A Recipe for Designing against Populism
Two Thousand and Seventeen marks a potential turning point regarding politics in Germany, Europe and beyond. With elections being held in France, the Netherlands, Germany and USA, the future of many countries are in the hands of their nation. Empathetic by profession, caring by nature, as designers we tend to want to help out wherever possible. #Designagainstpopulism is no different. Experiencing changing times, and a feeling of helplessness, IxDA Berlin wanted to curate an evening for the design community showing where it would be possible to help out this year with the hope of informing and educating the community before the upcoming German elections.
Coming together for a community workshop, IxDA Berlin gave the ingredients to designers in order to work through the question:
‘What can we as Designers do, to halt the spread of right wing populism?’
in one evening — perhaps somewhat a wicked question for such time constraints. We laid out a simple 3-step recipe for the evening; defining a problem, ideating on solutions, and creating an action plan for the next six months. In order for each designer to add their own spice to the final concepts, the initial group of 80 attendees was separated into 10 groups. We added a mentor to the mix to guide each group through the evening and intensified the experience 10 fold by giving a constraint of 2 hours. Video statements by senior thinkers and practitioners within design community were sprinkled throughout the evening with various inspiring flavours: We had asked designers, advocates, professors, researchers, collaborators, authors from all over the world to share their thoughts with us to guide the designers which were all especially filmed for the event.
This was an experimental format for us too, as the IxDA Berlin organisers hadn’t curated an evening like this before for our community. However each group developed their own concept, all with different group personalities; experiences, professions, background and group dynamics all played a role.
Boris Müller, Professor of Interaction-Design at FH Potsdam, set cogs in motion for the workshop feeding attendees with some initial food for thought
‘democracies are vulnerable to populism; they paint the world in black and white, divide mankind into them and us, and ignore the complexities of the world and undermine the values of democracy’.
This, enhanced by Peprally’s Dear Europe created drive in the attendees to want to make change. After first round of problem definition, the attendees hard working minds were fuelled again with some alternative perspectives to the Populism movement by the FIT associates’ Hannah du Plessis and Marc Rettig; ‘Every war has been fought by those acting in self defence. Battling them will only deepen the divide’.
Hailing from a land of divide, South Africa, Hannah added a perspective of ‘the other’ reminding us that these people ‘are family and friends’ and to not deepen the divide that is between each other, but create an environment for discourse and repair. Her colleague Marc Rettig also reminded attendees that although a serious topic, that
we still have overall life enthusiasm, and we should always create with joy.
With groups discussing current issues with everything from Xenophobia, Disinformation and Totalitarism to Sexism, Nationalism & Isolationism, Louis Rosenfeld was able to give practical examples in his video message of how he is shaping Rosenfeld Media since last year’s elections in the US, allowing the attendees to see past the problem space, and consider the landscape around them, and how this solution could be shaped in the space of Berlin.
Other great designers that added inspiration for the evening included Design Advocate for diversity Brenda Laurel who brought to the table the power of discussion when talking about populism in everyday life.
“ Ensure to take time out to talk to people that have different views that yourself. Invest in conversation, ask about someone’s family background and try to find common ground to find out about how they think. ‘Someone that holds a different view but is still civil and kind is important.”
Co-founder of BRCK Juliana Rotich also reminded designers of our ethical responsibility of designers, to create meaningful products, and take responsibility of the products we unleash into the world — somewhat similar to the thoughts of Mike Monteiro at the Q & A session last November at IxDA Berlin.
Solution Space
The inspiration provided by many seasoned designers from around the world provided each team with enough strength to create an idea and foster conversations on how to create impact by means of the designer’s skill set over the upcoming months of the current political state before the German elections. Groups had a variety of solutions; from creating double ice cream cones that can be split with strangers to start a conversation about politics, to creating art exhibitions around the city to educate the wider community.
Other groups proposed tech-enabled solutions; from a internet plugin entitled ‘Zebra’ that presents stories that we otherwise wouldn’t be exposed to, to an online platform that allows viewers to understand other peoples’ political opinion and compare themselves to others political opinion, to creating hashtag campaigns.
Still, yet other groups created hyper-local solutions, from simple yet convincing sticker campaigns in order to create visual awareness around the city, to in-context research using peoples’ safe environments to create awareness ‘undercover in der Kneipe’.
To round off the evening’s discussion, 10 willing souls contributed to a panel discussion about the current political climate sparking heated debate. The evening’s activities from team concept to debate reflected everyone’s need to expand their own understanding and belief system. There were even some groups who were enthusiastic about testing their idea-prototypes in the city before the upcoming election.
Finishing off the evening, we were finally greeted with some words from Josh Clark. As we were briskly swept out of our sponsor venue, drinks were as usual, finished off at Bar 3 until the late hours of the night. IxDA events are sprinkled with Q&A as well as interactive sessions to ensure that everyone is able to get to know each other, spread knowledge, and genuinely have a good time. We hope that everyone enjoyed the evening, and would love to hear of any of the groups that chose to move forward with their ideas! If anyone has speaker suggestions for the upcoming months in Berlin, please let one of the organisers know.
Signing off,
Kathryn
along with Audrey, Jay and Thomas
If you would like to see a collection of photos of the evening, head to our flickr.
All videos shown at the workshop in order of appearance:
Boris Müller, Professor of Interaction-Design at FH Potsdam: https://vimeo.com/215902867
Peprally’s Dear Europe: https://vimeo.com/207224551
Hannah du Plessis, FIT Associates: https://vimeo.com/215899331
Marc Rettig, FIT Associates: https://vimeo.com/217822734
Lou Rosenfeld, Founder Rosenfeld Media: https://vimeo.com/217994776
Brenda Laurel, independent scholar and consultant: https://vimeo.com/222806657
Juliana Rotich, Co-founder of BRCK: https://vimeo.com/222806975
Josh Clark, speaker & principal of Big Medium: https://vimeo.com/226139781
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A big thanks to our Design Advocates who created videos for the evening; Boris Müller, Eric L. Reiss, Kim Goodwin, Brenda Laurel, Nelly Ben Hayoun, Josh Clark, Phil Balagtas, Mark Rettig, Hanna Du Plessis, Khoi Vinh, Louis Rosenfeld and Ed Macovaz.
The Workshop Mentors for the evening; Cori Moore, Ed Macovaz, Clive K. Lavery, Sven Ellingen, Tom Allison, Fabio Saccon, Hanna Petruschat, Holger Eggert, Maya McBeath and Andreas Rau.
Finally, a special thanks to our IxDA photographer Konrad Röpke
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