What if architecture, interior design, engineering and product design students spend a week together to investigate the design of the built environment by making it impossible to use? By deliberately creating designs that are impossible or difficult to use, students learned about universal design. This method is known as ‘critical design’.
A week of critical design workshops provoked reflection, awareness, empathy and action among the next generation of designers involved in the built environment. The paper provides details of the workshops and the processes, and the outcomes for the students and their designs. The picture above shows four of the designs discussed in the article.
The students felt the workshop was a great learning experience. Although the workshop method needs some perfecting, it shows that students approach universal design in a more thoughtful way.
The designs were exhibited for others to experience the difficulties people with different disabilities experience with a design. Critical design is a real challenge to design problem solving.
The title of the paper is, Empathy Enabled by Critical Design – A New Tool in the Universal Design Toolbox. The article is published in the proceedings of the UDHEIT 2018 conference held in Dublin, Ireland.
Editor’s note: I liked the narrow doorway with a sticky floor that made entry difficult.
Highlighting ‘the Dark Side’
Critical Design is a way of challenging stereotypes and prejudice. It is a way of looking at the world from the “dark side” of design thinking. A paper presented at a recent engineering and product design conference explains how design students responded to a series of workshops using the critical design method.
The process does not focus on designing solutions. Rather, it focuses on designing to highlight the problem. The idea is to get the participants to think about the problem in greater depth. This is where satire and irony can be used to convey the message of stigma and exclusion. Students were also challenged to consider user empowerment, or how they might reshape societal and cultural stereotypes.
The authors say it is essential for students to develop design methods for tackling stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination. Interdisciplinary work will prepare them for the real world outside of the university.
They conclude the article with, “Whether CD alone can help in battling stereotypes, prejudices, discrimination, and stigma – in so doing achieving a more diverse and inclusive society – we don’t quite know but are sure that it’s a good way to start!
The title of the paper is, Addressing the issue of stigma-free design through critical design workshops.
From the abstract:
Stereotypes and prejudices increase the likelihood of individuals rejecting products, services, environments, etc. altogether, often depriving them of e.g. safety, efficiency, and independence.
In a worst-case scenario this can lead to a stigmatised condition that triggers further inequality and exclusion. In an increasingly complex world, it is imperative that the nex generation of designers are adequately equipped as regards methods and tools for battling existing stereotypes and prejudices related to social growth and development in society.
Through this, they will ensure that stigma-free design is a priority when initiating, planning, and executing future projects. The purpose of this paper is to describe what happens when critical design is used to explore the stigma associated with existing products, services, environments, etc. in the context of interdisciplinary workshops, and to discuss the results so far.
Furthermore, the paper examines whether and how this upside-down way of thinking about and performing design is a good contribution to the fields of design, architecture, engineering, etc. as a method of both teaching and learning about equality, diversity, and inclusion.