Prototyping public friction

Exploring the political effects of design testing in urban space

Bibliographic Data

ID5610327
AuthorsMartin Tironi (0000-0001-6569-9527, School of Design Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile Santiago Chile, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume71
Issue3
Pages503-519
Publication date2020-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueBritish Journal of Sociology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0007-1315 • E-ISSN: 1468-4446
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/1468-4446.12718
PMID31849053
OpenAlexW2996207190
LanguageEN
Citations received13
References cited43

The use of prototypes as testing instruments has become a common strategy in the innovation of services and products and increasingly in the implementation of "smart" urban policies through living labs or pilots. As a technique for validating hypotheses about the future performance of products or policies, prototyping is based on the idea of generating original knowledge through the failures produced during the testing process. Through the study of an experimentation and prototyping project developed in Santiago de Chile called "Shared Streets for a Low-Carbon District," I analyse the technique of prototyping as a political device that can make visible (or invisible) certain entities and issues, determining what the experimental entities can do and say. I will show how the technique of prototyping defines modes of participation, what is visible and thinkable, what can be spoken and what is unspeakable. In this sense, I examine two ambivalent capacities of prototyping: as a mechanism of management and enrolment that seeks to prescribe normativities (problem-validating prototype) and as an event that can make frictions tangible, articulating matters of concern and ways to open up alternative scenarios (problem-making prototype

Ambivalence · Architectural engineering · Political science · Politics · Process (computing · Rapid prototyping · Space (punctuation) · Computer Science · Engineering · Innovation, Technology, and Society · Innovative Approaches in Technology and Social Development · Innovative Human-Technology Interaction · Psychology

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