Abstract
Design educators often utilize methods to teach students the practices of design. Yet, these popularized methods often wash away mess and inadvertently cultivate aesthetic hygiene among designers. In response, this research explores the following question: How can we instill critical aesthetic reflexivity among designers about the ways that design methods cultivate aesthetic hygiene? In two workshops with design students and practicing designers, we worked with soaps as tangible metaphors to explore the mess that popular methods erase. Exhibited together with prompting questions, these soaps were then used to spark conversations among design educators. Through our analysis of this process, we highlight four material expressions of how design methods repress mess and critical pedagogical questions for cultivating aesthetic reflexivity.
Keywords
service design; failure; queer theory; education
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.207
Citation
Nilsson, F., and Vink, J. (2024) Critical Design Soaps: Resisting the Aesthetic Hygiene of Popular Design Methods, in Gray, C., Ciliotta Chehade, E., Hekkert, P., Forlano, L., Ciuccarelli, P., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2024: Boston, 23–28 June, Boston, USA. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.207
Creative Commons License
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Conference Track
Research Paper
Included in
Critical Design Soaps: Resisting the Aesthetic Hygiene of Popular Design Methods
Design educators often utilize methods to teach students the practices of design. Yet, these popularized methods often wash away mess and inadvertently cultivate aesthetic hygiene among designers. In response, this research explores the following question: How can we instill critical aesthetic reflexivity among designers about the ways that design methods cultivate aesthetic hygiene? In two workshops with design students and practicing designers, we worked with soaps as tangible metaphors to explore the mess that popular methods erase. Exhibited together with prompting questions, these soaps were then used to spark conversations among design educators. Through our analysis of this process, we highlight four material expressions of how design methods repress mess and critical pedagogical questions for cultivating aesthetic reflexivity.