Text: Jens Persson / Photo: Erik
Abel
2020-09-04
Maria Göransdotter's research explores
whether forgotten episodes in design history could open up new
perspectives on how we can understand and do design today.
She believes that an increased awareness of the
historical values embedded in the practices of design can
contribute to avoiding the reproduction of the ideals that have
contributed to Western civilization's movement towards an
increasingly unsustainable future.
In her dissertation, Maria Göransdotter argues that activating
the transformative power within design requires an understanding of
designing as fluid and changing, rather than something that is
stable over time. While central concepts of industrial design may
appear to be stable - such as "form", "participation" or "user" -
they have indeed been introduced, established and changed over
time.
Facing the weight of past values
According to Maria Göransdotter, many of the values that
prevailed when industrial design came into being are still
activated in how designers think and work today. With the major
changes we are facing on a global scale, we need a fluid
understanding of how design can be understood - and this requires
fluid and changing design histories. Before we can create new ways
of designing for a sustainable future, we need an understanding of
how the past has shaped our present.
"The problem is that design is a rather a-historical field. If
we are really going to try to understand where some difficulties
come from in the ways we design, we need to understand where our
design methods come from. But so far, design history has mostly
been about things, how they look, who made them, and how they have
acquired meaning in different contexts. When it comes to the
history of our methods, processes and thinking in design, there is
not much presence of such perspectives within design. It is almost
as if methods and processes were given by nature", says Maria
Göransdotter.
"My aim has been to explore which kinds of stories about design
emerge when we take our starting point in the practices of design,
instead of in things or design outcomes. The idea has not been to
search for the "true story" of what design is or has been, but
instead to find other, and more, perspectives on what design could
be, and could become. To perhaps see things we have not seen before
through discovering that our design methods carry a lot of
presupposed notions and expectations that steer us towards things
that we may not really want to do at all".
Challenging the origins of design's central concepts
One of the stories that Maria Göransdotter explores is the one
about the origins of Scandinavian user-centered design. According
to current design histories, user-centered originated in the United
States during World War II, when the Armed Forces designed
ergonomic cockpit environments for fighter pilots. But according to
Maria Göransdotter, the historical roots of user-centered design
can just as plausibly be traced to a completely different context,
on the other side of the Atlantic. Namely to Sweden.
In the 1940s, Hemmens forskningsinstitut (Home Research
Institute) was founded with the aim of fundamentally changing
women's opportunities for societal influence through systematically
studying, and changing, housewives' work in the home. Many of the
methods that were developed to create new tools and working methods
introduced new, iterative and participatory design processes,
including prototyping and iterative clay modelling based on
in-depth user participation.
"The processes and methods that were developed during the 1940s
and 50s had clear roots in both folkbildning (adult learning) and
the Folkhem, a 'People's Home', as well as in the women's movement
and general efforts to reform and revalue women's work and
perspectives in society. These ideas, methods and values later
become important for how participatory design formed a few decades
later. But stories like the one about Hemmens forskningsinstitut
have never really been considered as "real" design, which of course
plays a big role in how we think about where design practices come
from and which trajectories the field of design might take".
Maria Göransdotter hopes that the creation of other kinds, and
more diverse, design histories can contribute to new ways of
activating and informing today's and tomorrow's design processes by
taking on more perspectives, related to, for example - environment,
culture, ethnicity, gender and different power structures.
About Maria Göransdotter: She was born in
Umeå, and grew up there and in Saudi Arabia. She has previously
studied the history of ideas at undergraduate and postgraduate
level at Umeå University, and has also studied semiotics and
aesthetics at the University of Bologna. She has been teaching at
Umeå Institute of Design since 1995, and was between 2008-2018 part
of the school's leadership group. Between 2013-15 she was head of
department, and between 2015-18 she was vice rector. She is now
defending her dissertation in industrial design, working as a
teacher in design history and design theory, and currently has
assignments in pedagogical development projects at Umeå Institute
of Design and as an external expert in quality review of design
educations in the Nordic countries.
Read
the dissertation
Press photos. Credit: Erik Abel
About the dissertation:
On Friday 18 September, Maria Göransdotter, Umeå Institute of
Design, will defend her dissertation entitled Transitional Design
Histories.
The PhD Defense takes place at 13:30 in the Project Studio, Umeå
Institute of Design, Umeå University
Faculty opponent is Molly Wright Steenson, Carnegie Mellon
University.
The main supervisor is Professor Johan Redström, Umeå Institute of
Design.
Secondary supervisor is Professor Kjetil Fallan, University of
Oslo.
The
event on Facebook
For participation via Zoom, send a request to: participation.uid@umu.se
