Are We Designing for the Wrong Kind of Production? Rethinking Tools for an Evolving Practice

Contemporary music production comprises an expanding ecosystem of tools. DAWs, plug-ins, sample platforms, AI generators, sharing services, cloud storage and analytics platforms support and expand the possibilities of production. Yet they raise a deeper question: what kind of practice are they designed to support?
This presentation argues that contemporary production has evolved beyond making as its sole emphasis. Instead, it is increasingly shaped by shifting roles and expanding technologies and as such, production increasingly involves mediation so that work can carry forward.
Drawing on practice-based doctoral research, this presentation proposes a shift toward designing tools for navigating production as an evolving practice. It offers work-in-progress and speculative directions for future tools that better account for what production now entails. The central proposition is simple: we are not lacking tools for making. We are lacking tools for navigating what making has become.