Critical pedagogy
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The political body as a fulcrum for radical imagination in metadesign
Abstract: The political role of the body in metadesign is often underestimated, due to a lack of imagination regarding contemporary body and identity politics. This research reports on a democratic design experiment organized by design students to unleash radical imagination in metadesign. Students imagined a socially engaged design practice that welcomed dissensus as a source […] - Nov 9, 2020 -
This is a book summary for the Pluriversal Design Book Club. It is a short contextualized introduction to Paulo Freire’s magnum opus. The main feature of this introduction is a visual scheme to frame the historical-dialectical relationships developed throughout the book: oppression, banking education, and colonization. This scheme also considers the emergence of third forces […] - Oct 30, 2020 -
The Anthropophagic Studio: Towards a Critical Pedagogy for Interaction Design
Abstract: The design studio is the standard approach for interaction design education in the Global North. Nevertheless, in the Global South, this approach is not directly applicable due to authoritarian educational systems founded on colonialist ideologies. This research reports on an attempt to appropriate the design studio and fundamental interaction design concepts in Brazil. Following the anthropophagy tradition of hybridization, the foreign concepts […] - Jul 25, 2020 -
Matters of Care in Designing a Feminist Coalition
Abstract: Recent literature on Participatory Design describes the act of designing coalitions around a matter of concern. This paper challenges the notion of concern as the ontological basis of coalitions. Coalitions are, in fact, political organizational forms that have a long history in civil rights movements, characterized by the provisional union of different oppressed groups […] - Jun 13, 2020 -
Course design and design (in)discipline
Course design and design (in)discipline (2020) was a talk given at the Innovative practices in higher education panel from UTFPR teaching seminars. UTFPR has been conducting debates and workshops on Course Design, a pedagogical approach that aims to promote innovation in education. Despite borrowing the term Design, this loan does not reach cutting-edge research in […] - Apr 27, 2020 -
Thinking with the whole body (2020) was a workshop offered in UTFPR teaching seminars. The Technological University usually stimulates its students to think primarily with the brain, ignoring the biological and social support of this organ. Physical activity is restricted to complementary activities, which are isolated from the primary processes of learning, assessment, and knowledge […] - Apr 27, 2020 -
When black people move, all the possibilities of future move with them
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to identify how the Brazilian black movement appropriates Afrofuturist language as a strategy of resistance to racism. The analysis is based on a literature review on the studies of identity representation (Stuart Hall), Black Movement (Nilma Lino Gomes) and Afrofuturism (Ytasha Womack). This study shows how design techniques […] - Apr 15, 2020 -
Conscious Periphery COVID-19 communication
Conscious Periphery is an emergency outreach activity funded by UTFPR to fight misinformation about the COVID-19 in vulnerable communities around the university. To reach this aim, the students involved in the activity will collaborate with community leaders to find the right tune as well as with healthcare professionals to deliver the correct information. The messages […] - Apr 9, 2020 -
Theater of the Techno-Oppressed
Theater of the Techno-Oppressed is an outreach activity offered to UTFPR’s local community. The activity aims at raising critical consciousness about the role of technology in our everyday life, in particular, the way it constrains our bodies to certain physical and/or political postures that accepts oppression as an inevitable deed. There is nothing inherently good […] - Apr 6, 2020 -
Open Design was initially introduced as an analog to Open Source Software, a concept which explains why software source code should be part of an official product release. The analogy went by stating that electronic drawings and models be released together with physical products, in the hopes of enabling modifications or self-production through digital fabrication. […] - Apr 6, 2020 -
60 hours – Bachelor in Design – UTFPR This studio course lets students discuss and realize the role of design in increasing or decreasing social inequalities. To realize that, they must develop a design project together with a disenfranchised community. Before joining a community, however, they must learn how to design together. Hence, the course […] - Mar 23, 2020 -
TECSOL is UTFPR’s Solidarity Economy Incubator. This outreach project assists disenfranchised communities to organize solidarity work relations, fair trade markets, and public policy advocacy for Solidarity Economy. Solidarity Economy is understood as an alternative mode of production which can work within Capitalism to overcome its limitations, such as poverty and dehumanization. I helped the incubator […] - Jul 8, 2019 -
Design is often defined as a professional activity that produces physical and symbolic artifacts. However, in contemporary common parlance, the design word is also used to describe the characteristics of this professional activity’s products. Despite professionals claiming responsibility for these qualities, there is ample evidence that such qualities are not defined solely by professionals. Instead, […] - Oct 31, 2018 -
Cities and Technologies is a 30 hours graduate course from the Urban Management program from PUCPR. The course was delivered by professors Rodrigo Firmino, Fabio Duarte, Rodrigo Gonzatto, and Frederick van Amstel. After reading and discussing various articles from the field of Science, Technology, and Society (STS), the students engaged in three workshops led by […] - Apr 28, 2018 -
Designing oppressive and libertarian interactions with the conscious body
Abstract: Human-Computer Interaction literature often includes the allegory of computers oppressing users through badly designed interfaces. Analyzing this oppression relation through the critical pedagogy of Paulo Freire, it is possible to say that computers are not oppressors, yet they can be considered oppressive if one social group is using it to oppress another. This article introduces […] - Oct 31, 2017