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Second session

When? 23th October 2023

Who? Roger Guilemany and Jana Tothill

What? Areas of Intervention in a Multiscalar Design Space

Contents

We were introduced with the concept of Design Intervention.

What can a design intervention be?

Can and should be developed with others in context - An opportunity to co-create and iterate prototypes with others

  • An experience that transforms yourself and others - open your mind to new scopes

  • An action to start building trust - the first step to human relationships is trust in order to be able to co-create

  • Am activity to bring difficult topics to the table - safe space

  • An experience to learn and from others

  • An experience to learn through a situated action - understanding the context that will allow us to propose something.

  • To understand the direction that one’s trying to take in the project.

Relationship between Design Intervention and Design Space

The Design Intervention will allow us to show the context that the Design Space is mapping so that we can create iterations of the Design Space diagram and investigate new elements in it. A Design Intervention doesn’t have to be perfect or unique, is a key part of a process that consists in several actions that will lead us to build the final design space (if it ever exists). A Design Intervention can be used to understand issues we don’t control, to clear our minds about them, to research unknown paths or to validate already existing ones.

The four key roles a Design Intervention can have within a Design Space are:

➔ Organizational: to visualize the ideas we have in a Design Space

➔ Narrative: to give a voice to these ideas, so we can understand their process and development

➔ Performative or Participative: to involve stakeholders or make it understand to the public

➔ Inspirational: to research new developments and continue the journey

Exercise

A. Start sharing the elements we have printed in a big board and relate them to the ones everyone brought.

B. In groups, create a Collective Design Space

According to the Collective Design Space Mural we assembeled a group with similar interests. My group was formed by Annna, Everardo, Francisca and Drishya. Together we talked about our areas of interest and came up with a group Collective Design Space.

C. Think about a Design Intervention to make within the shared interests and Design Space.

Finally, after exploring many options we decided to conduct the following Design Intervention:

We’ve designed a collective Design Intervention to explore how alterations of your face can change your perception of yourself; either hide a part of you or enhance it. We want to give the possibility of changing your face to a specific group of people, and allow them to reflect on reconfiguration of the body. This change they can apply to their faces, might be on purpose to hide a part they don’t like or either enhance another one they love.

For the intervention, we have organized an event or party at Everardo’s house with our friends. We believe that the relaxed atmosphere of this type of space gives the participant more room to get carried away.

Our intervention wants to explore the following questions:

- Did you choose to alter your face to hide or change a part of yourself you don’t like? Or to enhace your existing identity?

- After changing your face, do you feel more like yourself or less like yourself?

Reflection

Reflection on the Collective Design Space

Doing the Collective Design Space was a bit overwhelming for me at first. From having to place my cards to, then, looking at the whole wall once it was finished. The concept of not having a right/wrong reasons to place your concepts disturbed me a little bit, but I soon went along with it. Once I looked at the wall I also felt a bit overwhelmed, so I quickly focused on a specific area of it, the one that interested me the most.

Even though I choose an area of the wall, I was interested in all the groups that were formed, every topic chosen could’ve fit in my own interests. Despite that, I decided to go with a group that was doing something different from what I’m used to, so that I could explore more other options.

Reflection on the group work

The group work was very intense from the beginning, we choose an area of the Collective Design Space that was very plural, it had a lot of topics, and we couldn’t do all of them. That’s why we spent quite a bit of time, at first, to figure out what everybody was interested in and what direction we could take. It was a difficult conversation for all of us because we all wanted to compromise for the group but still be interested on the topic. After a few meeting, we kind of figured it out, and then it was time to think about the intervention.

The design of the intervention wasn’t easy either, but we got the hang of it as soon as we decided the goal we wanted to reach: explore how alterations of one’s face can change the perception of oneself. At the beginning, we thought about playing with face prosthetics or deformations, while also exploring the identity of a community as a concept. Our main idea was to build some face prosthetics and introduce ourselves to a small Ball Room community in Barcelona to do the intervention.

We soon realized we didn’t have the time and resources to deliver this kind of intervention, and we had to tone it down a few knots to make it fit into our context. The final result of our intervention left aside the research of a community’s identity and focused more on the perception of altering your own face.

It has been good reflecting on the whole process we’ve been through to understand that, even though in the beginning of an experience you have some expectations, you also have to adapt to your colleagues, the work pace of everyone and the resources you have and try to achieve a similar goal while being coherent with everything.

Personal Design Space update

The way my Design Space has changed thanks to this experience isn’t the most obvious one. After reflecting on the Design Intervention concept and gone through the exercise, I’ve changed 2 things of my Design Space.

  1. Firstly, I’ve added a sub-part that connects 2 weak signals: social media and non-heteropatriarcal innovation. In this sub-part I want to fit in my interest in the perception we have as a society of “beauty” and how it affects us, specially women and specially teenagers and middle-aged women. I’ve been interested to see how the new generations are evolving with the same concept of “beauty” and this differences confronts the generations/age groups when living in society. A couple of decades ago, the concept of “beauty” was a much closed box where, if you didn’t fit into, you were out of. Nowadays, it seems to be a bit more open and accepting but still very much a box. It’s also interesting to see how, even though we are more “open” to different forms of beauty, at the same time there are much more “beauty treatments”, operations and interventions to alter our faces and bodies…

  2. Second of all, I’ve gathered a list of Design Interventions I could personally do to explore other parts of my Design Space I don’t know much about or O haven’t specifically experienced in my own skin. This session and the “Living with your own ideas” seminar have helped me see the importance of “forcing” myself to live certain experiences to further my knowledge and evolve into my interests.

Deliverable

To see how the intervention was developed, make sure to check out the video.

Last update: June 21, 2024