All of the Things: Engaging Complex Assemblages in Communication Design

Abstract

In this paper, we compare sociocultural theories of communication and user experience design to scholarship from associative and new materialist approaches. We argue for a more expansive and symmetrical perspective on communication design---one that broadens the scope of potential actors that affect user experiences, and that more strongly considers their effects on communicative activities. We posit three ways in which this perspective may be operationalized: (a) accounting for the missing masses, (b) designing for flat ontologies and radical symmetry, and (c) designing for interagentivity. Finally, we offer an initial heuristic for deploying such approaches and discuss scenarios in which they may prove fruitful.