The Festival Checklist: design as the transformation of artefacts

The idea that computer systems should be designed through abstract representations of the use domain has been systematically challenged in the Scandinavian tradition of user involvement in design. In this paper it is suggested that ideal design should happen as a transformation of artefacts rather than through abstract representations of domains. Thus the paper emphasises that design and design representations have to be tied to concrete material reality. The transformation idea is based on notions of secondary artefacts and boundary objects. The general ideas in the paper are introduced through a case story about a design project involving a music festival organisation and a group of university researchers, aiming at developing computer support for the planning and production of the festival.