One of the contributions of this study pertains to the design research methodology. Since in section 7.2 above I have proposed a shift towards an ANT of design, in this section I set a new research agenda for design studies. When considering design through the lens of the ANT framework we are not just looking at the designer and the design problem, but opening it up to other actors, hence making it more transparent. Researchers employing this approach to inquire
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on the design process need to concentrate on illuminating the network formation process as well as investigating the human and non-human alliances and their networking effect (Tatnall, 2009). The interactions and associations formed among the actors and the resulting network are the most important issues. The actors are seen simply as the sum of their interactions with other actors and networks (Tatnall, 2009). As Yaneva (2009, p. 282) suggests, “An ANT approach to design would consist in investigating the culture and the practices of designers rather than their theories and their ideologies [...]”. Thus researchers should concentrate on elucidating the negotiations that result in the networks which are enacted and configured through the actions of both human and non-human allies. My thesis in this regard is that expanding the network vocabulary of ANT to the field of design research should mobilise this method’s persistent ambition to account for and understand (not to replace) the objects of design, its institutions and different cultures.
For example, in conducting this study I was guided by ANT’s post-human ontology, where I looked at all things in the Web 2.0-facilitated collaborative design as made equally of human and non-human influences; and its epistemology, where I sought to describe how the intertwined relations between human and non-human elements constituted the collaborative design process. My methodological approach to data collection was to follow the actors, stopping to collect the traces that they left and sitting down to write rich descriptions that show the fluid associations among things, as well as revealing what gave the actors the energy necessary to act. However, this was not a simple matter, because it entailed dealing with complicated entanglement, since Web 2.0-facilitated collaborative deign is a messy process that is constituted by heterogeneous actors. Nevertheless, it is ANT’s business to provide an account of such a dynamic process in which messy relationships among actors are forged, negotiated and maintained.
ANT allowed me to explore the Web 2.0-facilitated collaborative design process as a network creation process from a ‘flat’ ontological basis in which there is symmetry between human and non-human actors. As we have established in the literature review, ANT does not give any a priori power or complexity to actors, but such reality is built on the relations and is understood by following the connections between actors. ANT’s ‘flat’ ontology represents networks as non-hierarchical, self-organising, collaborative, and flexible with a topological spatiality (Latour, 2005). Latour (2005)’s ‘flat ontology’ neither looks up to a macro-scale for explanations, nor down to a micro-scale, but rather looks across the network of material
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relationships to explain the phenomena it finds. ANT argues that the idea of a ‘context’ or a global point of view assumes a coherence and smoothness that belies the translation and negotiation of “small, sensuous, specific, heterogeneous, non-coherent” (Callon, 1986a, p. 13) networks that make up things in the world. However, as Aanestad (2003) notes, Latour’s adoption of a ‘flat ontology’ does not mean that hierarchies and scales do not exist. It rather means simply that if you wish to go from one site to another, then you have to pay the full cost of relation, connection, displacement, and information (Aanestad, 2003). The metaphor of a flatland was simply a way for ANT observers to clearly distinguish their job from the labour of those they follow around (Latour, 2005, p. 220).
The foregoing discussion shows that designing is not a dry or cold domain of material relations;
its investigation should shed light on other types of non-social ties that are brought together to make the process durable. Extending ANT to the field of design requires us to mobilise this approach’s insistent ambition to account for and understand the objects of design, its institutions and different cultures (Yaneva, 2012). This means that design researchers should concentrate on understating the design process in action, its networks and artefacts, instead of trying to provide a social, psychological, historical or other explanation of design (Yaneva, 2009). In other words, an ANT approach to design should comprise an investigation of the culture and practices of designers rather than their theories and ideologies. This implies following what the designers are doing in their daily actions as they engage in designing. Thus, for us to understand the constitution of the design process in complex environments such as Web 2.0 platforms, we should not limit our analysis to the discourses of designers. Dealing with the discourses of designers in isolation misleadingly separates the social and the technical dimensions of engineering design. In so doing, we fail to embrace the diversity of the design process (Yaneva, 2009).
ANT-inspired methodology to study collaborative design should be able to capture the movements of designers in the entire design space, from the design studio to all the other nodes, including the VDS of Web 2.0 platforms. The research methods employed should enable the inquirer to follow the designers and other actors’ practices and account for their actions and transactions throughout the entire design context. Data collection through static means such as questionnaires obscure the dynamics of the collaborative design process, hence in this research I traced the trajectory of the design process as the actors engaged each other and the design problem, noting the specifics, pathways, actors and actions that constituted the collaborative