Perfect Objects for Imperfect Bodies, Perfect Bodies for Imperfect Objects. Why Does Design Need Extreme Users?

Abstract

Despite knowing that perfection is an unsteady concept, mass society is unlikely to escape normalising pressures and be susceptible to negative differentiations of bodies, such as those with functional diversity. However, in co-creative design processes, these bodies can be understood as extreme-users and are welcomed for their diversity and empowerment. Artefacts similarly undergo inclusion and exclusion in creative and productive processes. Therefore, the stigmatisation and standardisation of human and artificial bodies are made explicit in extreme-users, whose importance in design processes lies in addressing them with no negative differentiation with respect to ordinary users, implying that objects’ flaws would be embedded as identity and semantics. This paper questions the dualism of perfection/imperfection attributed to bodies and artefacts by normalising domains, and expects to corroborate design as a social activism tool for catalysing the paradigm of inclusion.