Learning [is] a conversation with artifacts. People learn by switching roles from being producers to being critics, from being actors to being audiences, from holding the stage to moving into the background. People also zone in and out of situations to change their stance. In other words, no matter how embedded we are in a situation there comes a time when we distance ourselves to look at things from afar. Putting on a critic’s hat and shifting perspectives enable us to engage our own creations as-if they had been produced by ‘another’ or existed independently, and then, reengage them again.
Edith Ackermann, “Experiences of artifacts: People’s appropriations / objects’ ‘affordances,'” pp. 3–4