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Design has the potential for addressing societal challenges including sustainability by highlighting certain societal issues or even changing existing structures of consumption. One of the primary concerns of design for sustainability (DfS) has been to bring about behavior change towards supporting more sustainable lifestyles. There are a number of potential problems however with this intention of DfS. Behavior change is highly normative, and potentially problematic to address, since there is no obvious agency of designing for norm setting in sustainability. As a reaction towards these concerns, we have been exploring an alternative perspective on DfS by challenging existing power structures and norm setting occurring among the various roles and relations between actors in design processes. We frame this perspective as humble designing to indicate an important yet modest role for design. In order to take this exploration further, we held two workshops with design practitioners and researchers working with DfS in the fields of interaction design, engineering, social sciences and anthropology. In this paper we reflect upon these two workshops in order to understand whether humble designing as an alternative perspective on DfS has potential to contribute in steering away from normative goal-setting so to diversify design for sustainability. The results indicated that there is a need for setting appropriate moments for applying humbleness in a design approach, but also that there is potential for moderating power structures within design processes in order to address normative intentions.

In a globalized world that promotes universal desires, southern epistemologies struggle to flourish against westernized notions of values, beauty and life goals. This manifestation of Coloniality (Grosfoguel, 2006) is strengthened by the mainstream systems of production and consumption of both goods and knowledge, where design is a driving force. Design, has been taught from generations in academy under the same Eurocentric canons that disseminate the values of capitalism and search for economic growth. Designers, have been worldwide trained to think, value and act according to the standards of aesthetics, progress and development set in the North. However, the current global unsustainability crises make more evident the global power dynamics, and the need to maintain diverse and contextualized forms of seeing and acting with the world.

Our own experience of being trained as designers in the south, and now relocated to the north is making us aware of our life desires imposed by contemporary coloniality. However, this relocation also builds on the advantages of coloniality, for instance, by being in contexts that have a stronger voice in international disciplinary communities. As others in our situation, we don’t want to be colonizers by being the “north in the south”. In this presentation we show journeys of deconstructing design, sustainability and their values and worldviews through transitioning between south and north. These journeys are motivated by the intention of creating mutual learning between south and north. We aim at supporting the transition of our discipline from Eurocentric worldview to more diverse worldviews and systems of values.

Our contemporary world is organized in a modern/colonial structure. As people,professions and practices engage in cross-country Design for Sustainability (DfS), projectshave the potential of sustaining or changing modern/colonial power structures. In suchproject relations, good intentions in working for sustainability do not directly result inliberation from modern/colonial power structures. In this paper we introduce threeapproaches in DfS that deal with power relations. Using a Freirean (1970) decolonialperspective, we analyse these approaches to see how they can inform DfS towards beingdecolonial and anti-oppressive. We conclude that steering DfS to become decolonial orcolonizing is a relational issue based on the interplay between the designers’ position inthe modern/colonial structure, the design approach chosen, the place and the peopleinvolved in DfS. Hence, a continuous critical reflexive practice is needed in order to preventDfS from becoming yet another colonial tool.

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.

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.

Decolonization is a situated effort as it relates to the relations of privilege, power, politics, and access (3P-A, in Albarrán González’s terms) between the people involved in design in relation to wider societies. This complexity creates certain challenges for how we can understand, learn about, and nurture decolonization in design towards pluriversality, since such decolonizing effort is based on the relationship between specific individuals and the collective. In this paper, we present and discuss the ‘River project’, a participatory space for decolonizing design, created for designers and practitioners to reflect on their own 3P-A as a way to create awareness of their own oppressive potential in design work. These joint reflections challenged ideas of participation and shaped learning processes between the participants, bringing to the foreground the importance of seeing and allowing for a plurality of life and work worlds to be brought together. We build on the learnings from this project to propose the notions of pluriversal participation, pluriversal presence, and pluriversal directionality, which can help nurture decolonizing designs towards pluriversality. We conclude by arguing that, for nurturing pluriversality through Participatory Design, participation, presence, and direction must be equally pluriversal.

Este artículo argumenta que si queremos llegar al Diseño para la pluriversalidad, no podemos hacerlo desde una noción universalista de lo que significa ser Diseñador. Este artículo describe brevemente los esfuerzos para descolonizar el Diseño, para luego examinar dos aproximaciones de Diseño en métodos de Diseño comprometidos socialmente, que enmarcan cómo los Diseñadores conectan a lugares y personas: Diseño Situado y Empatía en el Diseño. Estos discursos son luego matizados con un lente decolonial, detallando cómo los Diseñadores se sitúan y se comprometen a través de la matriz colonial del poder. Este análisis sirve como un mapa de aspectos a tener en cuenta para comprender la relación del Diseñador con lugar, historia, profesión y personas en la matriz colonial del poder. El artículo sugiere la normación de awarenessing, una toma de conciencia reflexiva orientada a la acción, sobre la propia posicionalidad, la flexibilidad en los procesos de Diseño y la incorporación de aspectos personales en el Diseño como posibles formas de abrir posturas pluriversales en el Diseño. El artículo concluye delineando las implicaciones potenciales de estas posturas para hacer, escribir y enseñar Diseño.

This paper argues that if we aim to Design for pluriversality, we cannot do so from a universalist notion of what it means to be a Designer. This paper briefly describes the efforts of decolonizing Design, then looks into two Design approaches in socially engaged Design methods that frame how Designers connect to place and people: Situated Design and Design Empathy. These discourses are then further nuanced by adding a decolonial lens, nuancing how Designers are situated and engage through the colonial matrix of power. This then serves as a map of aspects to be taken into consideration for nuancing a Designer’s relation place, history, profession and people in the colonial matrix of power. This paper then suggest the notions of awarenessing, an action-oriented reflective awareness on one’s position, flexibility in Design processes and the incorporation of personal aspects into Designing as possible ways to open up for pluriversal Design stances. The paper concludes by outlining potential implications of opening up for such stances in doing, writing and teaching Design.