HPW A2: Jasper Krarup, Karan Shah
The last few weeks of How People Work have catapulted our understanding of human-centered design. It was really interesting to learn about how emotion, diversity in perspectives, and worldviews and their relation to universal and inclusive design, are integral in our journey to be ‘problem-solving’ designers.
During his guest lecture, Jonathan Chapman’s commentary on the intersection between design and emotion was quite interesting. What resonated with us the most was two major concepts: that all design is interaction design, and that design shouldn’t be perfect, so as to create a richer experience for the user. This was quite surprising, considering the fact that as designers we have been constantly taught to provide the most efficient solutions. It feels like this semester has been an introduction into the deeper concepts of design and into learning how to design more thoughtfully.
It was intriguing to connect Jonathan Chapman’s idea of designing an experience for the user and how the user’s worldview can shape that experience. The two of us come from very different parts of the world and we recognise how our perspectives on issues and design itself are products of our personally developed worldviews. Furthermore, after the two of us met and through constant conversation and shared experiences, our worldviews have been restructured significantly. Hence, exemplifying the idea behind hermeneutic loops and constantly evolving worldviews. Hajira Quazi’s lecture prompted us to recognize our audience and their relation to our own personal perspectives.
This idea in conjunction with that of how our positionality structures our thinking drove us to re-evaluate our design thinking strategies in terms of the stereotypes and cultural beliefs that we inherit from our personal experiences. Learning about the concept of universal design in terms of understanding the fact we design for people from a range backgrounds and not only the presumed average human beings forced us to think about solutions that promote inclusivity. However, that subtle tension between universal design and inclusive design really caught our attention. Through logical justification, we can say that universal design would require generalization, however, considering the immense diversity in human kind considering only the average person would not necessarily suffice inclusivity in design.
Taking all of this into consideration, we recognize how our thinking procedure in the designs (or the ‘solutions’ if you must) we create have been impacted by the consideration of how people work. Understanding emotion as one of the driving factors that dominate how people respond to our designed elements has taught us to be empathetic. Pondering over the immensity of possible worldviews and perspectives and its relation to design for ‘all’ has pushed us to be more responsible designers.
