Quasi-design: Breaching presentations in academia

In this thesis, I explore academics’ methods of presenting knowledge in academia. My central concern is academics’ expectations of the use of Microsoft PowerPoint and similar software in routine academic presentations. I argue that academics’ expectations of presentations are informed by design, the breaching of which reveals new knowledge of these expectations. In this research I draw on design, ethnomethodology’s breaching experiments and actor-network theory’s notion of script to develop the notion of quasi-design. This methodology is developed to be applicable in academia through the case studies of this research. In these case studies I undertook participant observation among academics who go about presenting knowledge in conference presentations, lectures and mock research interviews. I then breached these presentation scripts. Subsequently, I developed a method of design-led research that involves breaching not only scripts informing interaction between people and things but quasi-scripts containing atmospheres. These atmospheres are important as they affect my research participants who reveal their expectations of presentations by adopting, resisting or transforming disruptive breaches into quasi-breaches. Breaching presentation quasi-scripts therefore affects academics who reveal their expectations of presentations as informed by design. Through this, I inform our understanding of ethnomethodological breaching experiments, actor-network theory’s notion of script, interdisciplinary social research situated between design and sociology and presentations given in academic settings. To conclude, I outline quasi-design as involving the breaching of quasi-scripts to explore people’s expectations revealed inadopting, resisting or developing quasi-breaches in situations of presentation inacademia and perhaps beyond.