Design research for social impact: opening space for South Asian perspectives
The need for a conversational space
When designers from Sri Lanka got together in December 2020 to form DesignAct, we were passionate about creating deeper knowledge of the kind of design that is practiced in South Asia.
Nearly 3 years, a people’s revolution, and an economic meltdown later, we’re just getting started!
Our launch-point is a ‘podcast’ series titled DesignAct Chats — Lite; a space where the DesignAct community can meet, have conversations, and publish them for a wider audience. From ground shaking new tech like Large Language Models (or AI, as they’re commonly known) to the all-too-real challenges of climate change, to the evolving promise of design practice to do more good, we want to know, how are designers making sense of it all?
For our very first episode we collaborated with when we design, a design research focused podcast to specifically open the dialogue on design research in South Asia. In conversation with designers, when we design aims to unpack philosophies, perspectives, and contributions that influence how we practice design research in our diverse contexts. This series is led by Alifiya Mutaher, Akshaya Narayanan, Vaidehi Supatkar — design researchers and educators with roots in South Asia, now practising in the United States and in India.
Design research practice in South Asia centres largely in the social enterprise and development space and provides a unique cross-sectional view into prevailing social structures and inequalities. It also provides designers with a unique opportunity to examine their role in relation to the people they design for. Questions of power, privilege and agency are at the forefront.
If designers are truly eager to understand plurality, the many ways of being, and a future for design that sustains, empowers and nourishes communities, then the cultures of South Asia are great places to learn from. In turn, design research can help elevate these learnings to impactful action agenda that serves.
Mashal Khan: designing with communities
Our guest for this episode is Mashal Khan, a Design Strategist for the Kaarvan Crafts Foundation in Lahore, Pakistan. Mashal is an alumnus of the Transdisciplinary Design program at Parson’s School of Design, New York. Now at Kaarvan, Mashal works closely with rural craft communities in Pakistan. Their theory of change is to ‘Educate in life skills, enable to learn, and empower to decide’.
Mashal starts the conversation by reflecting on how she journeyed through visual design and branding for corporations to her current work in designing with communities. She expands on how she aligns her design education from the west and standardized global frameworks such as the UN SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) with the reality of the people she works with.
Deep listening and careful observation lay the foundations for Mashal’s practice. This is crucial since the majority of the craftspeople that Kaarvan works with are rural women, of whom a significant number experience gender based violence. Therefore, Mashal emphasizes how important it is to listen and centre their lived experience and comfort in all of the activities that Kaarvan conducts. Conversations are never about extraction or dictation but about thoughtful, creative expression.
One such example Mashal points out is when Kaarvan conducted workshops for 16 days of activism against Gender-Based Violence. Here, 16 women made roti — a quintessential South Asian flat bread — and embroidered their thoughts and emotions around violence onto it.
“Each roti is a silent testament of violence that has metamorphosized into something else.
Why roti?
Roti is a symbol of necessity connected to livelihood as well as dependence. Males in most households are bread earners for the family.
Now imagine, speaking ill against the person who brings food to the table. The person you care about, who is also a victim of social pressures (and might have drug addiction). Speaking about such delicate matters takes a lot of courage”. — Kaarvan Crafts Foundation, Annual Report, 2022
“So that way your anonymity is there, you don’t have to verbally say like, ‘Oh, I’ve experienced X, Y or Z.’ It just like it’s more of an creative expression of your emotion, etc. and kind of saying that this happened, but I don’t want to give it a name — such a big word.. and (create) trouble in the community. So I think you just have to find creative solutions… in a way that kind of communicates.. but you also are not exposing them to risk and harm.” — Mashal
Looking to the future, Mashal wishes that conversations around climate change and decolonisation could happen more in the spaces that she works in. She is excited about meeting more design practitioners working with communities and taking this discourse forward.
To view the full conversation, please visit our YouTube channel.
Are you a design researcher or practitioner working with communities in South Asia and beyond? Please comment and/or reach out to us at designact.org@gmail.com. We’d be honoured to see design research practice through your lens.
