Abstract
Feminist work exists in industrial design and contributes to society, the feminist movement and the industrial design field itself. Though much of the work dates from the 1980s and 1990s, which leaves the contemporary industrial design field without much feminist critique and intervention, and without the many contributions of this body of work. Thus, there is a need to rebuild the body of feminist work in industrial design. However, the feminist movement in industrial design is difficult to grasp and it’s hard to know how to move forward and contribute to this rebuilding. This paper provides recommendations to inform this complex task based on readings on the topic of feminism and a literature review on feminism in design. The recommendations touch-on how to address the limited presence of feminism in industrial design, the contemporary relevance of older feminist work in industrial design and how contemporary feminism could inform newer work.
Keywords
feminism; industrial design
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2016.255
Citation
Prochner, I., and Marchand, A. (2016) Recommendations to rebuild the body of feminist work in industrial design, in Lloyd, P. and Bohemia, E. (eds.), Future Focused Thinking - DRS International Conference 2016, 27 - 30 June, Brighton, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2016.255
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Recommendations to rebuild the body of feminist work in industrial design
Feminist work exists in industrial design and contributes to society, the feminist movement and the industrial design field itself. Though much of the work dates from the 1980s and 1990s, which leaves the contemporary industrial design field without much feminist critique and intervention, and without the many contributions of this body of work. Thus, there is a need to rebuild the body of feminist work in industrial design. However, the feminist movement in industrial design is difficult to grasp and it’s hard to know how to move forward and contribute to this rebuilding. This paper provides recommendations to inform this complex task based on readings on the topic of feminism and a literature review on feminism in design. The recommendations touch-on how to address the limited presence of feminism in industrial design, the contemporary relevance of older feminist work in industrial design and how contemporary feminism could inform newer work.