🗓 March-April 2022
First, the “urban homeless” (UH) intervention is an in-progress project about understanding and designing for and with a diverse group of people in a very specific context: experiencing homelessness. Growing up in large cities, I had always been concerned and interested in the stories of people who find themselves without homes, but the idea for a design intervention came to me as I was volunteering with a local organization who distributes food to people experiencing homelessness in Barcelona. Through going on night distribution walks, speaking to the regular volunteers, and meeting many homeless people in their temporary spaces, I became particularly interested in the different relationships and uses the UH community had with the urban space and objects.
As designers, we are typically designing for target audiences which usually don’t include marginalized communities such as the UH. This poses a danger for the future because it continues to leave a group of people who are already left out, out of the conversation. Hence, perpetuating the cycle of the “rich getting richer” in a sense and colonizing the design. The UH may be an extreme example, but we see this trend happening with other marginalized communities such as immigrants and gender. On the other hand, as I was volunteering, I observed some of these individuals were finding creative uses for objects and materials to assist their needs. For example, someone made an enclosed space with a cardboard box with a cut-out window flap that was held together and released by a bungee cord. This made me question how design can play a role in helping create a better life for the UH community.
Ethically, I knew this would be a tricky project due to the inherent imbalance in power dynamic. I am a designer coming from a place of privilege, inserting myself into a community and lifestyle of lesser privilege and which I have no familiarity with. So I decided to start the process with a series of conversations and questions that would help identify what was important to the UH. I contacted a core member from this volunteer organization and discussed my interests and my preliminary list of questions. My idea was to gather stories, analyze needs, and define the direction of my project through this collaborative method. As I reviewed these questions with the core member, it became apparent that he had little faith that I would get the responses I wanted. I learned a lot in this review, but most of all, that thinking I can insert myself into the UH community, extract stories and information, and use them to create a project in which I would feel helpful, could be unethical. Although we designers tend to think of design as a linear process, we are often limited to thinking about the timeline from which we ideate to when we release the thing into the world. Often detached or having moved on once the design process has been “complete”, it raises an ethical question of how much responsibility the designer has on the impact and extended life cycle of the designed “thing”?
I decided to take a pause on this project, as two of my main volunteer contacts have opted out of helping execute the interviews. But I will continue to reflect on the roll of design and its impact for marginalized communities and find ways to pursue this project in the future.
The second project on “urban diversity” (a collaboration between me and my classmate Borka Morascvik), also involves a underserved community within design: young children. This intervention was a workshop on the topic of urban diversity that took place at the Poblenou Superilla with with young children (ages 5-8) and their parents. Together we imagined the perspectives of diverse human and non-human agents that also inhabit a city (bees, trees, people in wheelchairs, etc.) and their needs in order to co-create a habitable space for them within the urban space. We worked with the children to physically build, draw, and design their own versions of spaces as they empathized with another agent from a different perspective.
In planning this intervention, ethics was at the core of our discussion. Borka and I both wanted to involve participation and co-designing from the ideation phase, so the communities are an active part of making and not just for the research. As we were working with children, we also recognized the power dynamic and tried to not push them too much in one direction and influence the outcome. Which, as we were conducting the workshop, we realized it was really easy for the children to get off-track and we needed a more solid framework.
Reflecting further on ethics, I doubt that any design process or collaborative making process can be 100% ethical to everyone’s standards. Also, as hard as we may try to keep ethics in the process of designing we don’t have full control on the use, the outcome, and the impact of our design. Therefore, I believe, the most important aspect to good ethics is good intention and care. I think a code of ethics is necessary on a foundational level, but to hold ethical values as a way of measurement can be tricky. I will continue to reflect on ethics within the context of my design process and design systems, and would love to continue learning more and sharing ideas in regards to this. I believe, the more perspectives the more wholesome the topic becomes.
Design Ethics
During this year of MDEF, I wanted to explore alternative design methods and approaches which I found lacking within professional experience. These methods included inclusive, accessible, and participatory design. All of which I believe touches upon the topic of ethics and how we can use design to make a better life. Looking back on the year, and through the lens of this assignment, I feel I was able to apply and explore these principles to some extent, and especially through two design interventions: designing for “urban homeless” and “urban diversity”.First, the “urban homeless” (UH) intervention is an in-progress project about understanding and designing for and with a diverse group of people in a very specific context: experiencing homelessness. Growing up in large cities, I had always been concerned and interested in the stories of people who find themselves without homes, but the idea for a design intervention came to me as I was volunteering with a local organization who distributes food to people experiencing homelessness in Barcelona. Through going on night distribution walks, speaking to the regular volunteers, and meeting many homeless people in their temporary spaces, I became particularly interested in the different relationships and uses the UH community had with the urban space and objects.
As designers, we are typically designing for target audiences which usually don’t include marginalized communities such as the UH. This poses a danger for the future because it continues to leave a group of people who are already left out, out of the conversation. Hence, perpetuating the cycle of the “rich getting richer” in a sense and colonizing the design. The UH may be an extreme example, but we see this trend happening with other marginalized communities such as immigrants and gender. On the other hand, as I was volunteering, I observed some of these individuals were finding creative uses for objects and materials to assist their needs. For example, someone made an enclosed space with a cardboard box with a cut-out window flap that was held together and released by a bungee cord. This made me question how design can play a role in helping create a better life for the UH community.
Ethically, I knew this would be a tricky project due to the inherent imbalance in power dynamic. I am a designer coming from a place of privilege, inserting myself into a community and lifestyle of lesser privilege and which I have no familiarity with. So I decided to start the process with a series of conversations and questions that would help identify what was important to the UH. I contacted a core member from this volunteer organization and discussed my interests and my preliminary list of questions. My idea was to gather stories, analyze needs, and define the direction of my project through this collaborative method. As I reviewed these questions with the core member, it became apparent that he had little faith that I would get the responses I wanted. I learned a lot in this review, but most of all, that thinking I can insert myself into the UH community, extract stories and information, and use them to create a project in which I would feel helpful, could be unethical. Although we designers tend to think of design as a linear process, we are often limited to thinking about the timeline from which we ideate to when we release the thing into the world. Often detached or having moved on once the design process has been “complete”, it raises an ethical question of how much responsibility the designer has on the impact and extended life cycle of the designed “thing”?
I decided to take a pause on this project, as two of my main volunteer contacts have opted out of helping execute the interviews. But I will continue to reflect on the roll of design and its impact for marginalized communities and find ways to pursue this project in the future.
The second project on “urban diversity” (a collaboration between me and my classmate Borka Morascvik), also involves a underserved community within design: young children. This intervention was a workshop on the topic of urban diversity that took place at the Poblenou Superilla with with young children (ages 5-8) and their parents. Together we imagined the perspectives of diverse human and non-human agents that also inhabit a city (bees, trees, people in wheelchairs, etc.) and their needs in order to co-create a habitable space for them within the urban space. We worked with the children to physically build, draw, and design their own versions of spaces as they empathized with another agent from a different perspective.
In planning this intervention, ethics was at the core of our discussion. Borka and I both wanted to involve participation and co-designing from the ideation phase, so the communities are an active part of making and not just for the research. As we were working with children, we also recognized the power dynamic and tried to not push them too much in one direction and influence the outcome. Which, as we were conducting the workshop, we realized it was really easy for the children to get off-track and we needed a more solid framework.
Reflecting further on ethics, I doubt that any design process or collaborative making process can be 100% ethical to everyone’s standards. Also, as hard as we may try to keep ethics in the process of designing we don’t have full control on the use, the outcome, and the impact of our design. Therefore, I believe, the most important aspect to good ethics is good intention and care. I think a code of ethics is necessary on a foundational level, but to hold ethical values as a way of measurement can be tricky. I will continue to reflect on ethics within the context of my design process and design systems, and would love to continue learning more and sharing ideas in regards to this. I believe, the more perspectives the more wholesome the topic becomes.