Conference Agenda

Participatory methods are widely used in design, but it’s important to take a critical stance towards how they impact vulnerable communities in the context of today's societal crisis (Juarez et al., 2008). This paper presents recent findings from the comparison of three social design research projects conducted in Hungary, which point towards evidence that empowerment by design can be beneficial for underprivileged women. This notion of empowerment is defined through developing embodied expertise, problem-solving skills, and agency in a design context. In order to understand how design can contribute to building such notions in participants, the author contextualizes the community’s barriers, and analyzes case studies of varying participation levels based on Healey’s engagement model (Healey et al., 2014). The author examines the cases from an intersectional viewpoint (Crenshaw, 1989), examining the barriers they highlight, resulting in a nuanced recommendation on establishing an effective level of participation within vulnerable communities.

This article aims to present a methodology that has been developed in design projects that combat oppression. The proposal emerged from work led by the Brazilian Design and Oppression Network in partnership with social movements and oppressed communities. The methodology has six guiding axes: popular assembly, dialogues, generating themes, unveiling, collective praxis, and systematization of experience. These axes bring together principles and practices stemming from critical pedagogy and militant research which can help designers and researchers with the particularities of conducting projects engaged in struggles against oppression.

This theoretical paper critically examines the relationship between design for social innovation and the concept of empowerment. It questions to what extent current empowerment discourses in design genuinely amplify marginalized voices or rather reinforce and hide existing structural inequalities. With the aim of unveiling the emptiness of signifiers, such as empowerment, much like the contested concept of ‘social innovation’, this contribution aims to encourage a critical reflection on power dynamics through an anarchafeminist lens. Rather than striving for definite answers or providing blueprints, this lens aims to be an open and dynamic invitation to scholars and practitioners to continue exploring (self)critical spaces and interrogate design for social innovation to reveal and confront the complexities, over-sights and potential challenges of contemporary design discourses.

The concept of power can be an effective discursive tool to wield when designing against oppression and designing for joy, desire, and flourishing. While power is a critical concept in oppression, it is underdeveloped in most design methods and practices. This paper makes the case that designers interested in social justice can explore dimensions of power to uncover and redirect bias and inequities in both design processes and outcomes. I summarize the conceptual debates about power's meaning and survey how designers are currently engaging with the concept. I then offer a loose anti-oppressive framework for sensemaking around power in professional and community-based contexts. Designers increasingly committing to social justice can utilize this framework to develop new forms of agency and empower people to mobilize and take action.