Rural Co-design Experiences
Designing education strategies to increase value to partnering communities in the context of participatory design projects2019-2022
MIT Media Lab | Diversa
Colombia
#PD #STS
︎ Completed
Motivation
For most of its history, the discipline of design has come to be an elitist space: in service to a privileged class, built over technical complexity, and made possible at the expense of planetary harm. In the United States for example, the foundation of the McMicken School of Design in Cincinnati in 1869 launched a wave of design schools, the majority of them created with the purpose of advancing industry’s interest by using design as competitive advantage. The co-op model, currently adopted by a wide range of design programs worldwide, guarantees a tight connection between universities and industries, creating a door for corporate and academic narratives to feed on each other. How can we intercept this circuit? Recent moves towards more inclusive, plural, place-based, and history aware design programs have begun to appear with notable examples in the recent decade. Programs like Carnegie Mellon’s Transition Design and the recently revamped Faculty of Design at the Ontario College of Art & Design (OCAD) serve as cases in point of this transformation in education. This project adds to these alternatives by offering examples of alternative models of design education taking place within higher education institutions.
Up: students and community partners work on prototypes for an artisanal fish pond
Down left: students working with small-scale coffee growers and community partners
Down right: students working on prototype for sensorized beehive
Down left: students working with small-scale coffee growers and community partners
Down right: students working on prototype for sensorized beehive
What we did
We co-designed and implemented a model for an immersive, community-based, participatory experience on technology design: the Co-Design Experience. Inspired by decolonial studies and Indigenous research methods, we expose students to a learning program that centers local knowledge, features local communities as teachers, and exposes participants to a curriculum collaboratively built and informed by partnering collectives. By effectively connecting these programs with long-standing programs and initiatives, we provide a robust model for participatory design experiences that solves the issue of program sustainability.
Left: prototype of an invasive plant manual uprooter
Middle: testing a prototype for a lettuce washer
Right: schematics for a sensorized beehive
Middle: testing a prototype for a lettuce washer
Right: schematics for a sensorized beehive
My contributions
Curriculum design, design facilitation, Qualitative and quantitative analysis.
Collaborators
Alejandra Villamil, Alexander Freese, Diana Duarte, Rubez Chong.Outputs
Reynolds-Cuéllar, P. & Chong Lu Ming, R. (2020). Coffee Farms as Design Labs: Manifesting Equity x Design Principles in Practice. Design Research Society Conference 2020.Reynolds-Cuéllar, P., Villamil-Mejia, A., & Bello, A. F. (2020). Coffee and Engineering Education: Lessons from an Engineering Course on Technology for Coffee Production. 2020 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), 1–5.
A Co-Design Experience: Technology Design for Coffee Production | 2019 Edition report (Spanish)
