Design as Translation: what does it mean to have an healthy life?

• Autor(a) principal: Bispo, Renato
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Tipo de documento: Artigo de conferência
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.8/9446
• topic: Design

In modern societies, this question tends to be answered by maintaining the body young and fit, usually thru a low-fat diet and physical activities like run or going to the gym. This way, behaviors related to training have become a materialisation of being healthy, giving body to the concept of “healthy living”. But should we consider this materialization as a definitive translation of the concept of being healthy? Ideas need to be materialized so they can be assimilated in life. Assuming this point of view, Design can be defined as a materialization process which translates concepts into objects and behaviors. Therefore, to design something should be understood as a process of embodying meaning in the language of objects. Complex concepts such as “healthy living” can be broken into several moments and are the result of subjective perception. Objects can serve as catalysts of the experiences that define this perception, creating interactions that can make people feel healthy and transforming the abstract idea of “healthy life” into a concrete perception. This presentation intends to discuss how the perception of having a healthy life should be designed in the future, trying to make clear that to design is not a neutral translation but an encoding process which can profoundly change the meaning of a concept according to the way it materializes it.