The Political Career of a Prototype: Visual Representation in Design Engineering

This study focuses on the political career of the drawing/prototype pair, a linked series of visually oriented sets, that resides in the borderland between research/development and production in industrial design engineering. In this frontier space both consensus and conflict occur between groups and between individuals. Attention to the metamorphosis of design through interactions centered around the interlinked drawing/prototype pair reveals the social construction of a piece of technology and the group process of the emerging design. Moreover, this examination reveals the strength of visual representations as actants in the design process. Whether three-dimensional plastic prototypes or two-dimensional drawings on paper, visual representations play a crucial role in interactions that organize work, organize knowledge, and recruit and organize resources, political support, and power.