Diseña

Introduction to Diseña 22: Design, Oppression, and Liberation (2nd issue)

2023-01-26T10:08:58-03:00

This special edition introduces eight papers at the intersection of design, oppression, and liberation. These papers refer to social structure as a common leverage point to criticize and transform different oppression relations, namely racism, gender, marginalization, epistemic injustice, and colonization. The contributions follow recent moves in social movements and social sciences that recognize that tackling different oppression relations enables seeing oppressive structures more clearly. Nurturing solidarity bonds across different oppression struggles becomes an urgent task in this new field of research we call Oppression Studies of Design. Building upon anti-colonial views on oppression, this field connects design research with the history of changing social structures through liberation struggles.

Project Review: ‘Making Room for Abolition’, by Lauren Williams

2022-11-23T17:30:06-03:00

This review positions Lauren Williams’ installation ‘Making Room for Abolition’, shown in ‘Monolith’ at Red Bull Arts in Detroit, as a speculative design project that presents a two-fold critique: one directed at US society and the other, at speculative design itself. As a discourse and practice, speculative design offers a model for designing in socially-oriented, post-capitalist contexts, but it has yet to fully unmoor itself from colonialist ideology. I present common critiques of speculative design—specifically: the lack of attention to race- and class-based struggles, the assumption that time is absolute, and its stance that preferable futures must be plausible—to show how Williams addresses these shortcomings while centering Black experiences and imagination in a dream of abolitionist futures.

Structures Surrounding the ‘User’ in User Engagement: Gender-based Violence Design Engagements

2022-10-17T14:01:35-03:00

User engagement is a dynamic social process influenced by who is involved and how. Here we argue that designers must account for the structural conditions of users’ lives, as they may have safety, accountability, and political implications. We review current scholarship in the area of user configuration and engagement from a ‘structural’ viewpoint of gender-based violence (GBV), to better understand such considerations. We propose three dimensions that might support designers in deepening their engagement in this area, namely: construction of the user, engagement within the context, and the designers’ position. We combine these dimensions as a framework to review and compare examples of designed outcomes for GBV prevention. This article suggests thoughts and questions to be considered by designers for thinking more structurally about GBV design, and for other contexts involving people experiencing vulnerability.

Design In and From the Periphery: Building a Praxis of Resistance through Collective Investigations

2023-01-08T17:20:47-03:00

This article presents notes resulting from qualitative research with a participatory approach, carried out in person and remotely with a group of young people from the Terra Firme neighborhood, in Belém-Pará, northern Brazil. The aim was to analyze how the engagement of designers in emancipation processes managed by socially oppressed groups can promote transformations in the practices of designers in participatory projects. The theoretical foundation is based on the Latin American critical thinking of authors such as Paulo Freire and Orlando Fals Borda, demonstrating how their legacy influenced designers in participatory projects. The theoretical framework and qualitative research allowed us to consider that the engagement of designers in popular struggles not only influences the change in the scope of projects, but also allows solidarity to emerge as their main element.

Militant Design Research: A Proposal to Politicize Design Knowledge-making

2022-11-23T16:36:30-03:00

This work reflects on how design can engage in emancipatory processes of knowledge-making through Militant Design Research. The argument draws on the work of scholars who are engaged in counter-hegemonic design research and practice, and questions the knowledge production structures within academia. ‘Militant research’ is presented as a Latin American theoretical-political approach to knowledge production in social sciences, engaging processes of research, educational, and political actions, and uniting organic intellectuals, researchers, and social movements. Inspired by this perspective, principles for Militant Design Research are outlined to stimulate alliances between designers and social movements for the collective production of knowledge, to overcome situations of oppression in and out of academia.

The Trousers and Research Methodology for Oppressive Design

2022-12-26T12:13:53-03:00

As clothing represents social, political, and performative values pertaining to gender, it is not surprising that they also serve as oppressive designed objects. One of the most significant symbols of gender power relations were the trousers that women were banned from wearing in the West as a daily fashion item until the second half of the 20th century. This article presents the history of trousers via a new research methodology for studying oppressive design. This methodology is built on Michel Foucault’s approach to genealogical research and Bruno Latour’s ideas about the social agency of objects. Just as Foucault revealed the history of norms, ideas, discourses, and values, which are abstract yet powerful entities, this methodology focuses on identifying the moment in which oppressive objects first entered into daily common use, becoming a new natural and oppressive ‘truth’ that shaped the worldview of its users. This approach builds on Latour’s argument that objects serve as mediating devices of values and discourses between individuals, and the idea that genealogical research concerning their use might expose their socio-historical function and powerful involvement in shaping and policing power relations over time.

The Case for Minor Gestures

2022-11-23T17:23:29-03:00

This paper lays out the groundwork for a concept we define as minor gestures within design education. Moving away from a conversation centered around decolonization—a term, we argue, that has been co-opted to become a placeholder for equality, diversity, and inclusion, and tick-box exercises within academic institutions— we assert that minor gestures create the conditions for meaningful conversations on what it actually means to move towards decolonizing design education. Using examples from our own pedagogical practices, we sketch out and outline a proposition for minor gestures as theory-in-the-making, or an incomplete pathway towards meaningful, structural change.

Design Processes and Tools as Oppression? Rethinking our Design Practice for more Just Design Outcomes

2023-01-17T09:50:50-03:00

Our design processes and tools matter, as our design is always shaped by the processes and tools that we use. Context necessarily shapes the content of our design processes and tools. But, without paying attention to the content emerging from that context, the use of these tools and processes may become oppressive. In the wake of colonialism, the un-reflexive use of design tools and processes underpinned by Western conceptual ideas and schema can lead to oppression for design with non- Western or Indigenous peoples. Even tools and processes designed with a supposedly liberatory intent, such as promoting democratic practice or equality, can lead to oppression in their un-reflexive use. Looking at two experiences from my design practice with my own hapū (clan), this article explores the ways in which ideas of democratic participation and equality raised in these two design spaces could function in an oppressive way to cause a form of violence against our traditional lifeworld. This article proposes some ways in which this aspect of design might be modified to help lead to more just design outcomes, through a more reflective and intentional approach when choosing and applying the design tools and processes we use in our design practice.

Pluriversal Spaces for Decolonizing Design: Exploring Decolonial Directions for Participatory Design

2023-01-06T17:17:56-03:00

Decolonization is a situated effort as it relates to the relations of privilege, power, politics, and access (3P-A, in Albarrán González’s terms) between the people involved in design in relation to wider societies. This complexity creates certain challenges for how we can understand, learn about, and nurture decolonization in design towards pluriversality, since such decolonizing effort is based on the relationship between specific individuals and the collective. In this paper, we present and discuss the ‘River project’, a participatory space for decolonizing design, created for designers and practitioners to reflect on their own 3P-A as a way to create awareness of their own oppressive potential in design work. These joint reflections challenged ideas of participation and shaped learning processes between the participants, bringing to the foreground the importance of seeing and allowing for a plurality of life and work worlds to be brought together. We build on the learnings from this project to propose the notions of pluriversal participation, pluriversal presence, and pluriversal directionality, which can help nurture decolonizing designs towards pluriversality. We conclude by arguing that, for nurturing pluriversality through Participatory Design, participation, presence, and direction must be equally pluriversal.