“Feelings about the other body”: Caring through and forward in design for play

This paper considers designers’ embodied engagements while designing for play from the lens of “care.” We consider such engagements as socio-material relations of care, following recent theorizations of care within care studies. Relying on observations from a variety of activities undertaken by students during a two-week design workshop on embodied play design, we present a theoretical model that identifies two orders of care in design activities: First order, “care through,” indexes the immediate objects that designers attend to in the here-and-now while implementing procedures, practices and tools provided by diverse design methods. Second order, “care forward,” indicates the future beneficiaries of designed things, who are typically, though not necessarily, the projected users of design. The paper contributes to design literature by providing a model for investigating the affective and practical relations of care in design practice, with implications for how specific design activities and methods frame care.