Abstract
Design futures -- as a subfield and as an approach -- responds directly to the precarity and uncertainty of our present. Within this context, the notion that "there will be no future" becomes the dominant vision. This paper argues that design, as a future-making praxis, should embrace ‘care’ to be able to respond to precarity. This paper draws on feminist care ethics and the concept of ‘matters of care’ to explore the theo-retical foundations for a care-informed approach to cultivate future-oriented respon-sibility in design. Care is situated, responsive and relational, and it resists reduction to step-by-step methods or toolkits. Thus, while there is a growing body of work around care ethics in the field of design, application of such concepts in design remains chal-lenging. We draw on examples from ethnographic field work to understand current future-making practices and trace possibilities for fostering care in design.
Keywords
design futures; care ethics; feminist technoscience
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.1295
Citation
Tekogul, I., and Forlano, L. (2024) Cultivating Future-Oriented Responsibility in Design with Care, 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.2024.1295
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Conference Track
Research Paper
Included in
Cultivating Future-Oriented Responsibility in Design with Care
Design futures -- as a subfield and as an approach -- responds directly to the precarity and uncertainty of our present. Within this context, the notion that "there will be no future" becomes the dominant vision. This paper argues that design, as a future-making praxis, should embrace ‘care’ to be able to respond to precarity. This paper draws on feminist care ethics and the concept of ‘matters of care’ to explore the theo-retical foundations for a care-informed approach to cultivate future-oriented respon-sibility in design. Care is situated, responsive and relational, and it resists reduction to step-by-step methods or toolkits. Thus, while there is a growing body of work around care ethics in the field of design, application of such concepts in design remains chal-lenging. We draw on examples from ethnographic field work to understand current future-making practices and trace possibilities for fostering care in design.