Turning Points

wondering how the relational – and the relational self – might be manifested in and by the artefacts we design for collaborative use in workshops

In contemporary fields like Design Thinking, Service Design, and Strategic Design, we have seen a turn away from a purely material practice towards an expanded practice that recognises how designer mindsets and ideation processes can help create new services, systems and other non-artefact design outputs. Furthermore, Scandinavian Participatory Design movements from the 1970s and more recent movements like Design Justice and Decolonising Design have articulated the importance of immaterial aspects of participation, including: power, oppression, customs, norms, identity, relationships, etc. These movements – one turning away from the material to elevate ‘thinking’ and another to attend to the complexities of ‘participation’ – have been critical for advancing the field of Design and crucial for developing more ethical practices of working with people in collaborative processes.

This study builds upon these foundations through advocating for a re-elevation of the significance of materials in co-design, for their affects in mediating the immaterial, lively, and relational. In other words: how do workshop materials reinforce, support, or curtail the relational aspects of co-design processes and, ultimately, the possible outcomes? This turning point recognises how much Design has to learn from other disciplines with longer histories dedicated to understanding the nuances and ethics of working with others (such as community organising, trauma-informed approaches, ethnography, activism and social movement studies, therapy and support groups, etc.). Therefore, this research has explores what a design expertise in making contributes differently to collaborative and participatory projects. The creation (or curation) of the materials we bring to workshops is a skill that is refined through relational practice and worthy of more interrogation. Sara Ahmed reminds us that norms and values become palpable things through being formed from the entangled histories that precede them. Yet, in the micro-process of designing workshop materials, this becomes a very condensed timeline and a more contained entanglement. The central story of the production of these materials can be filtered through a singular lens of the embodied experience of the designer who makes them. Therefore, materials (and the ethical implications of putting them to use in workshops) become a rich site for analysis when we recognise that they are not neutral or fully external objects, but partial reflections and extensions of ourselves. When looking at materials as ‘queer objects’ separated from their use, how do they appear to you?

attuning to our affective experiences of complex power entanglements in co-design

Ahmed calls for willfulness to be a collective approach. In co-design, practitioners are mediating between institutions and publics and acting as stewards and advocates for others’ ideas (Elsbach & Flynn, 2013). So, it becomes essential to understand how we are mitigating power imbalances, while encouraging exploration of alternatives, without inadvertently forcing our own values upon participants through the materials and framing we craft for these spaces.

Feminism can be enacted in any project context, not only community-led projects. In any project there is a possibility for an array of small moves that are actively dismantling / transforming / questioning the structures we are operating within. However, when tasked with crafting these spaces, designers might find themselves negotiating both a sense of power and subjugation within the same project. Ahmed reminds us that willfulness is intentional and embodied (2014) and that attuning to and describing the affect and sensations of these tensions or a sense that something is wrong is the conceptual work. When we encounter resistance to the positive social change we are intending, it makes a stronger impression.

In co-design, there is also an important flip-side: when does co-design feel easy or right?

When is the project ‘extending your shape’ or when might you have assumed a shape to create less resistance?

honing an awareness of what usually ‘recedes from view’ in projects, institutions, and our own everyday practices

A queer or feminist approach can be experienced as ‘being out of tune.’ You might notice what normally recedes from view within co-design projects (Ahmed, 2017, p. 40). You might notice how the process better accommodates certain kinds of bodies and reinforces certain values and possibilities over others.

In designing collaborative workshops, practitioners try to anticipate the optimal conditions for collective creative processes to emerge. Particularly if working within the complex power dynamics of both risk-averse stakeholders and ‘marginalised voices’, designing this context in public sector projects can be difficult and nuanced. As Ahmed says ‘The magical and mundane can belong in the same horizon; "use" can be plodding and capacious at the same time’ (2019). Rather than considering the problem-solving function of co-design as ‘given’, we can instead broaden and question the very use of participation. How can co-design contribute to modelling new ways of relating, being and becoming together that challenge what we are ‘used to’ (Ahmed, 2019)? Ahmed acknowledges that deviating from norms is hard. The significant work of leveraging and expanding the use of these workshops cannot be dismissed when it comes to supporting the difficult labour of questioning fundamental assumptions and norms. And yet, the (time-consuming) practical decisions made to respond to the anticipated needs of different participants and stakeholders is under discussed in co-design literature. Instead, often the primary documentation is on the finished tools for surfacing and capturing the solutions or ideas generated from the co-design process (Akama & Prendiville, 2016; Sanders & Stappers, 2016).

Doing the work of diversity in an institution is not the same work as being the diversity of an institution, but both these roles can involve coming into an oblique orientation. Importantly, coming up against the institutions we work within is an intentional process for those who more easily inhabit the norms.

In attending to the background, we are anticipating more than just project requirements, but configuring when and how it might be necessary to queer practices and processes surrounding these projects that have become entrenched: how, for instance, to mitigate bias or create space for potential unexpressed desires such as a sense of belonging or autonomy, or to be angry, or to be acknowledged, or to be encouraged, given permission, or to take a risk, or refuse to comply... It is these seemingly background choices, pivots, and anticipatory adaptations-in-action that directly contribute to how co-designers carefully consider and craft the ideal conditions and materials we believe will allow participants to explore the unknown or welcome new perspectives. Unfortunately, the lack of documentation surrounding how designers make these choices not only contributes to erasing complicated entanglements of the designer-researcher within participatory processes (and how they might be influencing collective project outcomes), but also misses opportunities for valuable knowledge sharing in the field about leveraging and evidencing the transformative potential of co-design.

It is a skilled practice to hold space for deviation, and a practice that can only be made better by recognising our own orientation within the entanglement. So, we can try to notice what recedes from our own view, as well as what others have overlooked.

This turning point offers a way in for capturing this decision-making process in more explicit spatial terms: what is my orientation to the background of this project? How does it extend my shape? How do we create more room? How do we question the ‘objects’ that we bring within reach?

noticing personal transformations that occur through practice towards better understanding of the larger transformative potential of co-design practice

While the transformative promise of workshops is often discussed in co-design literature, it remains slippery to evidence. We can often sense transformative learning happening in these workshops. But, even following the events that feel most successful, we might be left wondering about the extent and duration of this effect. Was this transformation just a fleeting experience for participants and stakeholders, before things settle back into place? This final turning point questions what we can learn from not only looking for transformation to happen to (or expect transformation to happen for) others and systems, but to better understand how we are changing as well. In fact, if we approach co-design expecting to create transformation, but not expecting or looking to be transformed ourselves by the process, even a practice that strives to be feminist can take on an unsettling sense of force.

This turning point has possible implications for the interdisciplinary field of co-design, which often must work across knowledge paradigms. More nuanced and plural understandings of transformation might be particularly useful for practitioners working in the public sector, where conventions surrounding ‘strong evidence’ are linked to funding opportunities. In interrogating our own ongoing and varied affective transformations at the scale of an individual, we can establish a humble precedent for other possible paths to better understanding the wider transformative potential of co-design to shift thinking and address complex or contested social issues.