Breaking in and out of industry: a journey of thinking design otherwise by Prof. Gillian Russell
Looking back, this talk will present my trajectory as a designer and how I went from designing speed boats to reimagining the rights to research and design. Through a series of past and present projects I will address how I came to understand design as a medium in the service of society rather than a solution-making expertise in the service of industry.
About Gillian Russell:
Gillian Russell is an Assistant Professor at Simon Fraser University’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology, Vancouver, Canada. Working at the intersection of critical design, anthropological futures, and narrative environments, her practice explores how design can be used as a method for actively engaging publics in unveiling present realities and future possibilities. Drawing on tactics of speculative intervention and value-sensitive design her practice explores the potential for the imaginary as a design tool for social change. Her work has been featured at the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, Lisbon, in the Porto Design Biennale, Helsinki Design Museum, Design Museum London, London Design Festival, Milan Furniture Fair and the Victoria & Albert Museum. She holds a PhD in Design History (2017) from the Royal College of Art, London, and was a SSHRC post-doctoral fellow at the Digital Democracies Institute.
Designing-with: More than Human-Centred Design by Prof. Ron Wakkary
In this talk, Ron Wakkary will introduce designing-with, an approach for designing for more-than-human worlds. He will discuss thinking past the limitations of humanism and human-centred design and why we might consider more relational and expansive approaches that better acknowledges our entanglements with nonhuman and multi-species worlds. Ron will discuss his recent book, Things We Could Design for more than Human-Centred Worlds (MIT Press 2021) and current work in his Everyday Design Studio that investigates methods for more-than-human designing and designing for multi-species.
About Ron Wakkary
Ron Wakkary is a Professor in the School of Interactive Arts and Technology, Simon Fraser University in Canada where he founded the Everyday Design Studio (eds.siat.sfu.ca). In addition, he is a Professor and Chair of Design for More Than Human-Centred Worlds in the Future Everyday Cluster in Industrial Design, Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. Wakkary’s research investigates the changing nature of design in response to new understandings of human-technology relations and posthumanism. He aims to reflectively create new design exemplars, theory, and emergent practices to contribute generously and expansively to understanding ways of designing that are more accountable, cohabitable, and equitable.
Relevant links:
Things We Could Design (MIT Press, 2021)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBogJtCmL6A Ron Wakkary’s talk about his book 'Things We Could Design for more than Human-Centered Worlds’ at Elisava, Barcelona - School of Design and Engineering
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUxIvPU9twE Ron Wakkary and Peter-Paul Verbeek in a conversation about Wakkary's book "Things We Could Design For More Than Human-Centered Worlds”
http://eds.siat.sfu.ca Everyday Design Studio, SIAT, Simon Fraser University