Pursuing aesthetic inquiry in participatory design

We introduce aesthetic inquiry as an important perspective to pursue in Participatory Design. Within the scope of tradition and transcendence, we pursue aesthetic inquiry by tipping the scale towards transcendence, and by staging offline loops for detached reflection through the use of imaginative artefacts. Although aesthetic inquiry resides to some extent in most Participatory Design practice, we see the need to elaborate this perspective, and to further build Participatory Design practice, tools, and techniques that address this issue. The Fictional Inquiry technique is presented as an illustrative example of a design technique for pursuing aesthetic inquiry, by using fictional narratives to temporarily bypass the existing structures of meaning and expectations within a given practice. We illustrate how Fictional Inquiry was utilized in a participatory design project, in which two design concepts for the Kattegat Marine Centre were developed. Author