Balancing Power

Abstract

Participatory Design (PD) has been used as a medium to democratize the design practice and include in the process the people intended to use the outcomes. When working for social change and justice, the practice intends to maintain its democratic nature by giving voice and agency to the most vulnerable in society. However, when engaging in complex societal problems PD can perpetuate systemic oppression and reproduce in the design process the same harmful mechanisms that are intended to be changed. For this reason, it is crucial for the PD practice to engage in matters of power dynamics so more socially just processes can be developed. Acknowledging this urgency, this research project has the aim of proposing an alternative understanding for a decolonial PD process that accounts for more power balanced and socially just dynamics between designers and members of marginalized communities. To accomplish the alternative understanding, the project was performed in three main phases. The first phase (research for design) is formed of a literature review and interviews with design practitioners familiar with participatory processes with oppressed communities. With these activities it was understood that the PD practice can reproduce systemic oppression in three different levels (individual, communal and systemic) because the role of the designer entails advantages in decision making, project ownership and process control among others. To overcome these oppressive practices, the work of the philosopher Paulo Freire was studied to find analogies between his pedagogy for liberation and the PD practice. In this study, it was learned that to create more horizontal relationships, it is necessary to create the space for a co-learning process based on dialogue between the designer and the members of a community. The second phase of the project (research through design) started by proposing a detailed structure for a process inspired by the research for design to be carried out with the community. However, earlier in the initiation of the phase, it was realized that in order to decolonize the PD process also the PD designer inside the process needs to be decolonized and that the structure could be propose if and only if it was developed together with the community of Afrikaanderwijk. Accordingly, the second phase of this research was based on non-structured explorations in the neighborhood allowing different moments of engagement between the designer and the community based on horizontal relationships and dialogue. In this phase was found that a decolonization of the designer and the design process entails a constant re-evaluation of the designer’s role that can move in a spectrum from facilitator to participant in the context. Other statements about the alternative understanding of PD processes were drawn including the need to see the process as a collaboration instead of just participation and to intend the project as something bigger than just what design is able to frame. The last phase of this project intended to make the insights of the research practical and useful for other designers. In this way, the final findings were translated into a series of reflective questions to challenge assumptions and biases in the initiation of a PD process.