Anything is a fridge : the implications of everyday designers

Everyday Designers conducted an ethnographic study to explore the way families use and reuse design artifacts, and help to improve the design of interactive technologies in the home. The context of everyday design consider surfaces and objects like the picture and plant form a system as appropriate, depicting the instances of complex and systematic use of everyday items that are appropriated and creatively recombined into highly unique systems. The study looked at usual appropriate design artifacts and surrounding for new and unintended uses as hanging a jacket on a chair, or placing items on a ledge, short wall, or stairs. The evolution of an everyday design system is evident in the creation of organized messages that spread past the front-door area into the nearby small kitchen to include a chalkboard. The system evolved in the process acquired a design complexity that managed distribution, storage, and display of different types of messages and lists for the household.