Displacing use: Exploring alternative relationships in a human-centred design process

• The concepts of use and users are critically discussed in relation to design.
• An ethnographically-informed design process that focused on relationships other than use is presented.
• Our design investigations revealed some of the contextual conditions that determine how products are perceived and used.
• Displacing use can be a strategy for design inquiries concerned with understanding conditions of use.

This paper critically discusses the concept of use in design, suggesting that relevant relationships other than use are sometimes obscured by the user-centredness of design processes. We present a design case from the medical device domain that displaced the concept of use from the centre of a human-centred design process. We identified alternative design-relevant relationships between people and devices that are not specifically tied to the functions/uses of the devices, e.g. relationships between the healthcare professional and the device, between doctors and patients, and between patients and their own medical conditions. Displacing use can be a valuable strategy for design, revealing some of the contextual conditions that influence an artefact's use, and broadening the space of alternatives explored in design.