This habilitation to conduct researches focuses on the conception of artefacts and favours a theoretical grounding in poetics (reflection on doing), the human sciences and, more specifically, design. From this perspective, we question the processes, approaches and different modes of thinking used to generate ideas and implement them in projects. For this research, we will be looking at the genesis of the artefact, whether it be the work or the product, the everyday object, the commonplace object, the social object, the technical object, the device or the technical system. These objects are artificial. They have been intentionally thought out and created by human beings. In this way, they link the designers to the users and are representative of the context in which they were created.
This creative activity, the production of artefacts, has certain origins in architectural design, which, through ars and technê, establishes ways of inhabiting the world in relation to its time. It therefore plays a central role, and forms a fundamental basis common to the various conceptual professions: design, architecture, styling, engineering, arts and crafts, etc.
What's more, this intellectual and practical activity goes beyond the design professions and, through its uses, makes users aware of the need to consider the world through these technical objects with strong anthropological potential, which raises questions about the need to democratise the different types of knowledge involved. In training courses using creative approaches, design can act as a lever to emancipate the designer's thinking, to modify his or her points of view, to think in project terms, to become an actor within our democracies steeped in technical knowledge.