Design contributes to human knowledge.
It’s political, and it has consequences.
Design + DH. With S. Ruecker.
Coming in 2020 via Intellect Books.
We’ve created a series of free, short lectures on design methods, speculative design, graphic design, critical reading, and design case studies. We have over 50 videos done at the moment, with more finished every day.
LAST UPDATED: 12 October 2020
We’re super pleased to present our inaugural Colouring Feminist Activists, the first in a series of books designed by the qlab to celebrate and contemplate the vital work done by leading feminist activists of the past and present.
Freedom of expression and academic freedom are vital in a democratic society. But Alberta and Ontario governments seem intent on undermining those freedoms by distorting their meaning.
To help add clarity to the debates, I created a poster guide, free to print and share.
qlab is located at the University of Waterloo, Mount Royal University, and University of Illinois. We undertake design research projects that extend and interrogate the lab’s commitments, and that are collaborative, paced to encourage reflection, and funded (by grants or industry partnerships). We seek to use design to create safer, more inclusive public spaces for marginalized and targeted communities.
The TechnoTampons project appropriates and re-imagines existing design vocabularies by exploring relationships between objects and their qualities, and the complexities of human experiences. We use provocation to think—critically, contextually, and intersectionally—about design, and problematize its relationships with people, communities, nature, and culture.
We outline disciplinary perspectives, share common pitfalls to avoid, and break down foundational concepts from the Digital Humanities and from Design. With illustrated case studies from cutting-edge research projects, supplementary reading lists, and dozens of practical exercises, this is an essential, accessible handbook that will bring design and the digital humanities closer to mutual understanding.
When the majority of designers teach or use design process models, they tend to emphasize the fact that the models are iterative, and that it will be natural to expect to go through the cycle more than once. It is also common practice to mention that the design cycle does not have a fixed starting point, but can instead begin at any stage of the model.
ABSTRACT DEADLINE EXTENDED TO MARCH 7, 2020.
research areas
DESIGN +
Design research contributes new knowledge that is actionable—beginning with an attempt to understand the present, grounded in an acknowledgement of the past that has shaped it, in order to define a better future and then figure out how to get to it from here, the present.
WICKED PROBLEMS
This is a category of problems (proposed by Rittel and Webber in the 1960s) that are messy, unsettling, complex, and ill-formulated. They contain confusing information, engage multiple stakeholders who hold conflicting values, and often result in confusing ramifications.
REFLECTION & ACCOUNTABILITY
“Know where you come from and know where your privileges are. If ‘all design is ideological’, as Dunne says, do take that statement seriously. Giving yourself the task to stop navel-gazing and to always second-guess your own decisions is not a shame. It is for the better, trust us.”
Pedro Oliveira and Luiza Prado