Design Research Praxis Narratives

When you don’t quite inhabit the norms, or you aim to transform them, you notice them as you come up against them. The wall is what we come up against: the sedimentation of history into a barrier that is solid and tangible in the present, a barrier to change as well as the mobility of some, a barrier that remains invisible to those who can flow into the spaces created by institutions (Ahmed, 2012, p. 175, emphasis added).

Like those hired to do diversity work, designers are often placed at an oblique angle to the institutions and projects they are situated within. This embodied practice, not only feminist theory, can be how we come to understand how power operates. In this research, I explored different ways of writing that mimic the kind of embodied and interpretive learning that happens through co-design practice experiences. The design research praxis narrative (DRPN) emerged as a recursive form of analysis for my own personal feminist practices as well as a research artefact that could be used to share how feminism gets informed through practice.

In these various project contexts, the ‘barriers to change’ we encounter though design-research might sometimes only become noticeable through situated practice. These tensions are opportunities to notice institutional norms that may have receded to the background. There is room to explore ways to amplify writing that makes the negotiation of this embodied, personal practice in relation to institutional practices more visible and more tangible.

The DRPN writing technique as it relates to designerly orientations and Ahmed’s feminist theories, is broadly summarised in the pinwheel diagram at the top of the page. To challenge oppressive social norms and conventions, the familiar design process of making ‘right’ also might also involve unmaking social scripts and norms that are exclusionary. It might involve ‘making possible’ other kinds of being and relating. But to make deviations and alternatives possible, we also need to provide better descriptions of these invisible blockages: accounting for what institutional and practice norms are not making possible as well. In other words, rather than seeing the role of design as purely generating possibilities, we can amplify awareness of existing oppressive practices and attempt to unmake these possible. The DRPN also provides a reflective space for designers, to help us review our past efforts to make change and to make sense of both our intentions and tensions in practice.

The DRPNs are not meant to generate generalisable findings that reveal universal truths for any practitioner working in a similar context. Instead, I hope to provide a description of personal practices and experiences that can often be difficult to describe. As Ahmed says of her own research with diversity practitioners:

I cannot generalise my findings. The research was never intended to generate the kind of findings that can be generalized. The desire for findings can even reduce or limit what can be found. Practitioners across the public sectors repeatedly said to our diversity team that too much research in this field is premised on findings that institutions want found: from toolboxes to good practice. Too much research thus becomes translated into mission speech ... There is much less research describing the complicated and messy situations in which … workers often find themselves. When description gets hard, we need description (Ahmed, 2012, p. 10).

The memories interspersed with accounts of design practice in these narratives were not necessarily the most significant, emotional, or impactful experiences in my life that have shaped my views about feminism. Instead the anecdotes in the upcoming narratives have been curated to illustrate how the mundane, everyday practices of doing co-design might influence our personal understanding of feminism, whether or not these findings are generalisable. The narratives trace and make connections among different embodied memories, and are not meant to portray comprehensive documentation of an objective event. Instead, they try convey one possible interpretation of a subjective experience.

Writing DRPNs was a way to trace how my own subjectivity is relational and changeable over time. Recalling past memories within the affective, embodied, current situation, makes it difficult to present these accounts as demonstrable ‘facts.’ Instead, the focus is on what personal meanings have persisted from these experiences and influence my current understanding.  The narratives share possible explanations as to why I may have designed methods and materials in particular ways, but also experiential insights about the project situations which would never be included in other modes of dissemination, like a government report of the work, or a toolkit, or case study of the design methods. 

As co-design practitioners, we often take on the labour of holding many perspectives at once, but we pay less attention to how our own perspective contains multitudes, contradictions, and complexity. By writing in a way that seeks to preserve this uncertainty, the narratives can serve as a reminder that the ‘others’ we encounter through co-design are just as complex, contradictory and multitudinous, even if we perceive them as a single individual.

My hope is that, like Ahmed’s research has done for me, the following DRPN stories will provide moments of resonance (and dissonance!) with your own practice and perhaps prompt you to notice aspects of your work that have become part of the background. They will not necessarily prompt transformative turning points or entirely new orientations in your practice, but might suggest possible queer angles to reflect on the value, meaning, and impact of personal experiences in your own work.

You can read 3 DRPNs I wrote during the PhD by clicking the links below.