Design Studies: Cultures

I had the opportunity to lead CMU Design Studies: Cultures), a 4.5-unit course with forty-two undergraduate students that investigated how varied human identities—including class, race, gender, faith, and disability—intersect with design. Through weekly lectures, discussions, and reflective assignments, students cultivated a broader perspective on their own positionality, culminating in final projects that explored design’s relationship to diverse cultural contexts.

Course Description

As makers of the artificial and influencers of human experience, designers have a responsibility to account for the different kinds of human. This course aimed to give students new perspectives and insights into the world, particularly to those messy and irreducible aspects of human life. By discussing various aspects of human difference —ideology, class, faith, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disability status, political affiliations, or worldviews— and relating them to the material/designed world, students learned to become more critical and sensitive thinkers, especially with regards to the ethics and politics of their design propositions and interventions.

Additionally, they engaged in a self-learning experience about their own identity, how that identity is nested within a complex network of identities, and how these complexities shape what and how they make. To reach this goal, students were required to engage critically with curated content prior to each session. Class time consisted of short lectures, discussions, and personal reflections surrounding a series of discourses from the fields of cultural theory, theories of labor and class, queer studies, among others, and how varying ideologies relate to their own identities and to the realm of design. They navigated this process with the guidance and support of their peers, instructors and TAs. We encourage them to ask for and share points of view with others to enter in a process of reflection and reevaluation of their own preconceptions. Due to the nature of this class, coursework combined personal and group work, allowing for self and collective reflective work.

Finally, this course forms part of a series of Design Studies courses students took as part of their core undergraduate design degree program. Design Studies courses aim to help students learn how to think critically about design; most importantly, these courses provide them with a space to practice how to consciously and critically make choices among ways they are designing so those are morally responsible.

Learning Objectives

By the end of the course, students were able to:

Describe how historical and philosophical roots of identity and culture shapes design as a reflection of society and how design shapes society in return.
Assess your own biases and assumptions regarding identity, class and labor, politics and power, faith and belief, disability status, race, ethnicity and culture, and gender, sex, and sexuality to reevaluate them and enter into a process of constant reevaluation.
Discuss issues of difference in a sensitive manner that is mindful and respectful of everyone's difference and positionality.
Facilitate conversations on sensitive topics for others to engage in critical thinking.

Class Project: Cajita Concept

In this assignment, students created a “cajita” (Spanish for “little box”) as a personal and cultural assemblage that reflects the diverse aspects of human difference explored throughout the course. Each week’s “pataje” assignment provides an opportunity to gather artifacts—such as objects, images, videos, or even newly created pieces—that represent the student’s evolving understanding of identity, culture, and design. These artifacts, along with insights gained from the five modules, will form the foundation for a 2-minute video submission and visual documentation of the cajita. Through this process, students integrated theoretical concepts, personal memories, and reflections on the designed world, examining how differences influence both individual and collective experiences, and how designers can engage with these complexities more thoughtfully.