A Family of Sensibilities: Toward a Relational Design Practice Grounded in Materiality and Embodiment

Abstract

Beyond the industrial design origins of human-centered design, the empathic frame of design thinking, or the democratic convivial tools of co-design, there are nuanced practice considerations for the inter-relational, social practice of designers working with people. This paper specifically considers the affordances of materiality and the reflexive sense-making of embodiment within the sensorial, performative practice of design. This shared theme is explored through auto-ethnographic writing and a poetic line of inquiry that models a novel method for examining this social practice. Taking a reflective stance, the researchers resist the impulse to tidily package insights from six creative practice vignettes into a toolkit or diagram. Instead, the small moments enacted in the practice snapshots reveal a Family of Sensibilities. The collective set of attributes intentionally present a complicated, messy, interpretation of the familial elements that shape a designer’s material, embodied moves when in conversation with people and place.

Keywords:

• design
• materiality
• embodiment
• objects
• aesthetics
• social practice
• reflexivity
• autoethnography

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank our fellow practitioners for making their work available as vignettes in this article: Helena Cleeve, Arawana Hayashi, Alicia Smedberg, Siv Helen Stangeland, and Claudia Madrazo. We extend our gratitude to the reviewers whose affirming and constructive feedback strengthened the paper. Lastly, our gratitude to WonderLab, our research community at Monash University.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Akama, Hagen, and Whaanga-Schollum (2019) problematize the uses of human-centered design toolkits as ways of perpetuating Eurocentric, colonialist world views. We are inspired by how Akama & others call for respectful and relational approaches to co-design: for instance, by “accounting ourselves and our stories.”

2 Phrasing borrowed from a project by Shana Agid and Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani, working-with-people.org. It is a project to “build a more nuanced way of working with people.”

3 We agree with Duncan (2004) that if the ways we understand reality are linked to how we perceive it, then autoethnography becomes an experimental means to investigate reality through subjective experience.

4 We resonate with how Adams and Jones (2011) Jones shed light on the practice of telling “stories about all we can’t tell,” the notions of “I-We-You,” and “making room for all our selves”

5 We are inspired when Harris, Jones, and Iosefo (2020) write that autoethnography positions the subjects of our stories not as “objects of study,” instead as “agents themselves.” Hence, by “walking with,” this positionality moves away from a logic of “insiders and outsiders.”

6 We use this area, the footnotes, to elaborate and bring these theories and theorists into the conversation of this paper.

7 Contemporary writer Teju Cole tells a story about James Baldwin who “had to bring his [jazz] records with him [to Switzerland] in the fifties, like a secret stash of medicine… to keep him connected to a Harlem of the spirit” (Cole 2017).

8 In a critical autoethnographic paper about nomadic consciousness, two family members, Sherrie-Lynn and Kerem Doğurga, write about "Complicated Documentations" surrounding their Turkish, Canadian experiences: “Although we seem to be authoring a single text,” they state, “there are many texts layered within. We each experience co/authoring and re/writing differently. We contest on anothers’ translations and memory of detail. Recent conversations are multiple and occur across several platforms or ‘plateaus.’ We call/ed new linguistic incarnations Turk-lish” (2017, 182).

9 This refers specifically to the two-year Master of Fine Arts, Transdisciplinary Design graduate program at Parsons, The New School in New York City, in which we attended, staggered, between 2012 and 2015.

10 See also hooks 1995; McMillan 2009; Overlie 2016; Scarry 1985; Turkle 2009; Winnicott 1953.

11 See also Depraz, Varela, and Vermersch 2003; Hayashi 2017; Heidegger 1962; Merleau-Ponty 2013; Noë 2004; Varela, Thompson, and Rosch 1991.

12 See also Anzaldúa 1987; Arbon 2008.

13 See also Nhat Hanh 2008; Suzuki 2011; Trungpa 1996.

14 See also Scharmer 2016; Trungpa 1996.

15 See also Barad 2014; Boylorn 2015; Gordon 2004; Haraway and Goodeve 2012; Rambo 2005.

16 See also Hernandez and Ngunjiri 2015.

17 All blog posts can be found on: https://medium.com/a-family-of-sensibilities

18 Transparency is exercised here as a form of accountability, responsibility, care, ease, and rigor.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Myriam D. Diatta

Myriam D. Diatta is a design researcher and co-founder of Matter-Mind Studio. Myriam is currently a PhD candidate at Monash University in Melbourne. Her research focuses on a practice of aligning politicized commitments and one’s everyday – as someone with Double Consciousness and working in the context of white, dominating logic. Myriam is a co-first author with Ricardo. [email protected]

Ricardo D. Goncalves

Ricardo D. Goncalves is a social designer and action researcher at the Presencing Institute. He holds a MFA in Transdisciplinary Design from Parsons School of Design, New York, and is currently a PhD candidate at Wonderlab, Monash University. Ricardo’s work focuses on making visible intangible dimensions of embodied, non-verbal experience. Ricardo is a co-first author with Myriam. [email protected]

Lisa H. Grocott

Lisa H. Grocott is the Director of Wonderlab at Monash University. Lisa’s relational approach to designing transformative learning is informed by collaborations with learning scientists, queer methodologists, and education psychologists while drawing on her practice expertise and indigenous knowing. Her people are Ngāti Kahugnunu from the east coast of Aotearoa, New Zealand. [email protected]