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The aim of this Conversation is to inquire taken-for-granted foundations for design aesthetics, often informed by semantics and the social order established around the privileged designer. Hence, the Conversation is set up to disrupt former social orders and support a shared Conversation about the nature of the questions we need to ask in order to respond to the shift in design aesthetics. The session is structured around group work, with each group's discussion revolving around a given disruption: capitalism, the anthropocene, and technocentrism. Key to the Conversation will be conversation-triggers in form of media and creation of 'narratives' that represent what kind of questions can be asked and what kind of answers we aim for. The purpose is to inspire diverse discussions around ways we can push for the kinds of aesthetics that align with democratic meaning-making, beyond the idea of universal modernist functionality.

The case study presented here is an intensive nine day community participation project in a Swiss town, aimed at fostering community food production. The approach to participatory design presented here seeks to emphasize the in-situ improvisatory ‘doing' of collaborative activities.

Using notions such as diffusing, reifying and catalyzing the study describes the iterative movement of the project that is bound up in material arrangements and social relations.

Through a reflection in action approach, the author unpacks how the designer's agency is understood through social interactions and acts of summarizing, materialization and translation.

The paper concludes by discussing power and agency, both as an outcome and central to the design process. This reflective exploration through the lens of agency seeks to encourage the reflexivity of designers in collaborative practice.

Design deals with the material, social, political, cultural, economic, and more, and in relation to history—past, present, and (possible) future(s) At the same time, the objects of design are becoming less traditionally thing- like and rather connected, dynamic, ‘smart’ components of product and service ecosystems. We need, then, to find ways to grapple with (eco)systems, contextual specificities, new forms of technologies, and societal needs in a changing world where we have yet to even begin to adequately come to grips with the implications of our dwindling resources and impending climate collapse; political structures are often woefully ineffective; and advanced capitalism seems to be spinning disastrously out of control. The aim of this conversation is to speculate about future articulations, practices, and contexts of postindustrial design (research), and in the process to prototype the inclusive, rich, realistic yet hopeful discourse among passionate partial perspectives that is necessary to support it. This is a process of developing our ‘response-abilities’—our ‘collective capacity to respond’.

In this workshop, we propose that design research needs to actively think about designing research tools and procedures as part of the research process. Following from this a number of questions arise: How can we get a critical understanding of how research tools shape our research practices? How can we practice collaborative sharing, critiquing and making of tools? For example, in a setup using materials and manual making at the PhD by Design session. When engaging in experimental practice-based research, what capabilities do design researchers need to prototype and articulate their tool-making practices?

This paper is about the making of Umeå Pantry, a public participatory art festival performance on matters of concern regarding local food production. Participatory projects have been criticized for the way that researchers harness the creative outputs of collaborative work while safeguarding the underlying power structures. In addressing such critique this project focused on design’s relational and socio-political form rather than the value-added object of design. We argue that a public orientation, as in the case of Umeå Pantry, involves a critical enquiry and reflexive approach, which goes beyond participatory design within institutional boundaries and that there is a need for informal tactics to navigate this open public space. Thus, the paper argues that public participatory design needs to rethink its sensibilities and aim for a greater emphasis on the relational and socio-political underpinnings of a project. Articulating notions such as an open program, movement, relational exchanges and infrastructure, we are trying to find out more about what it takes to prototype new participatory design practices engaging with public matters of concern.

The Umeå Pantry was a five-week long public art event held in Umeå, Sweden, aimed at making concerns about food production public and supporting local communities interested in food related practices.

The event consisted of a series of performances where participant communities were invited to a dialogue on food concerns and practices in the region. The performances took the form of communal activities such as food harvesting, cooking, workshops, debates and demonstrations.

The making of the art event highlights the practice of creating forms for engagement and participation of disparate communities around social issues.

In the broader picture, this project contributes to the understanding of community participatory design and design for social innovation.