How to prioritize people’s knowledge about themselves
The core attitude underlying ‘Our Everyday Forms’ | Design Research
The Situation
The case project for the thesis (the research question I’m testing) is called Our Everyday Forms. The project involves myself (as researcher) and friends or friends of friends in their private spaces (homes, apartments, rooms, etc.).
All of the individuals involved in the research are Black, Brown, Indigenous, People of Color and Queer, Trans, Non-Binary People of Color. They self-identify as an individual who experiences displacement or marginalization. Lastly, they also must identify as an individual who uses things and places in their private space (house, apartment, suitcase, etc.) specifically to deal with a displacing or marginalizing experience(s). I am calling this particular type of object or space ‘objects of resistance.’
The project takes the form of a tour and interview. There are four scenes I will cover in the project: Recruiting, being in their space with their object(s), analyzing objects and stories, and sharing the stories with people in the community. I understand these four scenes I’m creating as the context (or project) for the design research question (or thesis) I’m exploring.
The thesis is:
“How might I develop a critical design-research attitude by prioritizing people’s wisdom about themselves?”
My decisions about what questions to ask, how to move around in the host’s living room or bedroom, and how I share my findings with them and others, for instance, will be made with the critical design research attitude in mind. The central methodologies for my work serve this research question, which also means that methodologies about work with objects, home, and analyzing objects will play a supportive, background role to the methodologies about me and my practice around prioritizing people’s wisdom about themselves.
The methodologies central to this work fall into the categories of:
Critical Theory
Asking, “Whose Design knowledge am I holding space for?” and drawing from Black, Indigenous, and People of Color feminisms.
Reflexivity in Design Research
Meaning, how I, as part of the Black, People of Color community, work with people. “Me and figuring out a technique for thinking and working with people”
The intended impact of this research and project altogether is to produce:
Primarily,
- a methodology. A critical design attitude for people who do design research.
Secondarily,
- knowledge for Black, Brown, Indigenous, People of Color and Queer, Trans, Non-Binary People of Color by Black, Brown, Indigenous, People of Color and Queer, Trans, Non-Binary People of Color about objects of resistance.
- a proposal for a new interior design and digital archival service within Matter–Mind Studio
