Alternative Design Scholarship:
Working Toward Appropriate Design
ALTERNATIVE DESIGN
alternatives to dominant design activities
How social power operate in design
How designer's work might be directed wisely and fairly?
redirecting technologies toward the needs of marginalized
people
Participatory Design
access to the built world, artifacts embody certain types of power relations
Universal Design
different people have different needs
Ecological or Green Design
Feminist Design
Responsible Design
no command and control design approaches
Feminist design theorists criticize dominant design practices for
mirroring and thus reinforcing broader sexist cultural forces
political-economic forces
structuring design practice, especially the market.
fair and effective design
centrality of the interaction of
those who will use that technology
attention to the underlying
disarrangements
Participative decision-making is fair and intelligent
innovative and widely shared solutions
design process focused on the
mediation of conflicting interests
complexity of natural systems and the limitations of dominant design models to understand them
diversity, flexibility and biological compatibility
design with nature
designing human systems to work in
conjunction with natural systems
humans in harmony with nature
Governing mentalities are simultaneously the most important and the most difficult to identify, This represents the real challenge for alternative design
They show how gendered power relations become embedded in material objects, and then how social-material relations reinforce and legitimate sexist practice
For example the study of microwave
who exercises those skills,influenced designers’ assessments of what the microwave oven is actually intended to achieve. The design of microwave ovens ends up embodying certain of these expectations, and, by so doing reinforces them,
Feminist designers’ shared aim “to generate and put into practice projects that work, and so not only change that practice but also transform its supporting concepts and rationale.
Market shows the interconnetted dominant forces and design can change it only with designers agency
In the context of alternative design, agency refers to designers’ ability to work in ways that confront dominant design outcomes and empower marginalized social groups.
Scholars who seek to counter consumerist design argue that market structures
provide lucrative incentives for designing the ephemeral,
According to Whiteley: design ideologies, are particularly problematic when they reinforce individualism (not individuality) and work against the possibility of a social vision in design.
considering the context's use and local prespectives on the problem
putting attention on the unequal power relations
Differences' implications
Design object and spaces for a broad range of people
inclusive notion of USERS
inclusive notion of USE
Access
Independence
Diversity
Margolin and Margolin: a more socially responsible design
Papanek: designers have sufficient latitude to overcome dominant market system
Designers as citizens, against corrupted market system
Do a political work
Do design products genuinely needed by humanity
Take responsibility
Collaboration between designers and other professionals
extend alternative design scholarship
Appropriate design
Appropriate design accepts and copes uncertainty
Appropriate design recognizes the importance of governing mentalities
Appropriate design accounts for diversity and disagreement
Appropriate design theories agency-structure tensions
Social change through appropriate design
Barriers: status quo-preserving forces
Appropriate design is an ongoing activity
Never finally achieved