(In)Visible Participants

Abstract

What should we understand about designing against infrastructures of oppression and marginalization? Research articles and social technologies produced by our design community have focused on procedures for action. Through this technicist approach, we have often disregarded the experiences of the participants of this type of design process, excluding their voices from institutionalized design knowledge, and thus replicating their invisibility. To overcome this, it is necessary to understand what characterizes people’s experiences and drives their participation, how these processes and practices interweave with their lives, and to bring their voices to the core of our research outcomes. These reflections emerge out of interviews with the participants of a design project in a Brazilian favela. The need for a more complex and multilayered perspective for design processes against infrastructures of oppression and marginalization emerges, together with the understanding of desire and affection, as critical factors in the process of unmaking them.

Keywords:

• affection
• desire
• disciplinary infrastructures
• experience
• institutionalized design knowledge
• participatory design

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Chiara Del Gaudio

Chiara Del Gaudio is a designer, researcher, and Assistant Professor at Carleton University’s School of Industrial Design (Canada). Her work focuses on political design, power, and conflict within design processes, participatory and collaborative design approaches, and explores the possibilities for design processes for self-determination. She has been part of the Participatory Design Community since 2014, having edited special issues on Participatory Design and organized the Participatory Design Conference in 2020. Chiara’s writing has been published in CoDesign, The International Journal of Design, and Urban Design International, among other venues, as well as in edited collections. [email protected]