JOHN HENLEY, HEYSU OH
During the past six weeks of How People Work, we reviewed the ideas of human cognition and its influences on the ways Design is contemporarily being perceived and understood. One concept we want to reflect upon is the “positionality” of a designer. Intersectionality and positionality work in tandem to promote understanding of human beings as an interaction between different social locations. Application of this notion for a designer is important as we need to be aware of different worldviews and backgrounds to conceptualize design compositions.
Taking into account the worldview and position in society as a designer helps to make aware of the other world differences necessary to consider. Measuring the levels of privilege as a designer, for example, helps to shed light on inequalities already present in society — and the beginnings of how to fix them. This practice of examining the systems in society that lead to inequality and levels of privilege is a great way to understand perspectives differing from the designer. While it is impossible to fully comprehend a different worldview, looking at these systems helps a designer to see connections and consequences of existing structures to build a better idea of what the positional context is being designed within.
However, while it may seem noble initially, erasing all societal differences in a design’s considerations is actually counterproductive. While the design should be relatively universal, it should also cater towards inclusivity and accessibility for those with different physical abilities, cognitive abilities, and worldviews. In fact, erasing these differences in the consideration process will lead to designs that are less inclusive and less creative.
A specific application of “positionality” could be in social media design. Contemporarily, humor is a critical tool which designers use to challenge and reinforce power structures. The mobilization of humor in online memes to express hate, love, political critiques, etc. results in social media corporations to make constant decisions of where the limits of jokes are drawn. However, humor is an area which is difficult to access. Humor, often, can have harmful intentions that leave considerable damages when left unaddressed. With the use of positionality, social media companies can develop a meaningful assessment which recognizes both humor and power protocols. Positionality recognizes the positions of power that individuals’ occupy are not separate from the meanings of interaction. Designer’s use of positionality could help to distinguish socially positive from socially corruptive.
