Comparison and critical evaluation

Presence design requires the involvement of different scientific and design disciplines. This in itself is a major issue. Connecting psychological, sociological, economic, technological, cultural and design, such interdisciplinary approaches require multi-lingual capacity between different communities of practice (Kuhn 2000).

Even when this multi-lingual capacity is available, there is no best solution, no ultimate system to be designed. As history shows, we, as human beings, with our ability to strive for well-being and survival we continually find new ways to adapt, invent and move on. Nevertheless, in today’s world we are dependent on complex systems that define basic utilities, transport, food and water, finance culture, politics and more. Presence as a value for design is fundamental to all of these systems, in particular to support emergence as the outcome of the accumulation of many participants' strive for well-being and survival is most often characterized by processes of self organisation and emergence. This in itself is a challenge, as the process of self-organisation is, by definition, unpredictable.
The need to integrate our strive for survival and well-being in the design process from the start is implicit in each of the approaches discussed above. Note, however, that we, as human beings, are changing due to our networked societies, with ubiquitous technology in pervasive media landscapes. Such changes pertain not only to our own psychological and physiological being, but also to how social structures emerge and function with increasing complexity.

CN , Frances Brazier