Learning from Indigenous Design

10 Nov 2023

The week before mid-semester break was Sydney Design Week, and I attended the Responsible Design Thinking Symposium at Tin Sheds Gallery at the Sydney School of Architecture, Design and Planning. I was happy that I made the time (in a chaotic period of semester) to attend. It included some fantastic presentations from Ilya Fridman & Yaron Meron, Desireé Ibinarriaga and Martin Tomitsch. I was really inspired by Desireé’s talk about her indigenous design methodology, and I enjoyed reading her (beautifully written) paper.

The paper outlines the Seven Grandfather’s Teaching, and how the principles of this teaching informs the way she designs. The principles are each associated with an animal that represents the teaching.

I’m not indigenous, and though Desireé has published her methodology, it’s not my place to utilise it - to extract it from its context and exploit it as a resource within my own worldview. I hope in the future we can work together, and I can learn about the way she applies her method reflects values in design: Responsibility, Respect, Relationality, and Reciprocity. But I don’t think it’s my place (as someone with no North American heritage) to try to have an equivalent for my own context.

Reflecting

So what do I do in response to this knowledge. How can I act?

I think the main theme that stood out from the symposium to me is the speed at which design is movingMarcus Foth has talked about this in a context of urbanism, in an article on The Coversation . It is like we think that there is a need to operate at GHz speeds, or be left behind. But we shouldn’t move fast and not worry if we break things. As Norm Sheehan puts it:

We are all traveling very fast in a powerful culture driven by evidence, so any ameliorative practices are patches applied to the damage we leave behind. Meanwhile, the social machinery continues to operate at the same speed in the same direction. Colonized peoples know this scenario so well and now everyone is beginning to experience the abject disregard built into every level of human engagement that enables maximum exploitation. in “On Country Learning” by Uncle Charles Moran, Uncle Greg Harrington, & N. Sheehan (2018) DOI: [10.1080/17547075.2018.1430996]

I am biased toward slower design, because my work in Biodesign relies on fabricating things at the speed of fungal growth, rather than the speed of injection moulded plastic [0.5-1m per second]. But even a human speed would work better than imagining we are digital operators. Designers should invest in taking time necessary to gather evidence for our decisions, so that we (designers) can take responsibility for the implications of our designs. We should be critical of the methods and methodologies that we use, develop them further, and make sure we are acting with justice.

As a start, the Value-Sensitive DesignSee vsdesign.org/ Method, Multi-lifespan Timeline, stands out to me as a way that designers can use the language of “tools” and “methods” to tap the breaks. I want to change my practice to make time to investigate how as a designer my process can adapt to a different pace. My hypothesis is that I can design more effectively, sustainably and create more meaningful designs as a result.

It somehow seems to me that design is simultaneously overstating and understating the impact it may have in the future - especially if we consider climate change and a transition to a circular economy. We act as if nothing is happening, and keep designing objects, web-appsThe internet may account for one fifth of all energy use by 2025. and wearables to quantify our health (but not necessarily our wellbeing). At the same time, sustainable and circular futures are projected to be design choices, without any apparent impact on how people (“consumers”) live their livesfor example, have a look at this video from the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water… sounds simple, right!? or any change in the economic system that prioritises profit over all else. There is of course, a detailed report to go with this (I haven’t read it all, yet), but at the core of a transition to sustainabiltiy is the actual transition. A change away from the way things are now, to something different.