The Creative Potential of Productive Inconvenience as a Design Approach

Abstract

A prevalent focus in design has for some time been on reducing frictions in everyday lives, a solutions-centric focus on reducing effort and discomfort while fostering convenience. This paper questions this underlying assumption and illustrates with a case study of a research project on human-robot collaboration how abandoning convenience for a turn to inconvenience can become anovel basis for a productive human experience. Inconvenience as a concept is situated within a growing literature that focuses on cracks, slips, and glitches of everyday life and on how we experience technology, rather than the seamless and user friendly imperative. An exploration into the nature of convenience and a discussion of its flip side gives way to a proposal for a design approach that embraces productive inconvenience at its core.