CRD seminar Luleå

2009 March 13

CRD seminar Luleå
March 9-11 2009, Luleå, Sweden

Gender and Design

The latest CRD research school meeting took place up north in Luleå at the Luleå Tekniska Universitet (LTU). The theme for the seminar was Gender and Design and I have to say I really enjoyed the event. I couldn’t understand all of the deep discussions during the three days, but I understood quite a bit, enough at least to find the different issues at hand very interesting.

The event took place at LTU’s DesignLab, part of the Work and Occupational Studies (Arbetsvetenskap) department. We had the chance to visit their nice facilities (including the nice acoustic rooms and an elaborate driving simulator). It was also interesting to learn and discover their Industrial Design Engineering program. They have quite a lot of students attending this education and the projets we could see looked different from what you expect from an Engineering school. This program seems to seat directly at the meeting point of Industrial Design and Production Engineering. Quite technical, but very interesting, really.

The first presentation from Janne Johansson was a truly interesting historical review of the Work and Occupational studies field. He presented the different roots and important works that led to the current situation we have today in this domain. Sweden and Scandinavia were precursors in many aspects, and it was nice to get this historical perspective.

During the following days, many presenters took the stage and revealed their work/research related to Gender and Design. I never realized that so much gender-specific are present in our day-to-day life and the objects/services surrounding us. We you stop and think about it, it’s everywhere, and kind of scary actually. And I don’t think we can avoid it really. We are all humans and member of one gender. Females and males are different in many ways, but we are naturally alike in other ways: we all social creatures that need to sleep, eat, interact with the world. Our value system is particularly culture-dependant and it affects greatly how we relate to gender-specific issues. Designers play an even bigger role as their “job” is to materialize, concretize, fulfill user’s needs and wishes. Bits and atoms are shaped and assemble according to a strange mix of personal values (or client’s ones) and technical possibilites. It is inevitable that gender-specific characteristics are present in designers’ works, both consciously and unconsciously.

Marcus Jahnke, from HDK/Göteborgs presented his work and publication FormgivningNormgivning. It contains fine examples of gender issues in relation to design, both from a critical perspective (discursive design he calls it) and from a proactive perspective. Nothing revolutionary, but definitely essential to explore/consider/reflect upon in today’s design projects.

I have now many articles and documents to read about the field. I’ll definitely try to embrace this aspect in my own research (and teaching also).

Resources and links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_role

On gender and things: Reflections on an exhibition on gendered artifacts

Design and emotion: the experience of everyday things
By Deana McDonagh, Paul Hekkert, Jeroen van Erp, Diane Gyi

Ewa Gunnarson, article/page

http://www.genusochdesign.se

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