Designing in Context

Participatory Design, Co-creation and Identity as a Designer

How do we, as designers look at social contexts, understand, explore, co-create and add value or help individuals to help themselves?

**System Map; Participative Design. Designing in Context.**

Being passionate about your work!

As an individual and as a designer, I am constantly thinking about and fine-tuning the career I have chosen. There are a few websites I visit often to read about design and design related articles. DesignObserver.com is one of them. If there is one article I could print and put up on my home studio wall, it would be “Learn by Numbers: Eleven Lessons Taught Only in Design School” (If you haven’t read it yet, leave this page now, read and come back!). This article reminds us designers that design is not about problem solving nor it is something that we do for paying bills. For me, lately, being a designer has become a part of my identity and what I can do with the knowledge and capabilities that come with it. At many times, because of our ability to come up with a million ideas about “something”, we feel we have the power to change or solve everything. As a young designer, I had a similar outlook about design and what I can do with it. This thought changed during my first year of the Masters program at Srishti. Here, I write about my experience of attending a workshop along the lines of designing in context where we, students of Human Centered Design, from Srishti, explore participatory design, co-creation and also explored the beautiful city of Udaipur. In spite of having read concepts of Participatory Design, Situated Actions through Lucy Suchman’s work, it would not be totally wrong for me to add that I was not really prepared for what I was going to experience.

Hello Udaipur!

A two week workshop for the 15-member student group was conceived and organized by my professors — Dr. Naveen Bagalkot and Mrs.Lakshmi Murthyand called Future of Interaction Design — Thinking Through Technological Things. Udaipur, the city of lakes was our context. I was quite excited to see what was in store during this workshop as design for social impact and change was always on my mind.(Oh, wait! I cannot change the world as a Designer! or Can I?) An experience that was humbling in every way and continues to add fuel to the raging questions in my mind about my choices and direction as a designer and what else I can do, how else I can contribute, and in the midst of this, finding meaning to my work/career.

I read about Lakshmi Murthy and her work in a book called Dekho by CoDesign, India, nearly a year back. The thought and intentions of staying committed to one context and building a career around it for nearly two decades fascinates me. The presentations, activities and the entire workshops was held together by Lakshmi’s energetic and inspiring conversations, stories and experiences. People and their work, their words have left me inspired and kept me motivated all along and this workshop was no different. The way the workshop was conducted helped me understand ways to learn and practice design in a social context.

During the first few days of our workshop, as a group, we visited tribal villages. All houses we visited were situated in valleys and access to these houses took about 10–15 mins, after a sort of a mini trek. We also visited an NGO that stitches and puts together finished fabrics for a very famous Indian clothing brand. It was truly humbling to see how the clothes that are put up in fancy stores in big cities across India are actually stitched by women from this NGO. The embroidery, appliqué work and other hand work for these clothes and home accessories are done by village women at their own homes, the work being managed by the NGOs. We also visited a block printing studio and an organic food store that procures local produce. In all these visits, it was humbling to see how organizations have been set up for the interests and welfare of the people in and around the area.

Making together! The Brief

The plan for the workshop was that kids from rural villages in the neighboring regions of Udaipur and the design students from Srishti, Bengaluru would collaborate together to “design” around the sensitive and taboo topics of Menstruation and Nightfall. The workshop was facilitated by Jatan Sansthan, a grassroots not-for-profit organization, based out of Udaipur, that facilitated and gave the opportunity for children from villages to participate in this the workshop. The objective was to do participative design and by co-creating, the teams would take back to their own contexts, an artifact that could be used as an educational tool that breaks silence, removes shame and busts myths around the topics of Menstruation and Nightfall. We started out by sketching user scenarios of gender discrimination for men and women in both rural and urban contexts around the same topics. This activity helped us understand that there are similarities that existed in both contexts. This activity set the stage for more open discussions by sharing stories and experiences amongst each other. The kids in my team were eager to sketch these scenarios.

It is very easy for designers to think of designing creative ideas for a given brief. But what about the context? What do I know about what would work for this context? We were a team of 5–2 from Udaipur (aged 13), 3 from Bengaluru (we were in our mid 20s and early 30s). As we stared thinking aloud, we could come up with some ideas that would work for them. We were proved wrong. The 2 children from the village with whom we were co-designing had no clue what we were talking about electronics, Arduino, and glowing LEDs. (Yes, we did think of working with Arduino to try and make something to communicate the concepts at hand). We paused for a moment and starting talking to the children. We tried to ask them how and when all kids would get together and what do they do when they are together. As we built our ideas, we could build a rapport and get clarity on what the children want and what would work right to take back the designed artifacts with them. We chose to take a game based approach, where the kids told us that “Snake and Ladder” is a game they would play amongst their friends. As we started making, all of us were participating in the design and contributing to the game — designing the questionnaire and rules of the game.

As a team, We designed a stack of questions and wrote down the questions in Hindi on side of the card. We decided to add a simple illustration for each question. More often, as UI/UX designer requirements, designers adhere to design guides that impose design styles, icons and visual forms that may not apply in every context. Lakshmi Murthy’s work is a very good example of defining a visual language developed for the context, that she refers to as a Picture Dictionary — a collection of icons, illustrations and marks that can put together while designing a design artifact!

Through out the workshop, we looked at the varied work of Lakshmi Murthy in communicating Menstrual and reproductive health to adolescents, women and men. In every design artifact, be it a booklet or video, the visual language is designed in a way very relatable to the audience. So, as a designer, I learnt that its important to question what we are doing in choosing one visual style over the other and why it is important to understand what works for one’s users. Based on our learning, we decided to let the kids create the illustrations. Their enthusiasm and willingness to sketch around the topics of menstruation and nightfall, made us realize it was us, who were more unwilling to sketch. We were able to make a game that the kids to relate to. We agreed to not make the answers; as we wanted to encourage talking about the answers, validated and corrected one of the kids who has already been part of the workshop and knowledgeable to share this information amongst their friends. For urban contexts, we again co-created a card game (a stack of playing cards), where facts about menstruation and nightfall were written — keeping in mind the brief to break silence, bust myths and remove shame/shyness in talking about menstruation and nightfall.

During the workshop, every one of us got a chance to sew a cloth pad. The supplies( cloth, towels, needles and threads ) and the entire process was guided by the Uger team — Uger, an initiative of Jatan Sansthan, that aims to encourage reusable cloth pads. This activity turned out to be another means where boys and girls in the workshop spoke about menstruation and even nightfall, as we took time to learn, sew and complete a cloth pad.

It was a learning experience from our fellow teams as well. The form of the artifact were varied and it was interesting to see how other teams could come up with interesting forms in response to the brief — a song was composed in hindi, choreographed and played back; a pop-up book, a communal game, to name a few.

The workshop, although brief in time, introduced me to the practice of designing for social contexts. It seems to have left me more than humbled and has surely opened up opportunities for me to look for, where I can contribute.

PROCESS

Understanding the context: We visited an organic store and an NGO to meet individuals and understand their everyday work and operations of the place. For both the contexts, we tried to map our understanding of the place from the perspective of movement. In case of the NGO, we mapped it from the perspective of the production of garment by the NGO for FabIndia. In case of the organic store, we mapped the context from the perspective of movement of a food grain from the farmer to the consumer.

As a team, we brainstormed scenarios to understand how gender discriminations are prevalent in both urban and rural contexts. During this exercise, the children were not quite open about sharing their experiences about gender discrimination. It took them sometime to open up and discuss about it. We found it difficult to come up with our experiences in the urban context as we felt the discrimination in the urban context was subtle although it was not subtle.

Scenario 1 - URBAN - WOMEN: Women living in cities cannot step out at night, while men can freely roam around and stay outside late.
Scenario 2 - URBAN - MEN: Its not acceptable for men to cry.
Scenario 3 - RURAL - WOMEN: Menstruating women cannot go to temple.
Scenario 4 - RURAL - MEN: Men cannot dress like women.