Johan Redström

About Johan Redström

I’m Johan, Professor of Design here at HDK-Valand since 2025. I work with research and education across all three cycles. I’m especially interested in emerging design practices and in research through design (including its more philosophical and theoretical aspects).

If I were to trace some key characteristics across the different themes and topics I have worked with, it would very likely be that they all have to do with design contexts and situations where emerging possibilities and problems challenge existing ways of thinking and doing, and where experimental, critical and speculative design can help find interesting ways forward.

I once started out with an interest in what designing new technologies and new materialities could be like as computers turned from machines people used at work to become things we live our entire lives with. Such questions were central to my PhD thesis, called Designing Everyday Computational Things, that I defended here at the University of Gothenburg in 2001. Further developing what is now called Interaction Design, I was involved in establishing Interaction Design as subject here through the making of a Masters programme at the newly started IT-University in 2001, and I later became Docent in Interaction Design here (2008).

My research is probably best described as research through design combined with a strong interest also in its more theoretical and philosophical aspects. I’ve been a researcher with, and the Design Director of, the Interactive Institute, a Swedish research institute that was set up to explore intersections between art, design and new technologies. I was with the institute between 1998-2012, with some exceptions as I’ve also been Associate Research Professor at the Center for Design Research, at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, in Denmark (2006-2007), and an a part-time Adjunct Professor in Design Theory at the Swedish School of Textiles, University of Borås, Sweden (2009-2010). In 2012 I joined Umeå Institute of Design as Professor of Design to establish a PhD program and develop the research environment. I’ve also had other roles at UID, such as heading the school as Rektor between 2015-2018. Over the years, I have also had several external roles, such as being member of the Swedish Research Council’s committee for Artistic Research (2018-2024). And if you would like to see an example of a recently finihsed project, please take a look at DCODE (https://dcode-network.eu).

To briefly illustrate my research interests, there a few central themes:

As examples of my interest in the methodological and conceptual foundations of design research in general and research through design in particular, the following might be a start:

Redström, J. (2017). Making Design Theory. Cambridge: MIT Press 2017.

Koskinen, I., Zimmerman, J., Binder, T., Redström, J., and Wensveen, S. (2011). Design Research Through Practice: Lab, Field and Showroom. Waltham: Morgan Kaufmann.

Redström, J. (2020). Certain Uncertainties and the Design of Design Education. She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation, 6 (1): 83-100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sheji.2020.02.001

In recent years, many of the themes and questions that I have been interested in seems to involve More-than-Human and Posthumanist approaches to design. Such examples include:

Redström, J. & Wiltse, H. (2019). Changing Things: The Future of Objects in a Digital World. London: Bloomsbury.

Giaccardi, E. & Redström, J. (2020). Technology and More-Than-Human Design. Design Issues, 36 (4): 33–44. https://doi.org/10.1162/desi_a_00612

Giaccardi, E., Redström, J., & Nicenboim, I. (2025). The making(s) of more-than-human design: introduction to the special issue on more-than-human design and HCI. Human–Computer Interaction, 40 (1-4), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/07370024.2024.2353357

Some of this work is a continuation of my interests in digitalization and machines, areas that now take new directions with the introduction of generative AI at a large scale and astounding pace:

Giaccardi, E. Murray-Rust, D., Redström, J., & Caramiaux, B. (2024). Prototyping with Uncertainties: Data, Algorithms, and Research through Design: introduction to the special issue. ACM Transactions on Computer- Human Interaction (ToCHI), 31(6), 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1145/3702322

Hauser, S., Redström, J. & Wiltse, H. (2023). The widening rift between aesthetics and ethics in the design of computational things. AI & Society, 38, 227–243. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-021-01279-w

Redström, J. (2026). Arts of Living with Machines. International Journal of Design, 20(1), 71-75. https://doi.org/10.57698/v20i1.06

(And speaking of AI, Google Scholar probably keeps a more complete record of my publications than I do in any one place online)

If you for some reason would be interested in my earlier work on technologies, materials and use, the following were important to me at the time – and still are:

Hallnäs, L. and Redström, J. (2001). Slow Technology; Designing for Reflection. In: Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, Vol. 5, No. 3, 2001, pp. 201-212. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/PL00000019

Redström, J. (2005). On Technology as Material in Design. Design Philosophy Papers, 3(2), 39–54. https://doi.org/10.2752/144871305X13966254124275

Redström, J. (2006). Towards User Design? On the shift from object to user as the subject of design. Design Studies, Vol. 27, Issue 2, pp. 123-139. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2005.06.001

Redström, J. (2008). Re:Definitions of Use. Design Studies, Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 410-423. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2008.05.001