Changing Design from Margins to Centre:
Developing Feminist Tactics for a more just Design Discipline
My degree project offers an exploration of how we can bring norm-critical conversations and anti-oppressive approaches to practice in industry. Through a decolonial queer feminist lens it is investigating issues of design's entanglement with systemic inequalities and values that are rooted in dominant cultural/societal perspectives and systems.
This project is investigating issues of design's entanglement with systemic inequalities and values that are rooted in dominant cultural/societal perspectives and systems. All these oppressive systems are interconnected and intersectional. They have in common that they privilege one group and make life harder for another group, based on specific characteristics.
This project suggests a transformative learning journey moving from the safe space, where we feel to comfortable to speak up to a brave space, which is essential for having norm-critical conversations on social justice. My research insights as well as my personal experience translated into several artifacts that materialized into an activist toolkit. The artifacts of the toolkit are meant to encourage designers to incorporate design ethics and critical reflection in their daily design work.
Course:
Degree Project 2022
Type:
Design Research, Co-Creation
Team:
Individual
intersectional dictionary
critical design map
Reflection tool
Transformation Journey
moving from the safe space, to a brave space and ultimately into a 3rd space.
Concept
The outcome of this project is twofold: one is the actual and more tangible outcome you can explore here. The final concept is one framework, as mentioned earlier: for the multitude of intersections and forms of oppression, we will need a multitude of frameworks.
This framework works with the idea of becoming an activist, speaking up, a merge of my personal journey in this thesis and the research developed into a learning journey.
2 Learning Journey
With a transformative learning journey and a feminist activist toolkit this project suggests one way of “staying with the trouble” and how to challenge binary regimes from within the design discipline.
Through strengthening allyship, and step by step bridging the gap between academia and industry, between circular and linear thinkers, the activist toolkit is suggesting a form of ritual to create connections which increase critical thinking on a reflective empowering journey to equity. Furthermore, it assists dialogues to unfold concepts of how design embodies binaries in visuals, spatial, and other material practices.
3 Core Drivers for artifacts
Part of the concept were the creation of different artifacts supporting different stages of the journey.
These artifacts were built on the four core drivers community, knowledge building, building confidence, and discuss and measure, and were the foundation to question power, privilege, access and impact within a design project.
Concept Blueprint
The blueprint was made in order to create an overview to navigate through the research materials, the stakeholders and the interactions designed as a consequence.
The different layers show key moments, activity and goals describing the interaction. Research is displaying the methods, theoretical background and research quotes. Horizontally we find the transformation journey moving from a safe space to a 3rd space.
This more conventional service design tool showed itself as very useful to combine feminist theory with more actionable steps. Core idea was to merge a known tool to introduce more unfamiliar insights and approaches.
Journey and artifacts:
from safe space to 3rd space
To explain the transformative learning journey and the role the different artifacts were playing, the fictional persona Robyn helps with the storytelling. The journey displays how Robyn moves from the safe space when she is starting to work at an agency, to the 3rd space.
Safe Space
This is the space where we try to find allies and where we want to educate ourselves
Safe Space
Safe spaces are meant to feel comfortable. Often it is even too comfortable, which means it is not a space for dialogues with socio- cultural diverse groups and about power, privilege, and oppression.
Website
The website and forum is a start of where new designers can connect and find support through others who have been posing simila questions or share similar concerns.
It is a platform and a first step where persona stories, articles, and tools can be found. Through the community the toolkit supporting young design activists in their journey online can be found, as well as through physical objects.
intersectional dictionary
The cards in the journey summarize parts of the research and are still to be found in the „safe space“. They help new designers and activists to collect their insights and gather knowledge. As found in the research in most DEI trainings one of the first steps is to build vocabulary.
The cards come in a format that leaves it open to grow and shrink. I is a collection of vocabulary, and question cards that can be used during the process and can move together with the user from „safe space“ into „brave space“ and help shape arguments. The box is divided into the different sections of
safe/brave and third space.
Additionally to this, Lesley-Ann Noel‘s Critical Alphabet is a great tool to use
throughout the design process.
Brave Space
Reaching out to our colleagues
Brave Space
This space is recreating ground rules when working as social justice facilitators. The brave space is a space created to establish conversations around social justice and is meant to help participants interact authentically with each other in challenging dialogues.
critical design roadmap
The critical design roadmap is an artifact that can be used as a discussion base with team members. It summarizes different questions regarding the design process and is an addition to the double diamond covering important questions and critically investigating our existing design approaches.
3rd Space
Here we manage critical conversations
3rd Space
„The notion of cultural hybridity is about challenging static cultural binary oppositions. By challenging these oppositions, a more nuanced approach towards understanding culture is offered.“
reflection tool
To discuss and measure improvements in the process teams can use this playful reflection and communication tool. To really incorporate critical reflections before, during, and after a project. With this tool it can be decided what things they want to focus on, like connecting to others, building knowledge, taking action, etc. Ultimately questions about: Who is in power, who benefits from this project? What are the privileges they bring? Who has access to the project? What impact do they have? Can be included in the process.
Process
“Rather than going forward, going awkward.” Unknown
Process overview
How can we gain more understanding of how we can bring anti-oppressive approaches and conversations to practice in industry and disrupt the system within design, to not reproduce ideas, aesthetics and politics that manifest western patriarchal structures. This is how I framed my research question. It is quite a wide question and I am constantly in this conflict of narrowing down, specifying, focusing on one little part. But it actually very difficult, as we know that all the layers, all the little bits are intertwined.
Through our education and our profession in design we are used to a solutionist approach, but often that only is a quick fix. This project is not about finding 'the solution'. What I need to define for my own sanity is where to position myself, and the awareness of probably coming out with more questions than I entered.
Theoretical framework for a transformative journey
With a transformative learning journey and a feminist activist toolkit this project suggests one way of “staying with the trouble” and how to challenge binary regimes from within the design discipline.
Through strengthening allyship, and step by step bridging the gap between academia and industry, between circular and linear thinkers, the activist toolkit is suggesting a form of ritual to create connections which increase critical thinking on a reflective empowering journey to equity. Furthermore, it assists dialogues to unfold concepts of how design embodies binaries in visuals, spatial, and other material practices.
Knowledge Base, Lens, Approach
„Decolonial feminism is a feminism that offers a multi-dimensional analysis of oppression and refuses to divide race, sexuality, and class into mutually exclusive categories.“ Françoise Vergès, 2021
In her book „A decolonial feminism“ Françoise Vergès describes a „Decolonial feminism is a feminism that offers a multi-dimensional analysis of oppression and refuses to divide race, sexuality, and class into mutually exclusive categories.“ (2021). Her description strongly supports my approach and aim to investigate matters of intersectionality to understand how racist and heteronormative power creates exclusions within design, and how they cannot be seen as individual forms of oppression.
Literature Review
Initially I was talking way more about 'decolonising design' but after reading "Decolonization is not a metaphor" by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, I am using it with more caution until I further explored the terminology of 'decolonization', also being aware of my positionality as a white person, coming from a country that has profited from colonialism although it had no colonies of its own.
Relation Care
Some of the major insights in this project I have gained through establishing and taking care of relationships with people I had connected to who are advocating for similar matters as I do in this work.
Firstly, I encountered some resistance with this method, or naming it a method but adding it to interviews would devalue it and be disregarding the importance of the relationships that evolved. With „Relation Care“ as a method I want to position myself clearly for an exchange of skills and knowledge with the people we work with as opposed to exploiting users, supporters and anyone involved. Furthermore, I argue for finding allies within my design concept, which can only happen by connecting respectfully and by seeing each other as equals. „Relation Care“ as a method further helped me to continuously involve others and connect to people who have not yet started to implement norm-critical thinking in their processes. It is about those, to touch them with the right questions, elicit different ways of thinking.
About resistance and care
"Staying with the trouble" the title of multispecies feminist theorist Donna Haraway's book really resonated with me throughout the research phase (although I hope I am not misusing her book title too much). Where she is offering provocative ways of looking at the world and all its inhabitants (human and non-human) I am talking about the friction of bringing critical ideas into design practice and the feeling of experiencing resistance in that process. It also made me think of Sara Ahmed, speaking about "being a killjoy" and by trying to make a point being seen as trying "to cause trouble" and getting in the way of others happiness.
The process of connecting with others felt slow and difficult. People who share similar views, but also people who are completely immersed in their corporate environment. It's been the most emails and requests I have written in a long time. Collaboration, communication and politics within companies, introducing new methods, ideas, research, etc. is challenging. To describe this stage in Sara Ahmeds words: "When you expose a problem you pose a problem.".
Interviews / Relation Care Conversations
„To hear with a feminist ear is to hear who is not heard. “, is what Sara Ahmed writes in her book „Complaint!“ (2021), and what I have tried to implement when reaching out to people for interviews. For my process it mainly meant looking into what and how do I frame my questions within the conversations and hear stories that often remain untold.
Relation care particularly involved reaching out and networking with a lot of different people, and especially to create sustainable relationships. It was an ongoing activity across the different
process steps. Often these conversations were set-up as casual get-togethers, where I prepared a handful of questions or sometimes would only reflect on the project with the person I was
talking to.
Main Insights
Co-creation
Originally my aim was to follow a fully co-creative design process, which I do see as a general approach. Starting the literature review it turned out to be more time consuming to lay a foundation of knowledge doing thorough research to gain better understanding and awareness of the cultural nuances, norms, and value systems.
Therefore, I had to shift the planned amount of inclusion and understand how to work effectively within collaborative workshops, where participants can take the lead and are fully acknowledged as the expert and decision maker. The experts (or similar), which is how I describe the workshop participants to shift them from the observer to the actor will be equipped with tools and techniques that support the process.
interactive interviews
“How can we elicit engaging conversations to create awareness and start practicing norm-criticality in design.”
With this question I started into smaller co-creative sessions with mostly designers, but also non-designers. I was curious to explore how people with different backgrounds engage in situations and facilitate conversations around difficult topics. Each session I entered with a template where I was asking for a personal entry point, a personal story, a memory. Next I wanted them to take these moments and asked them what it is, ‘something’ they would have wished for to have in such a situation. Mostly they replied that using business language and coming with a lot of facts was helpful, so something that provides them with facts very quickly would be great.
Co-creation workshops
Negotiable dialogical space
Merritt and Stolterman describe in an article from 2012 that “The notion of cultural hybridity is about challenging static cultural binary oppositions.” Furthermore, they explain that the hierarchies we operate in, require us to balance conversations. In their work they explain the approach connected to design work with indigenous people. It suggests an assembly of humans, non-humans and how we shape and stage each actor. What is crucial in this approach is to create a 3rd space to have a negotiable dialogical space. The so-called “socio-material assembly” which suggests that we have to connect the external, a community and artifacts.
Main Findings
Defining and Refining
As an outcome of the insights from the workshop I formulated some values and ideas that had been highlighted through the exercises. These values serve as a check list against what the concept needs to fulfil.
1. Building knowledge
This also means building confidence and
structure, and it becomes easier to remind your environment of the values they want to convey. We need a strong base to create arguments and show clarity. People thinking more in linear
patterns need to understand the importance of a paradigm shift, and not only check the box of “inclusion”.
2. Finding allies
Creating a community and activating people can be a powerful tool. Creating a personal relation with others, sharing experiences and stories gives us a more powerful voice and helps us be courageous when finding ourselves in moments of critical dialogues.
3. Elicit empathy
Through stories and experiences it is often easier to reach people, even if they have a very different opinion. It is important to approach in a way that is open and does not allow this wall of confrontation to come up, where no one moves from their stance and both sides become inflexible.
4. Accountability
We need to keep ourselves accountable, as well as the people around us have to be. Only when we allow it to be called out and see it as an opportunity to grow and learn, will we move forward.
Different Concept Ideas
Having generated probes and early concepts through research, ideation, and workshops I started mapping the design space by using the design principles previously outlined. Ultimately, through different feedback sessions, and reflections on how in the best way I can communicate my learnings, tell the story of this thesis and make clear what my stance in design is, I created the concept of an “activist toolkit” for designers. This work is intended as a contribution to design for action and social change, and as a support for all designers and people interested in joining that movement. Activism often brings a sense of rebellion and confrontation, but the energy is needed to dismantle and disrupt, as many companies are discovering how their actions have severe consequences.
Map
What if we had a design roadmap with all the right stops and intersections, guiding us, like a compass?
Vocabulary
What if we shared the same language, and had more understanding of the terms together?
Revolutionary blueprint
What if we adapted existing design tools to point out important ethical questions? And therefore, implement questions naturally?
Game
What if we could all sit together and create conversations through understanding different positions in a game?
