Critical Design in Context: History, Theory, and Practice

by Matt Malpass

He shows that function is not limited to practicality in use and classifies five very different types of function: • Structural articulation, which refers to the object’s material structure; • Physical function, which refers to the utilitarian task of the object; • Psychological function, which pertains to the user’s emotional response to the object; • Social function, which refers to the nature of the activity that the object provides with regard to the social dimension; and • Cultural-existential function, which has more profound cultural and symbolic characteristics that include the existential being of the individual using the object. In similar terms, archaeologist Michael Schiffer writes that an object can have three different sorts of function.