Designing for serendipity: a means or an end?
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-12-2021-0234 |
| Published date | 30 August 2022 |
| Date | 30 August 2022 |
| Pages | 589-607 |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
| Author | Annelien Smets |
Designing for serendipity: a means
or an end?
Annelien Smets
imec-SMIT, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium
Abstract
Purpose –This article aims to gain a better understanding of the reasons why serendipity is designed for in
different kinds of environments. Understanding these design intents sheds light on the value such designs
bring to designers, in contrast to the users of the environment. In this way, the article seeks to contribute to the
literature on cultivating serendipity from a designers’point of view.
Design/methodology/approach –An extensive review of the literature discuss ing designing for
serendipity was conducted to elicit the different motivations to design for serendipity. Based on these
findings and a thorough analysis, a typology of design intents for serendipity is presented.
Findings –The article puts forward four intents to design for serendipity: serendipity as an ideal, common
good, mediator and feature. It also highlights that the current academic discourse puts a strong emphasis on
two of them. It is argued that this academic abstraction could be problematic for how we deal with designs for
serendipity, both in theory and practice.
Originality/value –The novelty of this article is that it addresses the question of why to design for
serendipity from a designer’s point of view. By introducing the notion of directionality it opens up the
opportunity to discuss serendipity from multiple perspectives, which contributes to gaining a firmer
understanding of serendipity. It allows to more explicitly formulate the different functions of a design for
serendipity and thereby expands our knowledge on the value of designing for serendipity. At the same time, it
sheds light on the potential threats to designing for serendipity.
Keywords Design, Directionality, Intent, Serendipity, Threats, Value
Paper type Conceptual paper
1. Introduction
Cities with streets whose width allows for eye-contact across the street. Streaming services
that rely on machine learning techniques to recommend novel items. Offices with coffee
machines accessible to employees from different divisions. While this may seem like a listing
of unrelated environments, they all have characteristics that have been found to cultivate
experiences of serendipity (Bj€
orneborn, 2017). In an era where environments seem primarily
oriented toward efficiency and therefore often predictability, there is an ever-growing call for
such designs for serendipity (Andr
eet al., 2009;Reviglio, 2019b). Instances of “serendipity by
design”(Reviglio, 2017)or“artificial serendipity”(Melo and Carvalhais, 2018) have
nevertheless been called an ultimate paradox: the idea that an unplanned experience, such
as serendipity, could be designed and thus planned, would destroy its essential feature (Van
Andel, 1994).
This viewpoint has, however, been contested (Bj€
orneborn, 2017;Makri et al., 2014;Melo,
2018). One of the arguments is that the presumed paradox mistakenly locates the experience
of serendipity within the environment rather than the individual. Scholars have drawn an
important distinction between the viewpoint of the “designer”of the environment, the one
who “successfully asserts control over the environment”(Carr, 2015, p. 835) and that of the
“serendipitist”(Van Andel, 1994, p. 645), the one who experiences serendipity. It is argued
Designing for
serendipity: a
means or an
end?
589
The author would like to thank her supervisor Pieter Ballon and members of The Serendipity Society for
their insightful questions and discussions. In particular, Samantha Copeland who encouraged her to
further study the intentionality of the people trying to make serendipity happen. The author also wants
to thank the two anonymous reviewers who provided thoughtful advice on how to improve upon
previous versions of this manuscript.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0022-0418.htm
Received 1 December 2021
Revised 31 July 2022
Accepted 6 August 2022
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 79 No. 3, 2023
pp. 589-607
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-12-2021-0234
that while it is (likely) impossible to “design serendipity”it is possible to “design for
serendipity”, meaning “create opportunities for users to have experiences they might
(subjectively) perceive as serendipitous”(Makri et al., 2014, p. 2181). Bj€
orneborn aptly
formulates this as “serendipity may be intended by designers but must always be unplanned
by users”(2017, p. 1068).
The distinction between designers and serendipitists continues in the literature on
serendipity. The focal point of existing work could be broadly described by two questions:
how is serendipity experienced by the serendipitist, and how could designers design for
serendipity? I argue that there is an important aspect missing in this discourse: why would
designers design for serendipity in the first place? While prior work has focused on the
valuable outcomes to the serendipitist, such as knowledge creation or social encounters
(McDonald et al., 2008;Yaqub, 2018), little is known about what motivates designers to design
for serendipity. What value is in it for them?
My argument builds on the rationale that products and services in practice emerge in
multi-sided markets (Evans and Schmalensee, 2016). As a consequence, providers
(“designers”) and consumers (potential “serendipitists”) often find themselves at other
sides of the market with potential diverging or even conflicting objectives. Therefore, we
cannot simply assume that if an individual values serendipity, designers also value such a
design. My concern is that when we do not take into account this potential divergence, we
might be missing out on some important consequences about how serendipity is designed for
and ultimately experienced.
This article sets out a first understanding of the various ways designers could value a
design for serendipity. This will not only fill a gap in current scholarly work but also
contribute to our understanding of serendipity and the possible threats to designing for
serendipity. As I will argue in the remainder of this article, different design intents exist, and it
will be important to question the “directionality”of a design for serendipity: who wants what
kind of serendipity for whom? What happens when serendipity is not primarily designed for
the serendipitist but rather for the sake of the designer’s objectives? In a discourse that
encourages cultivating serendipity, it is important to address these questions on value and
directionality, as they might indicate potential threats to designing for serendipity.
In other words, we should be able to answer the question with what purpose (or intent)
serendipity is designed for –is serendipity designed for as a means or an end? To address this
question, this paper is organized as follows. First, I briefly present how value is discussed in
the literature on serendipity thus far. Next, I examine the literature that deals with designing
for serendipity and contribute to the current discourse a typology of four ways in which this
can be valued from a designer’s perspective. More specifically, I distinguish serendipity as an
ideal, serendipity as a common good, serendipity as a mediator and serendipity as a feature.
Following this typology, I highlight three potential threats that come along with those
categories. Finally, the implications for further research are addressed.
2. Background
Serendipity is known as a “vague word”as there is in fact no consensus on its exact definition
(Merton and Barber, 2004;Reviglio, 2019b). Horace Walpole, who coined the term in 1754, was
already reluctant about providing a definition claiming that the word is better understood
“by the derivation than by the definition”(Walpole, 1754 in Merton and Barber, 2004, p. 1).
He recounts the story of the Three Princes of Serendip who were “always making discoveries,
by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of”(Walpole, 1754 in
Merton and Barber, 2004, p. 2). Up until this day, Walpole’s account of serendipity still stands
as the prime inspiration of many works echoing key aspects in their suggested definitions.
Such as Merton’s (1968, p. ix) “discovery through chance by a prepared mind of new findings
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