9.3 Analysing Language Use in Designing: Practices and Performance

Corresponding Chairs

Senthil Chandrasegaran, TU Delft, The Netherlands

Lisa E. Mercer, University of Edinburgh, UK

Co-Chairs

Nathan Crilly,  University of Cambridge, UK

(Eric) Heng Gu, TU Delft, The Netherlands

Terresa Hardaway, University of Minnesota, USA

Peter Lloyd, TU Delft, The Netherlands

Vivek Rao, Duke University, USA

Abstract

Language is often seen by designers as peripheral to designing, but for design researchers language plays a fundamental role in how a design process unfolds through negotiation, discussion, and resolution of conflicts. The ambiguity and conceptual flexibility of language constitutes all aspects of designing. Language validates lived experiences and shapes our understanding through a cultural lens. However, language also limits our understanding through a lack of cultural situatedness. Thus, language and design can both impose and uphold cultural traditions, whether positive or negative, liberatory or oppressive.

We argue that a shared language must be defined and refined through an understanding of situatedness (i.e. culturally, socially, economically). This intentional way of collaborating fosters a unified approach to dismantling and reimaging racialized and oppressive design approaches. Emerging technologies such as large language models (LLMs) demonstrate the challenges and the potential of new types of dialogical practices between humans and non-humans. While LLMs may further configure design processes and practices through language, their uncritical use in designing could further reinforce cultural biases and systems of oppression. 

This theme track invites papers that analyse the changing nature of language use in designing across all media, disciplines, education, and practice. We invite contributions that focus on how the epistemology and situatedness of language extend or restrict design practice, contributions focussing on the analysis of language in various design contexts, and those that explore new practices, workflows, and performances in design through language and language technologies to support a nuanced co-design process.

Keywords

Language, Design Practice, Situatedness, Collaboration, Context, Computational Models

References

Dong, A. (2007). The enactment of design through language. Design Studies, 28(1), 5–21.

Fricker, M. (2009). Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gu, E.H., Chandrasegaran, S., & Lloyd, P. (2025). Synthetic users: insights from designers’ interactions with persona-based chatbots. AI EDAM, 39, e2.

Oak, A. (2011). What can talk tell us about design?: Analyzing conversation to understand practice. Design Studies, 32(3), 211–234.

Scheper-Hughes, N. (1995). The Primacy of the Ethical: Propositions for a Militant Anthropology. Current Anthropology The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research 36(3), 409–440.