Send message to Author

Short abstract:

Teaching design principles & methods and their standardised toolkits risk reproducing a fixed set of normative values which fail to align with the multiple student visions of 'designer' futures. What ethnographically-informed modes of design justice can we imagine and place in the design classroom?

Long abstract:

Becoming a part of the capitalist Silicon Valley dream has long been a student goal that educators on design programmes either embrace or rile against using agile, critical, socially responsible, or human-centred design frameworks. With its elitist culture and technocratic capitalist visions of the future, big tech still offers a brighter future for those that manage to make the cut. In the UK, international students see digital design as a pathway to improved socio-economic status, in contrast to a lifetime of exploitation and resource extraction which mainly benefits citizens in the Global North. However, teaching design principles and methods that champion standardised toolkits to students with a variety of goals, risks reproducing and codifying a fixed set of normative values in technologies that extend into its implementation and use. This paper uses a mix of ethnographic insights on how the design of video meeting technologies re-enact bias and a reflection on how well current design approaches such as speculative critical design and inclusive design address these issues. Considering experiences in the classroom, I question how well these existing methods work to create sufficiently expansive spaces in which students can engage with socially responsibile design, while also speaking to their individual goals and visions for their futures. Finally this paper looks at the different definitions of design justice that emerge among students and how to teach to these multiplicities as students become-with design methodologies.