Abstract:

Even before the pandemic revealed the deeply rooted dimensions of systemic inequity across national and international communities, design education had been pivoting towards equity-oriented design. Topics such as universal design, inclusive design, participatory design, and more recently, decolonizing design- all seek to challenge systems of oppression that silence voices, limit participation and exclude the ‘Other’. In 2016, the Stanford d.school added two dimensions to its Design Thinking model, in order ‘to hold the vulnerability and courage needed to develop one’s self-awareness as a equity-centered designer’ (Anaissie, Cary, Clifford, Malarkey, & Wise, n.d.). This new Equity-Centered Design framework adds two design modes: Notice and Reflect. Both involve bringing transparency into the design process, including transparency about the ‘Self’ of the designer. This involves ‘self-awareness of your own identity, values, emotions, biases, assumptions and situatedness’ (ibid). It's important to nurture opportunities for reflection on the make-up of design students’ cultural identities. This term is intentionally pluralized as everyone has multiple intersecting identities, cultures and value systems which create the complex nature of how we perceive, react and respond to the world around us. We ask the question: can design students engage in a dialogue, seeking to foster constructive relations and co-creation within diversity, when they do not really understand the party they represent: Their Self? Our arguments are supported by data collected in 2021 from a global cyber-design charette, which included undergraduate interior design students located in the UAE, US and Mexico. Data collection was the foundation for a doctoral dissertation exploring the intersections between design and peace-building citizenship education: a qualitative study on intercultural dialogue through design. A key finding identified the struggle design students faced in unpacking their cultural identities. The focus of this presentation will identify three key themes: students understanding the visual narratives of their cultures, translation of diverse identities into a design artifact, and what can design educators do to foster more awareness about the Self in the student-designer? As we champion a participatory ‘design with, rather than design for’ approach, it is important to be cognizant of evolving power dynamics among diverse concerned parties in a design project, including unrepresented voices, and that does not exclude the designer’s ‘Self’. The data collected in the study revealed that students often singularly associated identity with ethnicity; overlooking gender, religion, race, (dis)ability, sexual orientation, status and more. Before transformative thinking to address systemic inequities can begin, designers need to engage in a process of unpacking their positionality and the systems of oppression they have been a part of, or subjected to. This process of ‘unpacking’ should not be taken for granted and requires safe spaces for Self-reflection and Self-reflexivity before claims of being an equity-centered design can be made. Valuing the identity of all stakeholders, including the designer, requires undergoing a sometimes uncomfortable process of questioning and uncertainty. Through this process, we can develop a greater potential for designers’ valuing diverse perspectives, inciting a new universal paradigm of inclusion and equity-oriented design.

Keywords:

Equitable design, universal design, inclusive design, participatory design, collaboration, cyber collaboration, identity, culture, critical thinking.