As a complement to the discourse about showing the seams (and seamful design), I found these lines by Anne Galloway very relevant:
"seams and scars point to where we have in the past made or become something else—and yet they also remind us that we can do so again in the future. If we treat them not as irregularities to be hidden but as indicators of our abilities to intervene in the world, seams and scars offer us glimpses of how we shape and re-shape ourselves, each other, and the worlds in which we live. (...) I find remarkable hope in seams and scars. But because liminal spaces, like all potentials, are also rather uncertain I find good reason to proceed with care. (...) Who is making the cuts? Who gets left behind? What goes forward? Who does the suturing and sewing? Has there been suffering? Healing? Are the seams ugly? Are the scars beautiful? What can we learn about ourselves and others by attending to the seams and scars our work creates and leaves behind?""
Why do I blog this? "seamful design" or how to reveal the seams/limits of technologies is an interesting proposal in terms of design thinking. However, what it implies is often quite difficult to conceptualize in terms of consequences. The paper provides some elements about it.
Galloway, Anne. (in press) “Seams and Scars, Or How to Locate Accountability in Collaborative Work,” in Uncommon Ground, Cathy Brickwood, David Garcia and Willem-Jan Renger (eds.), Amsterdam: BIS Publishers.