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Contemporary Industrial Design, as professional and academic practice, exists intertwined with the global hegemonic power structures of coloniality (Buckley 1986; Escobar 2018a; Mareis and Paim 2020). Problematizing this situatedness, the effort of Decolonizing Design emerges as a twofold effort: first to unlink it from this structure, opening up for diverse understandings of Design and, second, to remove oppressive behaviors from Design. In this paper we present a decolonial intervention in an Industrial Design education in the Global North as an exploration of how to shift Design towards decolonial emancipation. From this project, we suggest the categories of listening, learning, and loving as guidelines for decolonizing Design. We conclude arguing that the work necessary to dismantle Design as we know it and explore decolonial directions demands that we continually work to break and counterbalance the allegiance to its Eurocentrism and oppressive ways of working.

This article explores the shift in design education from traditional, hands-on practices to digitally-based approaches, particularly accelerated by the sudden and temporary remote teaching mandates that affected design schools during the global pandemic restrictions of the early 2020’s. It uses a case involving an interaction design class during such restrictions, where students engaged in, designed, and facilitated 15-minute remote collaborative activities called "Fire-up" sessions, to demonstrate how a short design doing task can provide surface what is at stake in the design of hybrid learning activities. Reflections of the students and teachers are used to take the pulse of remote and hybrid teaching arrangements that are physicality and materiality inherent in design education, emphasizing the perceived elasticity of physical and digital arrangements in these contexts. The paper offers three main sensitizing instruments to consider when arranging and engaging in hybrid design work. 

To explore dismantling oppressive power relations in design, we bring to fore design encounters through the lens of relationality and improvisational competence. This paper is based on the premise that, if we are to move toward decolonizing design, design(ers) needs to re-think the organization of the design encounter and how we as designers practice participation in such encounters. We emphasize the improvisational nature of turn-taking in dialogue amidst asymmetric and dynamic power relations, with design’s commitment to generating resources for future practices, and decolonization’s commitment to re-configure power structures. After problematizing the design encounter from a power relation perspective, we explore practice models for developing improvisational competence. We do this by looking at the two improvisational dialogic practices of Capoeira and Improv Theater. We focus on what it can mean to develop skills in “improvisational competence” of relationality in design. We first touch on our previous Participatory Design work in the language learning “in the wild” agenda and then draw on each of our personal improvisational practices: Capoeira martial art, and improvisational theater. We then outline possibilities for relational improvisational design dialogue and conclude by outlining how it can be practiced in Design education and practice.

Moving fully or partially online during the pandemic has exposed challenges in appreciating the nuances of sociomaterial design work in the design student / tutor encounter, while also offering opportunities for introducing “new” practices to otherwise resistant students and tutors. This paper explores a simple format for and practice of video capture that encourages students to provide detailed descriptions of up-close visual material, giving tutors a comparatively expanded view of the student work and the student or student-teams relationship to their work. By framing the video capture moment as a form of performance for both the tutor(s) and the student(s) involved in the video capture, the paper argues that the video-making process is a productive practice in and of itself, and a collaborative, dialogic one in concert with the tutor as audience, as well as its use as representational practice for tutor consumption. 

We take the position that, if we wish to move toward decolonizing design, design(ers) needs to re-think the organization of the design encounter and how we as designers practice participation in that encounter. We emphasize the improvisational nature of turn-taking in “real-time” dialogue amidst asymmetric and dynamic power relations, with design’s commitment to generating resources for future practices, and decolonization’s commitment to re-configure power structures. Improvisational design dialogue – unraveling partial glimpses of our individual and collective journeys in improvised performances of potential realities through a dance of multimodal, partially distributed, partially synchronized dialogue in the “design present”. 

What if this abstract was actually the middle of the story? And instead of it being a summary of what we try to do in this workshop, by individual ‘heroes’ that summarize the whole text, this section would be a collective account of why the text is worth reading and sharing. What if this section was not the beginning of a linear story, but a passage in a circular (re)telling of a shared experience? What if experimenting with such non-linear stories might change the way we tell stories in and through design? In this workshop we invite the design research community to explore how to situate sustainability through storytelling. In this workshop we explore how to bring forward individual neglected stories, dislodging heroic and universalist narratives, to explore how we can collectively listen, share, co-create and tell stories that can contribute to survival across individual and social scales.

This chapter introduces a “Rally Course” as a novel CA-inspired approach to teaching a second language. This approach builds on an understanding of language learning as a social process that is closely intertwined with L2 speakers’ evolving membership in the surrounding community. It addresses the need to develop experiential pedagogies that widen learners’ opportunities for interaction and support the socialisation process. Building on recent pedagogical initiatives supporting language learning in the wild, we illustrate the overall structure of the Rally Course, describe the main materials that were designed to support the learning objectives and present a case analysis of a student carrying out a pedagogical activity supported by the materials.

Tangible Future Scenarios use props, improvisation, and a cooperative approach to invite discussion and drive further iterations with stakeholders. This storytelling approach aims to align people and ideas more quickly.

There is often a great difference between what a student learns in a second language class and the competence a student needs to use a second language in the context of everyday life. The ability to speak a language and the ability to participate in everyday activities using a language are tightly linked. For many, the goal of language learning is to be able to participate competently in activities with other people using the target language, whether it is in a simple service interaction such as ordering food at a restaurant, or joining a conversation with colleagues during a break at work, or more involved types of participation such as interacting with the hospital staff during an emergency, or giving a presentation to a room full of colleagues, investors, or a scientific community. These interactive situations are potentially influenced by the physical environment, surrounding physical artefacts, gestures and other bodily actions. Often these situated interactions are influenced by what each of the participants may have been doing before and what they are intending to do afterward, and the practices they have developed in similar situations, and the relationships they have developed with the other participants. 

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These materials introduce a set of concepts, 'toolboxes' and examples for supporting a reflective experiential language learning practice where the learner uses the social interactions in everyday situations as the basis for reflection and future action.

This paper puts forward the early, practical actions “in context” that can begin to sensitize, orient, expand, and constrain design dialogue at the outset of a design effort. Drawing on a case of “breaching experiments” in “non-places” we explore a “first approximation” of interventionist participation into the context of future interactive & responsive design interventions. By introducing a design journey, we have shed a light on how a human-centric approach, applied to the context of Human Building Interaction (HBI), can support an interventionist design dialogue between people and designed environment through processes of stirring up what’s beyond ‘norms’ of interaction.