Practical quagmires

The practical challenge for the interaction design community is to clarify the understandings of the norms, expectations, and conventions that are commonly associate with critical designs, and to critique and change them, as needed, to make them more fruitful. One approach is to talk to the designer and ask her or his intent. Designers prototyping critical designs need some way to know which prototypes are more critical than others, or how they can or need to be improved. Conversely, it is also easy to imagine a designer intending to create a critical design, engaging in critical design processes, but then creating a design that is not actually critical. The designer intending a design to be critical intends for an appropriate public also to find that design critical. Designs can be presented to people as critical by virtue of their titles and descriptions; their inclusion in certain collections, catalogs, articles, or books; the prior reputations of their designers; and so on.