postgasse 6 - 2.St. or on Zoom)