This chapter explores the capacities and attributes design offers as a critical mode of inquiry. ... more This chapter explores the capacities and attributes design offers as a critical mode of inquiry. As a critical and communicative medium of exploration embedded in consumer culture, design inquiry offers unique opportunities for research in sustainability. The social and environmental unsustainability we experience in the world is deeply related to the way we conceive of, produce, use, and relate to each other through objects. The discussion looks at the influential role artefacts play in our lives and the contexts that shape their creation. Often the larger economic and cultural contexts that prefigure design intervention can limit the range and creative options available to us. Critical design inquiry offers a means of illuminating and questioning these often unseen or unacknowledged contexts and the values and assumptions that shape current practices in the production and consumption of material culture. The work of designers exploring issues in sustainability are presented as examples of the creative possibilities that critical inquiry through design offers in steering our culture in more sustainable, humane, and meaningful directions.
PIVOT 2021 Dismantling and Reassembling Tools for Alternative Futures, 2021
Relating the concepts of value-sensitive design to decolonial theory, we will describe our attemp... more Relating the concepts of value-sensitive design to decolonial theory, we will describe our attempts to activate resistance to the foundations of modern technicity through a game called Reimagining the Now, which we designed for the Digital Democracies Institute in Vancouver, BC, Canada in collaboration with Dr. Garnet Hertz and the Studio for Critical Making. We argue that, as digital technologies become embedded in every facet of society, any hope of a digital democracy requires sustained public discourse, imagination, and action that goes beyond an understanding of how digital technologies work, towards a comprehension of the value systems, contexts, and consequences of their creation. To do this we devised a custom card set and large paper playmat as a speculative prompt to help participants rethink existing technologies through different value sets, to imagine with us what a digital democracy — and the world it brings with it — might look like. As part of a larger research endeavour, the game experiments with using speculative design methods as fertile spaces for generating a critical imaginary as a productive way to invite publics to think past taken for granted ideas of ‘what is’ towards ‘how what is’ and ‘what could be’.
This short paper demonstrates what critical design pedagogy can bring to disciplines outside of d... more This short paper demonstrates what critical design pedagogy can bring to disciplines outside of design. We briefly discuss some viewpoints on what a critical design pedagogy might require, then introduce a game designed for the workshop Imagining the Possible through the Artificial, at the Digital Democracies Media and Communication Conference in Vancouver, Canada, May 2019. As part of a larger research endeavour, the game experiments with using critical design as a pedagogical approach for media studies, as a means to invite non-designers to think past taken for granted ideas of 'what is' towards 'how what is' and 'what could be'. Our objective is not to turn people into critical designers, but to employ critical design as a process for circumventing established structures of knowledge production in order to develop new transdisciplinary ways to challenge how we think, imagine, see and hear.
This paper offers a contribution to the debate about design for sustainability by considering two... more This paper offers a contribution to the debate about design for sustainability by considering two quite different understandings of our relationship to the world – namely, having and being. The differences between these two notions emerge from a reflection on two places of outstanding natural beauty – one in Canada and one in England. The discussion then moves to the urban context to consider the notion of being, rather than having within the contemporary city. There emerges an understanding of meaning that is deeply related to connecting – with people and place, and a notion of design that is both from and for context.
This chapter explores the capacities and attributes design offers as a critical mode of inquiry. ... more This chapter explores the capacities and attributes design offers as a critical mode of inquiry. As a critical and communicative medium of exploration embedded in consumer culture, design inquiry offers unique opportunities for research in sustainability. The social and environmental unsustainability we experience in the world is deeply related to the way we conceive of, produce, use, and relate to each other through objects. The discussion looks at the influential role artefacts play in our lives and the contexts that shape their creation. Often the larger economic and cultural contexts that prefigure design intervention can limit the range and creative options available to us. Critical design inquiry offers a means of illuminating and questioning these often unseen or unacknowledged contexts and the values and assumptions that shape current practices in the production and consumption of material culture. The work of designers exploring issues in sustainability are presented as examples of the creative possibilities that critical inquiry through design offers in steering our culture in more sustainable, humane, and meaningful directions.
PIVOT 2021 Dismantling and Reassembling Tools for Alternative Futures, 2021
Relating the concepts of value-sensitive design to decolonial theory, we will describe our attemp... more Relating the concepts of value-sensitive design to decolonial theory, we will describe our attempts to activate resistance to the foundations of modern technicity through a game called Reimagining the Now, which we designed for the Digital Democracies Institute in Vancouver, BC, Canada in collaboration with Dr. Garnet Hertz and the Studio for Critical Making. We argue that, as digital technologies become embedded in every facet of society, any hope of a digital democracy requires sustained public discourse, imagination, and action that goes beyond an understanding of how digital technologies work, towards a comprehension of the value systems, contexts, and consequences of their creation. To do this we devised a custom card set and large paper playmat as a speculative prompt to help participants rethink existing technologies through different value sets, to imagine with us what a digital democracy — and the world it brings with it — might look like. As part of a larger research endeavour, the game experiments with using speculative design methods as fertile spaces for generating a critical imaginary as a productive way to invite publics to think past taken for granted ideas of ‘what is’ towards ‘how what is’ and ‘what could be’.
This short paper demonstrates what critical design pedagogy can bring to disciplines outside of d... more This short paper demonstrates what critical design pedagogy can bring to disciplines outside of design. We briefly discuss some viewpoints on what a critical design pedagogy might require, then introduce a game designed for the workshop Imagining the Possible through the Artificial, at the Digital Democracies Media and Communication Conference in Vancouver, Canada, May 2019. As part of a larger research endeavour, the game experiments with using critical design as a pedagogical approach for media studies, as a means to invite non-designers to think past taken for granted ideas of 'what is' towards 'how what is' and 'what could be'. Our objective is not to turn people into critical designers, but to employ critical design as a process for circumventing established structures of knowledge production in order to develop new transdisciplinary ways to challenge how we think, imagine, see and hear.
This paper offers a contribution to the debate about design for sustainability by considering two... more This paper offers a contribution to the debate about design for sustainability by considering two quite different understandings of our relationship to the world – namely, having and being. The differences between these two notions emerge from a reflection on two places of outstanding natural beauty – one in Canada and one in England. The discussion then moves to the urban context to consider the notion of being, rather than having within the contemporary city. There emerges an understanding of meaning that is deeply related to connecting – with people and place, and a notion of design that is both from and for context.
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