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Bjorklund, Tua; van Der Marel, Floris
Meaningful Moments at Work : Frames Evoked by In-House and Consultancy Designers
Published in:
Design Journal
DOI:
10.1080/14606925.2019.1655179
Published: 01/01/2019
Document Version
Peer reviewed version
Please cite the original version:
Bjorklund, T., & van Der Marel, F. (2019). Meaningful Moments at Work : Frames Evoked by In-House and
Consultancy Designers. Design Journal, 22(6), 753-774. https://doi.org/10.1080/14606925.2019.1655179
Meaningful moments at work: Frames evoked by in-house and
consultancy designers
Tua Björklund and Floris van der Marel
Aalto University, Design Factory, Betonimiehenkuja 5C, 02150 Espoo, Finland
Corresponding author: Tua Björklund (tua.bjorklund@aalto.fi),
Aalto University Design Factory, P.O. Box 17700, FI-00076 AALTO, Finland
Design is increasingly recognised as a competitive advantage for companies, but we
know relatively little of the activities and perceptions of designers in different
organisational contexts. Based on 69 semi-structured interviews with 34 in-house and
35 consultancy designers, this study investigates the type and framing of 291 reported
meaningful moments. We found different dominant experience frames in the two
organisational contexts with different connections to motivation. On the other hand,
most meaningful moments in both organisations were related to the social context and
implications rather than the design activities themselves. The results highlight
professional design being an inherently social and contextual activity, urging more
research to take an organisationally situated perspective to design.
Keywords: framing; sense-making; design practice; psychology of design; motivation
Design is increasingly recognised as a competitive advantage for companies (Magalhães
2018). As the scope of design broadens to more holistic and strategic levels in
organisations, the variety of stakeholders that designers need to successfully engage
with broadens (Pierri 2017). However, we know relatively little of how activities and
perceptions of designers differ in various organisational contexts of design (Nielsen
2017). The few studies that have explored the perspectives of designers themselves have
found noted differences between the perceptions of design and roles taken by designers,
in relation to how designers connect their understanding of design to their actions (Daly
et al. 2012), how they experience cross-disciplinary design practice (Adams et al. 2011)
or how they use art, engineering and business rhetoric (Liu and Hinds 2012).
Aligning with the rise of more situated design research (Lloyd and Oak 2018),
framing and reframing have recently attracted much attention as a key feature of design
practice (McDonnell 2018; Paton and Dorst 2011). In essence, framing is a way to make
sense of ('frame') situations or experiences, selecting which aspects of complex and
uncertain features are attended to (Schön 1983). However, most framing studies to date
have focused on how design problems and solutions are framed (Lloyd and Oak 2018;
McDonnell 2018).
The current paper proceeds to extend the concept of framing to the
organisational experience of designers, investigating what types of events designers
perceive as meaningful moments and how these moments are framed. We view frames
as sense-making of experiences, with the designers rarely being fully cognisant of the
frames they evoke. As McDonnell (2018, 75) states: ‘calling upon the concept of
framing does not imply frame awareness on the part of those engaged in it.’ We create a
framework for perceived value in the designers' experiences by combining the
perspectives of intrinsic motivation (the three innate needs in self-determination theory
[Ryan and Deci 2000]) and external justifications (the six orders of worth [Boltanski
and Thévenot 2006]) to examine self-selected critical incidents reported by 69 designers
in two different organisations. Ultimately, we hope to contribute towards understanding
how organisations shape designers’ work and vice versa.
Theoretical Framework For Examining Meaningful Moments
In order to analyse what designers consider meaningful professional experiences and
how they frame these, we adopt a framework combining internal psychological needs
and social sense-making in the form of two theories: self-determination theory (Ryan
and Deci 2000) and orders of justification (Boltanski and Thévenot 2006). This is by no
means the only possible framework for these experiences, nor do we claim designers
themselves are aware of these frames, rather our framework serves as a scaffold for
examining the perceived value in the experiences reported by designers.
Self-determination theory (Ryan and Deci 2000, 2017) offers an inside-out
perspective on meaningful moments. This widely used theory focuses on the social and
contextual conditions that enhance intrinsic self-motivation, where motivation arises
from the experience itself, rather than from external rewards, punishments or
instrumental goals connected to the experience (Ryan and Deci 2000). Self-
determination theory identifies three innate, universal psychological needs that energise,
direct and motivate (Deci and Vansteenkiste 2004):
(1) autonomy: having volition, agency, and a sense of choice, being able to make
decisions regarding one’s actions and circumstances;
(2) competence: mastering skills, overcoming challenges and having an impact on
one’s environment;
(3) relatedness: interacting with and connecting to others in a meaningful way.
Figure 1. Three innate, universal psychological needs from self-determination
theory (Ryan and Deci 2000)
These basic needs have been found relevant for work experiences in a wide range of
Autonomy
Competence
Relatedness
occupations and professions (e.g. Jungert et al. 2018). Satisfying the needs of autonomy,
competence and relatedness is connected to wellbeing, job satisfaction and profitability
alike at the workplace (Deci et al. 2017). While the theory has received some criticism
on its emphasis on autonomy (sometimes misunderstood as individualism and
detachment, rather than choice as originally intended) and intrinsic motivation, all three
innate needs have been found to apply in cultures around the world (Deci et al. 2017)
and intrinsic motivation fits creative work well, as the necessary behaviours can be hard
to predict and script in advance (Devloo et al. 2014).
We combine this perspective of innate needs to how such experiences are made
sense of interpersonally. Orders of worth (Boltanski and Thévenot 2006) take an
outside-in view on meaningful moments, examining how people critique and justify
their experiences to others (Jensen 2018). Boltanski and Thévenot (2006) identified six
‘orders of worth’: generalised combinations of coherent moral principles through which
actors explain experiences. In these six worlds, legitimisation takes place through
distinct principles of worth (Denis et al. 2007):
(1) inspired: valuing spontaneity, creativity and imagination;
(2) domestic: valuing tradition and hierarchy;
(3) opinion: valuing reputation or esteem (also called ‘fame’ or ‘reputation’);
(4) civic: valuing justice and solidarity, putting collective above individual interests;
(5) market: valuing competition and individual desires (also ‘merchant’);
(6) industrial: valuing efficiency and productivity.
While the addition of other worlds, such as green or project-based worlds, has been
suggested, none have become as well-established as the six original orders (Blok 2013).
Analysing rhetoric that design professionals choose to use when talking about their
daily experiences in an organisation provides insight into how their legitimacy attempts
