Through inclusive design practices, we have an opportunity to learn new perspectives of temporality and community from people who defined those things for themselves – such as the QTBIPOC community.
Design informs how we navigate and interact with the world. Yet much of today’s design infrastructure is still based on fairly narrow assumptions about race, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, language, cultural background, and socioeconomic status—often reflecting the perspectives of the people who originally built it. Through inclusive design practices, we have an opportunity to learn new perspectives from people—including LGBTQ, BIPOC, and other marginalised communities—who have redefined that infrastructure on their own terms. This course offers an opportunity to consider unfamiliar perspectives, see how they interact with design practice, and learn how to apply them to design challenges in order to arrive at more inclusive solutions.
Prerequisites
No specific prerequisites are needed, but a willingness to ask and answer difficult questions about identity will be crucial.
How you’ll learn
The course is designed to provide a background in the history of design, identity, gender studies and more, while exposing them to new perspectives and frameworks. We will discuss ways to foster inclusivity by challenging the status quo of design today, giving tools for students to develop critical thinking about it and defining techniques for community design, and developing an inclusive design toolkit. We will hear perspectives from multiple designers across various industries about how identity, ethics, and the design process are intrinsically linked. Students will also be asked to consider their own unique perspective from the point of view of intersectionality, and how we might reconsider the design process to create a more inclusive future.
What you’ll learn
What to bring
