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From Crisis To Transformation: The Role Of Creative Practices In Organisational Transitions, Milad Hajiamiri, Giulia Calabretta, Peter Lloyd, Fatma Korkut Jun 2024

From Crisis To Transformation: The Role Of Creative Practices In Organisational Transitions, Milad Hajiamiri, Giulia Calabretta, Peter Lloyd, Fatma Korkut

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Organizational transitions can evoke a range of reactions and emotions among employees, departments, stakeholders, and leaders. To effectively manage the transition, it is crucial to comprehend how organizations experience and design change to navigate the various challenges of the transition process. This study investigates how changes in the working environment of the catering staff of a convention centre in the Netherlands led to the formation of a close-knit community that not only embraced the change but also developed innovative approaches for addressing local and social challenges. We draw on interviews with 16 individuals from the organization and use social practice …


Drawing-Philosophy Correspondence: Towards Transforming From Within, Caroline Hummels Jun 2024

Drawing-Philosophy Correspondence: Towards Transforming From Within, Caroline Hummels

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The global call for transformation towards a more just, sustainable and pluriverse world has also materialised within the design field, asking for new design practices that embrace open-ended and relational processes. Several approaches emerged over the last decades, built on different values, and investigating ontological, epistemological, ethical, and practical dimensions. In this pictorial, I explore what these new practices can be and do, through embarking on a drawing-philosophy correspondence journey. This pictorial shows my three-year quest to explore the role of drawing for researching design for societal transformation. By visually researching philosophical concepts such as correspondence, commoning, minor key, and …


Visioning And Managing Change: Analyzing Strategic Designers' Approaches In Salient Podcast Episodes, Ruchita Arvind Mandhre, G. Mauricio Mejía, Wenqi Zheng, Kendon Jung, Xueting Wu Jun 2024

Visioning And Managing Change: Analyzing Strategic Designers' Approaches In Salient Podcast Episodes, Ruchita Arvind Mandhre, G. Mauricio Mejía, Wenqi Zheng, Kendon Jung, Xueting Wu

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Strategic design considers strategy as the core deliverable of practice, where designers are intentional about creating change. However, there is limited research that reveals change as a deliverable in these projects. The purpose of this study is to understand how experienced practitioners do strategic design and to identify their approaches for behavioral, organizational, and social change intentionally. With many experienced strategic designers invited to podcast shows, we analyzed the content of salient podcast episodes. This qualitative study uncovers themes, methods and approaches that expert strategic designers use to implement intentional change. We found that strategic designers embed themselves in particular …


Activating Key Principles Of Systemic Design Through Exploratory Prototyping, Maria Vitaller Del Olmo, Nicola Morelli, Amalia De Götzen, Luca Simeone Jun 2024

Activating Key Principles Of Systemic Design Through Exploratory Prototyping, Maria Vitaller Del Olmo, Nicola Morelli, Amalia De Götzen, Luca Simeone

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Working towards sustainable futures demands competencies and methodologies that support system thinking and action. While prototyping has been designated as a promising method to facilitate complex systemic design processes, studies proving this potential are scarce, and scholars call for a shift in the definition and use of traditional prototyping when applied in design processes targeting complex systems. This paper describes the observed contributions of exploratory prototyping in the emergence of systemic design principles. Results from three systemic design workshops illustrate the role that exploratory prototyping played in the understanding and framing stages of design processes targeting complex systems, particularly in …


The Space Between Procedural And Situated Ethics: Reflecting On The Use Of Existing Materials In Design Research On Children Affected By Stroke, Pleuntje Jellema, Piet Tutenel, Birgit Moser, Anne-Sophie Schoss, Maja Kevdzija, Andrea Jelić, Ann Heylighen Jun 2024

The Space Between Procedural And Situated Ethics: Reflecting On The Use Of Existing Materials In Design Research On Children Affected By Stroke, Pleuntje Jellema, Piet Tutenel, Birgit Moser, Anne-Sophie Schoss, Maja Kevdzija, Andrea Jelić, Ann Heylighen

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Conducting design research in hard-to-enter care environments with children affected by stroke poses important ethical questions. Research focuses on procedural ethics or on situated ethics, emphasizing a hard-cut between research practices be-fore and during fieldwork. This paper explores this duality through an investigation of publicly available existing materials (i.e., biographies and YouTube videos). What was intended as a preparatory step before ‘entering the field’ becomes the primary way to better understand the role of the built environment in everyday lives of families affected by childhood stroke. In this paper we reflect on the shared space the investigation creates within a …


“Feelings About The Other Body:” Caring Through And Forward In Design For Play, Ida Kathrine Hammeleff Jørgensen, Harun Kaygan Jun 2024

“Feelings About The Other Body:” Caring Through And Forward In Design For Play, Ida Kathrine Hammeleff Jørgensen, Harun Kaygan

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper considers designers’ embodied engagements while designing for play from the lens of “care.” We consider such engagements as socio-material rela-tions of care, following recent theorizations of care within care studies. Relying on observations from a variety of activities undertaken by students during a two-week design workshop on embodied play design, we present a theoretical model that identifies two orders of care in design activities: First order, “care through,” indexes the immediate objects that designers attend to in the here-and-now while implementing procedures, practices and tools provided by diverse design methods. Second order, “care forward,” indicates the future beneficiaries …


Designing In Argentina With Indigenous Groups, Catalina Lucía Agudin Jun 2024

Designing In Argentina With Indigenous Groups, Catalina Lucía Agudin

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Indigeneity in Argentina has historically been oppressed. The project presented here is a collaboration between design researchers and students from Buenos Aires and Indigenous groups in Northern Argentina that combines anthropologi-cal and design methods. Participatory experiences are at the core of the pro-posal. Interactions within the communities led to various lines of work. The top-ics varied from textile production, natural coloring, traditional nourishment, and construction to didactic materials for schools within intercultural bilingual edu-cation. The results show not only material outcomes, but also how the project moved its participants. In light of the widely differing worldviews, the learning process became …


Paradigm Shifts In Research Assessment For Scientific Publishing: Emerging Models In A Pluriverse Perspectivs, Lorela Mehmeti, Elena Maria Formia, Eleonora Lupo Jun 2024

Paradigm Shifts In Research Assessment For Scientific Publishing: Emerging Models In A Pluriverse Perspectivs, Lorela Mehmeti, Elena Maria Formia, Eleonora Lupo

DRS Biennial Conference Series

In the realm of design, research publication undergoes a transformative shift in evaluation and emerging forms that prompt investigation into the distortive impact of the current assessment framework on publication diversity. The complexity of assessing research quality within institutional frameworks and career metrics hinders innovation, and globally, debates on impact factors drive a shift to qualitative, responsible evaluation. The article explores how collaborative methodologies enable new assessment practices for design communities in the Global South, challenging Western-centric peer-review norms to adopt a more pluriversal perspective. It includes an introduction problematising the status of publication assessment in the general scientific domain. …


The Future Of Digital Care_Drafting Design Spaces, Venere Ferraro, Carmen Bruno, Silvia Maria Gramegna Jun 2024

The Future Of Digital Care_Drafting Design Spaces, Venere Ferraro, Carmen Bruno, Silvia Maria Gramegna

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The paper presents the findings of a scoping review to explore the key themes within the digital care domain. The study not only encompasses the research methodology employed, which adheres to established guidelines for scoping reviews—research questions, screening, data charting, and visualization—but also explores the principal themes that emerged in the field of digital care. These themes include Distributed Care, Self-Care, and Health Booster Technologies, each of which is expounded upon in detail. The paper emphasizes how digital technologies, such as mobile applications, wearable devices, and IoT systems, have the potential to reshape the care paradigm by improving and enhancing …


The Heritage Language And Graphic Landscape Of London's Chinatown, Robert George Harland, Angelina Hang Pan, Alison Barnes Jun 2024

The Heritage Language And Graphic Landscape Of London's Chinatown, Robert George Harland, Angelina Hang Pan, Alison Barnes

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The preservation of minority heritage through language is widely recognised as an important means for safeguarding ethnic identity within multicultural settings. This paper investigates the visibility of "heritage language" through the lens of graphic heritage within the distinctive ethnic enclave of London's Chinatown. Located in the City of Westminster, Chinese identity is officially designated on street nameplates that demarcate geographic boundaries as well as depict a shift in the cultural influence of this migrant community. In this study, the visual analysis of 209 retail signs displays 313 instances of language. The research findings indicate the extent of retention of heritage …


Expertise Profiling In Design Schools: A Theoretical Framework, Ehsan Baha, Tomás Dorta, Philippe Gauthier Jun 2024

Expertise Profiling In Design Schools: A Theoretical Framework, Ehsan Baha, Tomás Dorta, Philippe Gauthier

DRS Biennial Conference Series

A renewed interest, propelled by the European Bauhaus initiative, has sparked a re-evaluation of design education in response to the growing complexity and interdisciplinary demands of design, encompassing both craftsmanship and academic discipline. While ongoing discussions focus on school types, curriculum development, and pedagogical approaches, there is an oversight in examining the expertise profiles of design educators. These profiles encapsulate the competencies and proficiencies of teaching staff, profoundly influencing the ethos, objectives, philosophy, and substance of education institutions. This paper proposes a theoretical framework delineating three archetypal expertise profiles for design educators: design practitioner, design researcher, and hybrid, nuanced to …


Training Designers In The Pluriverse: The Experience Of Studio Wudé With Leather Crafts In Senegal, Caroline Grellier, Cécile Ndiaye Jun 2024

Training Designers In The Pluriverse: The Experience Of Studio Wudé With Leather Crafts In Senegal, Caroline Grellier, Cécile Ndiaye

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This article reflects on design and the training of designers from a West African perspective, based on the experience of Studio Wudé, a workshop which has been working in Senegal since 2006 to transmit endogenous knowledge about leather transformation. Through an analysis of the Studio's pedagogical design approach, the aim is to question in West African contexts the relevance of the historical dissociation between thinking and doing, at the genesis of a Western industrial capitalist design culture whose spread in West Africa has accelerated over the past five years via the emergence of higher design education based on a Western …


Transforming Design Museums For Redesigning Design, Anja Neidhardt-Mokoena, Heather Wiltse Jun 2024

Transforming Design Museums For Redesigning Design, Anja Neidhardt-Mokoena, Heather Wiltse

DRS Biennial Conference Series

There is a need for spaces that can support reflecting on and reimagining design, and redirecting it toward sustainment and justice. Such spaces would necessarily operate with the understanding that design is ontological and has political consequences. We might think of such spaces as metabolic design museums. In this paper, we imagine how metabolic museums might help to redesign design through keeping process at their heart and critically unpacking design’s involvement in urgencies as well as possibilities to envision and move towards more just futures. To do this, we build on intersectional feminist analysis of existing design museums through museum …


Drifting By Friction: Playing With Ontologies Of Design, Mathias Poulsen Jun 2024

Drifting By Friction: Playing With Ontologies Of Design, Mathias Poulsen

DRS Biennial Conference Series

In this paper, I will trace the ‘drift’ that has happened in my PhD project, ‘De-signing for Playful Democratic Frictions’. I argue that it has been driven primarily by the friction that emerged between the diverse components in my ‘research-assemblage’. The aim is not to resolve the friction, but rather to enhance and fol-low it as far as I can. I suggest that a playful attitude is helpful for lingering with this friction, and that such a stance can allow us to see things otherwise ob-scured by tales of historical necessity. This notion of drifting by friction may in-spire strategies …


Design Principles Of The Pluriversal Design Paradigm, Eveline Van Zeeland Jun 2024

Design Principles Of The Pluriversal Design Paradigm, Eveline Van Zeeland

DRS Biennial Conference Series

When scientists embrace a different paradigm, this naturally leads to a shift in aca-demic behavior. While the importance and necessity of the pluriversal design framework are evident, understanding how this paradigm influences academic conduct is less clear. Through a systematic literature review of 103 academic papers on the pluriversal approach, it is deducted what it is that researchers do or suggest to do when shaping their research and design practice through the pluriversal de-sign paradigm. In this study, the pluriversal design paradigm is distilled into a set of foundational prerequisites and design principles. These design principles can be applied by …


Participatory Design Research, Documenting The Experience Of Gainesville Local Drag Performers., Gilberto Corona Jun 2024

Participatory Design Research, Documenting The Experience Of Gainesville Local Drag Performers., Gilberto Corona

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This case study documents the process of research, identification, and co-creation —with members of the drag community— a visual ethnography of Gainesville's drag culture. This study documented drag performance as an integral element of public-facing queer communities and took place during 2021 and 2022. Drag GNV aim is to contextualize the importance and nuance of drag as an activity supporting LGBTQ+ individuals and communities and as a publicly visible format for sharing elements of LGBTQ+ community identity with broader audiences. This research focused on conversations with the queer community (performers and allies) and centered reflections on drag venues as safe …


Shanzhai As A Pluriversal Praxis: Challenging Western Design And Innovation Paradigm, Dan Mu Jun 2024

Shanzhai As A Pluriversal Praxis: Challenging Western Design And Innovation Paradigm, Dan Mu

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper explores the concept of Shanzhai ('fake' in Chinese), a Chinese practice often associated with imitation and design plagiarism, this study uses Shan-zhai to critique dominant forms of innovation, framed by a discussion of pluriversal design. Through a comprehensive literature review and empirical research, this study explores Shanzhai's evolution from a response to globalisation and de-sign colonisation to a reflection of identity. Shanzhai's unique approach challenges dominant design narratives, but in its own way emphasises inclusiveness and innovation. The study concludes that Shanzhai transcends its initial role as a design and manufacturing practice, evolving into a cultural phenomenon symbolising …


Designer-Maker: Merging Cognition And Construction In Practice-Led Design Research, Laureen Mahler Jun 2024

Designer-Maker: Merging Cognition And Construction In Practice-Led Design Research, Laureen Mahler

DRS Biennial Conference Series

In the decades since the establishment of design research, efforts to identify the nature of design knowledge have repeatedly returned to the question of design’s relationship to science. The resulting debate is often framed by the opposing tenets of positivism and constructivism, and this gap continues to characterize research across the discipline. This paper challenges the paradigmatic divide between cognition and construction through an examination of practice-led design research and, more specifically, a redefinition of the designer-maker. It presents perceptual space as an active, multimodal medium where cognition and construction emerge simultaneously, as evidenced by the work of the designer-maker. …


When A Tree Says No: Towards A More-Than-Human Consent Notion For Design, Franca Lopez Barbera Jun 2024

When A Tree Says No: Towards A More-Than-Human Consent Notion For Design, Franca Lopez Barbera

DRS Biennial Conference Series

A growing body of more-than-human approaches in design reconsider and re-articulate design’s relationship to the natural world through relational frameworks. However, such endeavours do not come without difficulties and may even reproduce the very logics they seek to overcome. Despite the prolific efforts within the design community, overcoming the modern/colonial legacies of design and its anthropocentric paradigm remains a formidable challenge. Departing from the Quebracho Colorado tree as a guiding example, this paper delves into a gender and decolonial analysis of the notion of consent that underscores design’s role in reproducing extractive approaches to nature. It then goes on to …


Embodying The Driving Experience Through Ai Driving Assistants As A Means Of Noticing The More-Than-Human, Olga Barbara Lackner Jun 2024

Embodying The Driving Experience Through Ai Driving Assistants As A Means Of Noticing The More-Than-Human, Olga Barbara Lackner

DRS Biennial Conference Series

On the road, a shift of agency away from human drivers is taking place with AI-based roadside monitoring and driving assistants. This changes interaction both within the car and with the environment outside of it, mediated by driving assistant algorithms. It also changes encounters with the non-human, framing and evaluating them from a technological lens. This paper aims to show how the human experience of their environment during a car ride is shifted through AI, where encounters with non-human entities are observed and logged by technology, and how this can be used to remediate passengers’ experience of their environment during …


Designing For Intimate Wellbeing: Aidee, A Qualitative Approach To Urine Home Monitoring, Margherita Motta, Delphine Ribes Lemay, Sebastian Baez-Lugo, Annelaure Klaus, Nicolas Henchoz, Emily Groves Jun 2024

Designing For Intimate Wellbeing: Aidee, A Qualitative Approach To Urine Home Monitoring, Margherita Motta, Delphine Ribes Lemay, Sebastian Baez-Lugo, Annelaure Klaus, Nicolas Henchoz, Emily Groves

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Despite the widespread use of self-tracking technologies for promoting personal wellbeing, there is limited research on the monitoring of intimate data, particularly urine. To shed light on the design possibilities within this unexplored domain we designed Aidee, a prototype system composed of an app and interactive device that assists users in performing urine monitoring through qualitative data expression and ambient physicalization. To evaluate our prototype we conducted an exploratory between-subjects study involving 54 participants. Our findings indicate user acceptance for qualitative data expressions in the domain of personal wellbeing. Moreover, our study underscores that the combination of an app and …


Discovering Design Implications For Future Food Experiencing Artifacts, Yağmur Kocaman, Damla Gözde Kocaman, Oğuzhan Özcan Jun 2024

Discovering Design Implications For Future Food Experiencing Artifacts, Yağmur Kocaman, Damla Gözde Kocaman, Oğuzhan Özcan

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Despite the growing number of research in Human-Food Interaction (HFI), studies mainly adopt a technology-oriented approach. The field focuses on creating foods computationally, leaving the device design neglected. This paper addresses this oversight by focusing on a prominent technology as a case study (i.e., 3D Food Printing) and exploring new forms and meanings HFI technologies may embody. We first explored domestic users' food-related dynamics, habits, and preferences in everyday life (N=19). We then present the outcomes of design workshops with 25 professional designers, resulting in 73 unique concepts aligned with the in-sights from domestic kitchen users. Overall, we extracted ten …


Expanding Participatory Design: Reflections On Current Epistemological Framework In Dark Time, Zi Yang, Kin Wai Michael Siu, Xinzhe Zhao Jun 2024

Expanding Participatory Design: Reflections On Current Epistemological Framework In Dark Time, Zi Yang, Kin Wai Michael Siu, Xinzhe Zhao

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Participatory design is a quintessential representation of human-centeredness. The recent climate crisis and threats to survival have pushed designers to consider the well-being of non-human entities. Many designers have already attempted to incorporate non-human entities (including animals, forests, and rivers) into the design process. They have strived to refine and readjust design thinking and practice within the participatory design framework. However, most practices resemble the 'pseudo-participation' of human subjective imagination. This study raises ethical and ontological epistemological issues based on Latour's profound philosophical insights. Specifically, in the case of non-human entities participating in our future becoming, how will the role …


Pluriversal Design In One Situated Place: An Approach Rooted In The Interface Between The Local And The Global, Iris Y. Luo, Renata M. Leitao Jun 2024

Pluriversal Design In One Situated Place: An Approach Rooted In The Interface Between The Local And The Global, Iris Y. Luo, Renata M. Leitao

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This essay posits that a Place-Based approach is the prerequisite for fostering fruitful and mutually-respectful form of social design in the emerging paradigm of pluriversality – contextualized within the contemporary global order. The concept of "Place" serves as the nexus between the Local and the Global: it's where intermediaries reside, translation unfolds, and power dynamics intensify. By examining four historical phases from the pre-colonial period through post-modernity, this work looks into the evolution of the concept of Place and its role in the construction of power. This discussion encourages designers to ground themselves in the local, embedded within communities, while …


Enacting Sustainability-Centered Design Curricula: The Role Of Ethos In Translating Educational Goals Into Pedagogy., Charlotte Kessler, Janice Rieger Jun 2024

Enacting Sustainability-Centered Design Curricula: The Role Of Ethos In Translating Educational Goals Into Pedagogy., Charlotte Kessler, Janice Rieger

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The concept of sustainability ethos can be defined as a context enabling an articulated set of educational aims and values to translate into curricula and promote capabilities that empower graduates to create change towards sustainable futures. While emerging as an important factor in developing sustainability-centered design curricula, further research is required to fully comprehend its educational significance, and how it intersects with the prevailing outcome-based approach to higher education curriculum development. This paper draws from interviews with academics and graduate students from three sustainability-centered design programs internationally to explore what enabled sustainability to be integrated in the programs. The findings …


Transitions To Multispecies Futures In The Design Classroom, İdil Gaziulusoy, Eeva Berglund Jun 2024

Transitions To Multispecies Futures In The Design Classroom, İdil Gaziulusoy, Eeva Berglund

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Sustainability Transitions and Futures is a mandatory course of the Creative Sus-tainability master’s program in the Department of Design of Aalto University de-livered jointly by the co-authors. It aims to provide a basic understanding of how sustainability transitions projects unfold in practice and the ways through which designers can contribute to these projects as part of interdisciplinary teams. For two consecutive years, we focused on multispecies sustainability. We have pro-vided the students with the necessary theoretical and critical lenses through a curated selection of guest lectures from fields including law, philosophy, urban ecology and planning. For the practical part, the …


Speculative Design Positions On Future Liveable Cities, Leigh-Anne Hepburn, Emrah Baki Ulas, Densil Cabrera, Clare Cooper, Phillip Gough, Kazjon Grace, Luke Hespanhol, Marius Hoggenmueller, Wenye Hu, Kiran Ijaz, Yaron Meron, Andres Pinilla, Callum Parker, Ricardo Sosa, Yasemin Tekmen Araci, Jody Watts, Bow Wu, Mariana Zafeirakopoulos, Rohan Lulham Jun 2024

Speculative Design Positions On Future Liveable Cities, Leigh-Anne Hepburn, Emrah Baki Ulas, Densil Cabrera, Clare Cooper, Phillip Gough, Kazjon Grace, Luke Hespanhol, Marius Hoggenmueller, Wenye Hu, Kiran Ijaz, Yaron Meron, Andres Pinilla, Callum Parker, Ricardo Sosa, Yasemin Tekmen Araci, Jody Watts, Bow Wu, Mariana Zafeirakopoulos, Rohan Lulham

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Designing for future liveable cities demands a spectrum of perspectives, each responding in some way to global and local challenges, from climate change to safe housing. However, enabling spaces for often juxtaposed, contradictory and cooperative voices, both hopeful and cautionary, can be challenging. This paper is a first step in harnessing pluralistic expression through design fiction as an approach to speculating on design’s role in future liveable cities. In presenting individual speculative positions, authors attempt to reconcile their personal experiences, disciplinary expertise, and vision. This collective voice represents disciplinary diversity including – but not limited to – artificial intelligence, co-design, …


Story Seeds: Creating Interactive Narratives For Visitors Of Outdoor Heritage Sites, Saad Ahmed Maqbool, Debbie Maxwell Jun 2024

Story Seeds: Creating Interactive Narratives For Visitors Of Outdoor Heritage Sites, Saad Ahmed Maqbool, Debbie Maxwell

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The lack of interpretation when considering the outdoor cultural heritage sites has the potential to limit the engagement and educational potential of these sites, as well as presenting a missed opportunity for visitor engagement. We pre-sent an approach that explores the development of interactive stories specific to users that documents their journey through a physical site via a tangible artefact – The Abbot’s Book. We describe the Research through Design process, which in-cluded interviews with Museum and Heritage experts, and the creation of two design prototypes that acted as probes to explore the potential to provoke emo-tional, empathetic relationships with …


New Interest-Based Social Action As A Design Approach For Youth Community Reconfiguring In The Post-Pandemic Era, Haoyu Dong, Jun Zhang Jun 2024

New Interest-Based Social Action As A Design Approach For Youth Community Reconfiguring In The Post-Pandemic Era, Haoyu Dong, Jun Zhang

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The pandemic has led to increased social distancing and feelings of depression among youth, a significant shift from their previous engagement in activities that enhanced their social skills and community involvement. With the easing of the pandemic, youth re-engaged with their social contacts and skills by participating in new interest-based activities, such as urban camping and frisbee sports. However, the process of how these activities foster youth social behavior changes remains under-explored. This study investigates how emerging interest-based activities facilitate youth social behav-ior and community identity, providing guidance for youth community design. Through a cross-disciplinary sociology-design framework, the "Youth Social …


Power Signifiers: The Subtle Forms Of Power In Design Practice With Marginalized Craft Communities, Seher Tabasum Mirza Jun 2024

Power Signifiers: The Subtle Forms Of Power In Design Practice With Marginalized Craft Communities, Seher Tabasum Mirza

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper discusses how craft practice may offer empowerment strategies for critically reflective spaces, that allow for social transformation, using the case of traditional textile communities of women in rural Pakistan where development opportunities are limited. It uses the reflective practice of its design researcher, to explore established power relations, and search for new dialogues that build meaningful relationships for creating new forms of power in interrelated social, development and design contexts. This practice-based discussion contends with the embedded layers of power arising from social constructs and those extending beyond. A combined methodology, ‘Power Signifiers’ is presented as a critically …