Task1: 150 words summary

Groupmates: Risa, Han, Shamita 

Chosen reading: Decolonial Design in Practice: Designing Meaningful and Transformative Science Communications for Navakavu, Fiji 

Manuela B. Taboada, Sol Rojas-Lizana, Leo X.C. Dutra & Adi VasuLevu M. Levu (2020) Decolonial Design in Practice: Designing Meaningful and Transformative Science Communications for Navakavu,  Fiji, Design and Culture, 12:2, 141-164, DOI: 10.1080/17547075.2020.1724479

Summary 

Colonisation has been influencing the standards of design and are often controlled by Eurocentric ideals as they have been prioritised. By decolonising design, products have a higher chance of allowing people from different backgrounds and cultures to experience design, creating a more inclusive space for marginalised people to be informed and to be able to speak out. The purpose of decolonial design is to allow direct interaction and communication with the audience, exchanging knowledge and expertise between professionals in the field and the audience. It is the job of the designer to be welcoming and understanding of groups from different cultural backgrounds. Giving ethnic minorities a platform to speak out and thinking critically as a designer are needed to successfully implement decolonial thinking in a design process. This is to create the best human-centred design outcome that resonates with a larger group of audience. 

Bibliography 

Anoushka, K. (2020). "Decolonizing Means Many Things to Many People" -- Four Practitioners Discuss Decolonizing Design. Retrieved from https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/decolonizing-means-many-things-to-many-people-four-practitioners-discuss-decolonizing-design/ 

As I am not good at writing at all, id like to fully digest the reading and summarise each paragraph so that I can have a clearer idea of how people frame their work. 

article main argument: DD can be successfully applied in design practice 

Paragraphs 

1. Introduction to contemporary designs 

2. Designs nowadays are commercialised 

3. People started to incorporate decolionial concepts into the thinking of design (transition) 

4. Main purpose of the case study 

5. Further explains what DD is 

6. Using modernism as a contrast to further elaborate 

7. Intro of case study and target audience of case study 

Theoretical perspective 

1. The start of decolonial thoughts 

2. An example of DT, modernity did not start with the industrial revolution 

3. The idea of DT, how tis formed outside Eurocentric thoughts 

4. An example to further explain the concept of DT, how different value systems can interact and that they are equally valuable 

5. Not all knowledge is applicable in all places, it depends on the audience and cultural background + example 

6. Design is Eurocentric, standards are set by europeans countries, while other places and cultures are being ignored 

Decolonial, collaborative, or human-centred? 

1. Touching a bit on tokenism, how human centred designs are solution focused, trying to “help” communities that need help, and designers are overlooking the true means for “help” for those specific countries 

2. negative consequences of the “developing and helping” approach: The imbalanced relationship of power between the helper and helped, creates unintended negative consequences fro the locals

3. Collaborating design might be a solution places designers and participants at the same level without any power imbalance, however some designers might guide collaborations with their own value systems

Conclusion 

1. Summarising the case study and principle 1 and the main idea behind —> to achieve DD, we need to learn and unlearn non-western epistemologies 

2. using Freire as an example, define having a “decolonised” mind 

3. Process of designing > the aim to solve a problem, how a designer with a decolonised mind design, how being decolonised help them throughout their design process 

4. Summarising principle 2. Practising exotopy means, =/= designers putting themselves in place of other n show empathy, but = designers extracting themselves from their roles and intend tot understand the impacts and implications of their own actions, linking the idea back to the case study 

5. Relationship of principle 2 and 3. Designers aware of their own biased, participants become designers. Knowledge sharing among multiple value systems 

6. Linking principle 3 back to case study in how it demonstrates the idea. Designing based on participants’ reaction and thinking. 

7. Principle 4. No expected results in design. Allowing for the unknown and the diversity of knowledge to become its most powerful creative fuel. 

8. How principle 4 is being applied to the case study. Explaining how the case study is successful, counter arguing. Bringing up the positive effect of the experiment. 

9. Concluding the case study/ experiment, concept 1: diversity in knowledge, how DD is applied in practice 

10. concept 2: Using a saying to support the result and further elaborate how DD can help push a design process further 

11. Concept 3: hierarchy of knowledges, stating professionals’ / scientific knowledges are seen being privileged 

12. Linked it back to the case, relationship of professionals’ knowledge and participants’ knowledge, the use of exotopy allowed scientists and designers to engage with participants from a critical and reflective perspective, making use of different types of knowledge to inform one another, to really communicate and interact with participants, instead of reflecting on their pwn as “others” 

13. Positive effects of dialogical design process, explaining how it is effective 

14. How decolonising is applied in the case study, how it is successful 

15. Conclusion, being neutral, brief definition of Decolonial Design.