Paper 2 -
Annotated Portfolios.

Bailey Newton-Browne.

“As soon as a divide is made between theories and what they are theories of, the tip of techno-science is immediately shrouded in fog. Theories now made abstract and autonomous objects, float like flying saucers above the rest of science, which by contrast becomes ‘experimental’ or ‘empirical.’”

This quote from Bruno Latour was posed in the paper I’m about to discuss. It, like the last paper, is a paper in search of better methods before preproduction. In this case, documentation.

I love this paper, simply because I genuinely believe that if I ever work in or own a company that does design work, I will put this paper’s results to use. Every designer will be using this method and if not, why not?

In the paper, they suggest that when doing a portfolio, you include the *Finished* project when trying to impress an employer but they say, as employers themselves, Bill Gaver and John Bowers suggest that as someone trying to impress another with your existing work, why not let them behind the scenes of your work? Let your employer see what your thought processes were. This will let them dive into your thought process but also into your work ethic. To do this, you could literally create documents of your previous work and rather than only show the finished result, display the processes of your work and the step by step guide that got you to the end result. Only now, annotate them not for yourself, for an audience. This way, people, literally anyone can pick up this document and immediately understand not only the product but all the work and thoughts that went into it. They also pose this as a good feature for research around the field your product would have been in. If you make a new phone, people will be able to see what processes went into making and designing the phone and how you came up with your ideas. Sooner or later, a phone will be created that will benefit more people than the last.

In the paper, they use an old people’s care home as the testing field. The paper itself is an annotated portfolio of their product testing project at the care home. They created products for an elderly audience and tested them in the care home. They displayed the results they got in the form of this annotated portfolio. It’s a great method because after reading, you immediately understand what went into the project and what it was all together. This was a great paper, me and the class thought so too.