Pelle Ehn
Pelle Ehn is professor at the School of Arts and Communication at Malmö University, and one of the founders of the school and of the Interactive Institute, the associated national research institute. For the last 15 years his research has been focused on design and digital media. His books and papers in journals and international conferences on the subject include Computers and Democracy (1987), Work-Oriented Design of Computer Artifacts (1988), Scandinavian Design - on skill and participation (1992) and Manifesto for a Digital Bauhaus (1998).
Publications by Pelle Ehn (bibliography)
Ehn, Pelle (2011). Encyclopedia chapter titled "Page title suppressed - page not yet published". Retrieved 14 December 2011 from Interaction-Design.org: [URL suppressed - page not yet published]
Ehn, Pelle (2008): DOC and the power of things and representatives. In: DOC08 2008. pp. 31-32.
“Social life is communication. To live in a society means sharing things. And this we do not through, but in, communication. That is how things become common, and hence how communities are formed.”
© All rights reserved Ehn and/or ACM Press
Moyes, Jackie, Buur, Jacob, Jarrett, Caroline, Ehn, Pelle, Howard, Steve and Brereton, Margot (2005): Book smarts meet street smarts: the best of both worlds. In: Proceedings of OZCHI05, the CHISIG Annual Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2005. p. 1.
“This panel will discuss how academia can contribute to industry practice and how industry practitioners can contribute to academia. We will focus in particular on how theories and practices are formed and shaped in different settings. We will discuss when academic theories and practices help industry, when and why they are discarded, and how they are transformed in industry settings.”
© All rights reserved Moyes et al. and/or their publisher
Ehn, Pelle and Badham, Richard (2002): Participatory Design and the Collective Designer. In: Binder, Thomas, Gregory, Judith and Wagner, Ina (eds.) Proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference 23-25 June, 2002, Malmö, Sweden. pp. 1-10.
“Is and should there be a place for the Aristotelian virtue of phronesis in contemporary participatory design practice and for design as an act of anxious love? In this paper we take a critical look at participatory design and reflect upon the virtues of the collective designer. Towards a background of the dreams and lost utopias of some related collective designers of the past: the Bauhaus, Nordic design and Scandinavian collective systems design, we suggest that
our attention should not be on the great espoused design
ideals but on the politics-in-practice of the collective
designer. The really interesting collective designer in
practice might very well be much more of a “machiavellian”
reflective practitioner than an objective scientist or
politically correct utopist.”
© All rights reserved Ehn and Badham and/or their publisher
Bødker, Susanne, Ehn, Pelle, Sjogren, Dan and Sundblad, Yngve (2000): Cooperative Design Perspectives on 20 years with "the Scandinavian IT Design Model. In: Proceedings of the First Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2000. .
Ehn, Pelle and Lowgren, Jonas (1996): The Qualiteque: Systems at an Exhibition. In Interactions, 3 (3) pp. 53-55.
Ehn, Pelle (1992): Scandinavian design: On participation and skill. In: Adler, P. and Winograd, Terry (eds.). "Usability: Turning technologies into tools". Oxford University Press pp. 96-132
Cited on the following page:
» Participatory Design: [Not yet published]
Ehn, Pelle and Kyng, Morten (1991): Cardboard Computers. In: Greenbaum, Joan and Kyng, Morten (eds.). "Design at Work: Cooperative Design of Computer Systems". Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Cited on the following page:
» Participatory Design: [Not yet published]
Johnson, Jeff, Ehn, Pelle, Grudin, Jonathan, Nardi, Bonnie A., Thoresen, Kari and Suchman, Lucy A. (1990): Participatory Design of Computer Systems. In: Carrasco, Jane and Whiteside, John (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 90 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference 1990, Seattle, Washington,USA. pp. 141-144.
Ehn, Pelle (1988): Work-Oriented Design of Computer Artifacts. Stockholm, Arbetslivscentrum
Bannon, Liam, Ehn, Pelle, Greif, Irene, Howard, Robert, Kling, Rob and Stefik, Mark (1988): CSCW -- What Does it Mean?. In: Greif, Irene (ed.) Proceedings of the 1988 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work September 26 - 28, 1988, Portland, Oregon, United States. pp. 191-192.
Bødker, Susanne, Knudsen, Jørgen L., Kyng, Morten, Ehn, Pelle and Madsen, Kim Halskov (1988): Computer Support for Cooperative Design. In: Greif, Irene (ed.) Proceedings of the 1988 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work September 26 - 28, 1988, Portland, Oregon, United States. pp. 377-394.
“Computer support for design as cooperative work is the subject of our discussion in the context of our research program on Computer Support in Cooperative Design and Communication. We outline our theoretical perspective on design as cooperative work, and we exemplify our approach with reflections from a project on computer support for envisionment in design - the APLEX and its use. We see envisionment facilities as support for both experiments with and communication about the future use situation. As a background we sketch the historical roots of our program - the Scandinavian collective resource approach to design and use of computer artifacts, and make some critical reflections on the rationality of computer support for cooperative work.”
© All rights reserved Bødker et al. and/or ACM Press
Ehn, Pelle (1988): Playing the Language-Games of Design and Use on Skill and Participation. In: Allen, Robert (ed.) Proceedings of the Conference on Office Information Systems 1988 March 23-25, 1988, Palo Alto, California, USA. pp. 142-157.
“This paper deals with computers and cooperative work. Focus in not on applications for cooperative work, but on the cooperative process of designing such and other computer applications. Focus is on the role of skill and participation in design as a creative and communicative process. The paper suggests a need to go beyond the Cartesian philosophical assumptions of rationalistic reasoning as epistemology and dualism as ontology, so strongly embedded in traditional design methods. There are many philosophical candidates for such a reinterpretation. In this paper I have chosen to elaborate on language-games and the ordinary language philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Hence, focus is on the shift in design from language as description towards language as action. Some consequences of such a shift is illustrated with reflections on examples from UTOPIA (a research and development project for skill enhancing computer based tools for graphic workers), and with design ideas on an application simulator from a new research programme on Cooperative Design and Communication.”
© All rights reserved Ehn and/or ACM Press
Bjerknes, Gro, Ehn, Pelle and Kyng, Morten (eds.) (1987): Computers and Democracy - a Scandinavian Challenge. Aldershot, England, Avebury
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Changes to this page (author)
11 May 2011: Updated the picture of Pelle Ehn11 May 2011: Author was edited 20 Apr 2011: Page was edited
17 Feb 2010: Enabled abstracts to be shown on Pelle Ehn's author page.
07 Apr 2009: Author was edited
29 Sep 2007: Conference Article was added to the page (approved by an editor)
29 Sep 2007: Author was added to the bibliography (approved by an editor)
24 Jul 2007: Author was edited
22 Jun 2007: Author was edited
28 Apr 2003: Added the author to the bibliography
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