Abstract
Design for social good is an area of design in which designers focus on social problems. One way of teaching this type of content is through classes with an international component that mimics an international development project, where students work as a consulting team for an organization in a developing country. However, this type of class sometimes replicates problematic structures in international development such as neocolonialism, the perception that knowledge comes from the Global North. This paper details a workshop that was created to disrupt the negative narratives in this kind of global social design project, such as the design saviour narrative, by introducing elements from critical pedagogy such as critical reflection, examining bias and positionality, introducing ethnographic techniques, and intentionally flipping the power dynamics of the collaboration. Over a two-weekend workshop, students at an American university collaborated with students at a university in the Caribbean. Instead of going through the entire design process, this short class focused on the tension and unfamiliar roles that the students played when the students from the Global South were tasked with identifying issues of their colleagues and other participants from the Global North. The American students expressed their discomfort at being 'studied' at several points during the two-session design workshop. This paper aims to help other educators create learning experiences where students examine their positionality, privilege, and biases, while also creating a space for them to practice humility and reflect on power dynamics in international design work in a very intentional way.
Keywords
decolonizng design, global design studio, pluriversal design, design ethnography
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs_lxd2021.04.275
Citation
Noel, L.(2021) Encountering development in social design education, in Bohemia, E., Nielsen, L.M., Pan, L., Börekçi, N.A.G.Z., Zhang, Y. (eds.), Learn X Design 2021: Engaging with challenges in design education, 24-26 September, Shandong University of Art & Design, Jinan, China. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs_lxd2021.04.275
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Research Paper
Included in
Encountering development in social design education
Design for social good is an area of design in which designers focus on social problems. One way of teaching this type of content is through classes with an international component that mimics an international development project, where students work as a consulting team for an organization in a developing country. However, this type of class sometimes replicates problematic structures in international development such as neocolonialism, the perception that knowledge comes from the Global North. This paper details a workshop that was created to disrupt the negative narratives in this kind of global social design project, such as the design saviour narrative, by introducing elements from critical pedagogy such as critical reflection, examining bias and positionality, introducing ethnographic techniques, and intentionally flipping the power dynamics of the collaboration. Over a two-weekend workshop, students at an American university collaborated with students at a university in the Caribbean. Instead of going through the entire design process, this short class focused on the tension and unfamiliar roles that the students played when the students from the Global South were tasked with identifying issues of their colleagues and other participants from the Global North. The American students expressed their discomfort at being 'studied' at several points during the two-session design workshop. This paper aims to help other educators create learning experiences where students examine their positionality, privilege, and biases, while also creating a space for them to practice humility and reflect on power dynamics in international design work in a very intentional way.