Rapid Prototyping for Social Science Research

Given social science researchers’ increasing interest in materiality and embodied practices, there is considerable potential for productive methodological engagement with design-based research practices. In this chapter, we explore the potential of conducting social science research ‘through design’ (Lupton, 2018:2, emphasis added). We reflect on a series of workshops investigating the societal implications and impact of digital technologies on the mediation of touch communication. The workshops used the design-based research method of rapid prototyping as a quick and approximate way to engage with ideas of remote digital touch communication that draw the body, touch and materiality into focus. Our emphasis in this chapter is on illustrating the kinds of insights that can be gained through this method, rather than an exhaustive analysis of touch. The chapter first introduces our rationale for using prototyping and our methodology. The second section illustrates the potentials of rapid prototyping as a socially orientated methodological strategy that enabled us, as qualitative researchers, to attend to the body as a meaning making resource, and to materialize ideas, sensory knowing, and wider discourses of personal remote digital touch communication. Drawing on selected episodes from the workshops, we show how this method helped participants to describe, explore or discover aspects of touch communication or stimulate dialogue. This enabled us to ask methodology and content focused questions including: What could we learn about touch through touch during the process of making? How did participants use touch as a form of telling and imagining? What were the social meanings and tensions that emerged around touch and the digital? How were experiential categories employed and made meaningful by participants in the process of making? In the final section of the chapter we reflect on the strengths and limitations of rapid prototyping for social science research, and suggest future developments for its use within social sciences.