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Deshonesty in theory + practice
How we talk about design matters, and we need to talk about how we talk about it. People who write about design have long observed that the design process results in more than just finished “things” — cars, toasters, apps to order takeout with, etc. In working through a given problem, a designer might catalyze new ideas about materials, generate new knowledge about systems, and, without sufficient criticality, rehearse old ideologies about people. While these intangible byproducts of the design process don’t often receive as much attention as the real-world “solutions” that designers intend to produce, these invisible subtexts exert tremendous force in shaping how design practice unfolds at scale — what kind of problems designers take on, for whom, and how.
As the design discipline grapples with its role in perpetuating cascading crises of colonial exploitation, environmental destruction, and insatiable capitalism, designers are in need of critical tools that bridge theory and practice, that create space for reflexivity, that engage internal motivations and external power structures, and that draw more voices into the conversations about what we make for the world (and how we remake the world itself).
What I’m calling Deshonesty is simply a diffuse collection of ideas, inquiries, and practices that are intended to make conversations about design more expansive, introspective, and inclusive. I’ve been experimenting with theories that link individual design processes to larger social structures, methods of critically reflecting on design from within the creative process itself, and tools that make it easier (and more fun) for designers to crawl inside of their own heads and hearts. Specifically, I’m interested in how practices of documentation and self-reflection can lead to new ways of doing design — at the individual scale, but also across the entire discipline.
At its core, Deshonesty is about the about-ness of design — the specific ways that designers capture, understand, and communicate design work. In more precise language, it’s about how designers can leverage (and invent!) documentation and reflection practices that help them to see their work in new ways, and to realize how many different stories they can tell about it. As designers, Deshonesty asks us to get real with ourselves by asking how the systems that make us make us make things, and how to best communicate the things we end up making.
Like honesty (and dishonesty), Deshonesty is a way of showing up in design practice. It is a complex ethic that navigates tensions between truth and meaning. It upholds the ideals of radical transparency, the necessity of knowing oneself, and the power of narrative. It also acknowledges that transparency isn’t all or nothing, that self-examination is structurally fraught, and that all good stories are at least a little bit distortive.
This work is admittedly hard to describe in words, and is best experienced directly. During my MFA studies at UC Davis, I’ve been picking at these concepts from multiple angles in theory and practice (and have opened up possibilities for many further explorations as well). Within the scope of my graduation requirements, I’ve completed the following investigations, each detailed here in the coming pages.
In conjunction with the literature review I completed for this thesis, I’ve been writing about how theories of design practice sync up with bigger theories about how design creates the entire world — I’m curious about how documentation can disrupt how design unfolds across scales. You can read more about this on the Background + literature page.
I developed and taught an undergraduate studio course that focused exclusively on process documentation and reflection practices as skills in their own right. The entire curriculum was built from scratch and designed to offer students a variety of different perspectives into their design work. As part of this work, I qualitatively analyzed students’ written material throughout the term to learn what types of assignments led to what types of reflective activity. You can read more about this course on the Documentation for Designers page.
After my experience teaching (and studying) my Documentation for Designers course, I noticed the need for tools that help design educators integrate reflective writing into studio design curricula. DARB is a digital personality designed to motivate students to reflect on their creative practice. You can read more about DARB (and talk to them yourself) on the DARB page.
In collaboration with my cohort of fellow Design MFA students, I installed an interactive exhibition of my work at the Manetti Shrem Museum on the UC Davis campus. You can see more about that installation on the Media + exhibition page.