Prospective Design is a field of research opened by researchers from the Graduate Program in Prospective Design (PPGDP) at UTFPR, of which the proponent is one of the founders. Since 2019, the proponent has been conducting participatory workshops with faculty, students, and others interested in what would become PPGDP. The workshops are being recorded in photos, videos, and audio recordings, thus lending themselves to qualitative analysis of recurring patterns and explanatory categories. The objective of this proposal is, on the one hand, to expand critical awareness of Prospective Design through additional workshops like this one. On the other hand, the objective is to measure the degree of clarification of this collective awareness through video-based interactional analysis and graphical analysis of the collected data.
These two objectives are intertwined, as the results of each measurement will be communicated to the field and other fields, thereby contributing to its expansion. The main method of data generation will be Lego Serious Play, with modifications based on Critical Pedagogy and the Theater of the Oppressed. The data coding strategy is based on the seven categories of critical consciousness identified by Álvaro Vieira Pinto: 1) objectivity; 2) historicity; 3) rationality; 4) totality; 5) activity; 6) freedom; and 7) nationality.
This study is based on the hypothesis that these categories are already manifest in the collective body that outlines the field of Prospective Design. In addition to confirming or refuting this hypothesis, this study will measure the qualitative level of clarification of each of these categories. In addition to expanding this nascent field, this proposal will strengthen studies of the work of philosopher Álvaro Vieira Pinto, the scientific-political project of Decolonizing Design Research, critical pedagogies in Design Education, Participatory Design methods, and the differentialist approach in Information Design.
