11.4 Design with Care: Theories, Practices, Methods, and Politics

Corresponding Chairs

(Melody) Zixuan Wang, University of Edinburgh

Jiashuo Liu, University of Edinburgh

Co-Chairs

Bow Yiying Wu, The University of Sydney

John Vines, University of Edinburgh

Karey Helms, Umeå Institute of Design

Sarah Kettley, University of Edinburgh

Paul Rodgers, University of Strathclyde

Ann Light, University of Sussex

Abstract

This track explores “care” as a critical lens, rather than merely an application domain or setting for design. As design moves beyond user-centred and business-driven visions to consider broader societal and environmental responsibilities, there is growing interest in using care (e.g., drawing on feminist ethics of care or ‘matters of care’ theories) as an epistemological orientation and ethical stance in design research. However, its slippery, elusive, and multivocal nature can make care—as an underpinning concept for design—difficult to apply and make explicit to others. With a growing body of work engaging with care, there is a pressing need to clarify and evaluate its role and quality in design.

We welcome papers engaging care in all design domains, particularly those that explore:

1. Knowing with care - How might care be a way of knowing and thinking in design? How can care serve as an analytical lens to reimagining design artifacts, technologies, and our social and more-than-human relations?

2. Making with care - How might care be a way to design artifacts and interactions between people and communities? How to make with the tensions and temporalities of care, prevent idealistic abstractions, and evaluate the qualities of care in design?

3. Defining with care - How might care be a way of (re)defining power, tensions, inequalities, and politics in design? How might a feminist ethics of care foreground marginalised and overlooked voices, as well as indigenous knowledge, to foster a more pluriversal understanding of the world?

Keywords

Design with Care, Design through Caring, Caring for Design, Feminist Ethics of Care, Matters of Care, Caring Design

References

Tekogul, I., and Forlano, L. (2024) Cultivating Future-Oriented Responsibility in Design with Care, in Gray, C., Ciliotta Chehade, E., Hekkert, P., Forlano, L., Ciuccarelli, P., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2024: Boston, 23–28 June, Boston, USA. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.1295 

Place, A. (2022) Design as a practice of care: Feminist perspectives on preventing harm and promoting healing through design, in Lockton, D., Lenzi, S., Hekkert, P., Oak, A., Sádaba, J., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2022: Bilbao, 25 June - 3 July, Bilbao, Spain. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.713

Pennington, S. (2018) Taking Care of Issues of Concern: feminist possibilities and the curation of Speculative and Critical Design, in Storni, C., Leahy, K., McMahon, M., Lloyd, P. and Bohemia, E. (eds.), Design as a catalyst for change - DRS International Conference 2018, 25-28 June, Limerick, Ireland. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2018.632 

Jönsson, L., Light, A., Lindström, K., Ståhl, Å.,and Tham, M.(2019) How Can We Come to Care in and Through Design?, in Mattelmäki, T., Mazé, R., Miettinen, S. (eds.), Nordes 2019: Who Cares?, 3 - 6 June, Aalto University, Espoo, Finland. https://doi.org/10.21606/nordes.2019.011