Design As Pluriverse

This idea that there can be at any one given time multiple intersecting, beautiful in some cases, conflicting worlds in which design occupies, operates, and works is a really powerful concept that is driving where design is heading.

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On this episode of Design As you’ll hear from:

Pluriversal design, the concept of a world of many worlds as design practice, is not a new idea but one that has drastically increased in influence. First, here’s Renata Marques Leitão explaining how the pluriversal design paradigm can restart discussions of change:

Then, Frederick van Amstel talks about how pluriversal design works again the old paradigm of multiculturalism that silos communities from each other:

And to end the episode, Lesley-Ann Noel speaks to the current moment of crisis:

Transcript

Lee Moreau Welcome to Design As a show that’s intended to speculate on the future of design from a range of different perspectives. This season, we’re bringing you six new episodes with six new keywords to interrogate. In this episode, you’ll be hearing three different design voices speak to the idea of design as pluriverse. I’m Lee Moreau, host of The Futures Archive from Design Observer, Founding Director of Other Tomorrows and Professor of Practice in Design at Northeastern University’s College of Arts, Media and Design, which hosted the 2024 Design Research Society conference earlier this year. There I got the chance to sit down with various guests, leaders and speakers who are attending the conference, and we’ve compiled some of their voices in this episode about design as pluriverse. This is a roundtable in three parts. On this episode, you’ll hear from Renata Marques Leitão —

Renata Marques Leitão Sometimes it’s very difficult to separate what is real help and what is simply oppression. 

Lee Moreau Frederick van Amstel —

Frederick van Amstel While we make this, we also remake ourselves. So we understand that people are never totally made, people are never done, and they can be also considered design projects in themselves. 

Lee Moreau And Lesley-Ann Noel—

Lesley-Ann Noel Anybody who feels a little bit othered because I find that they have found this conversation of a world of many worlds, resonates with them because it kind of gives them space to say, okay, I can exist as I am because of maybe I occupy this other world and we just learn to talk with each other. 

Lee Moreau Pluriversal design or the notion that design is itself a pluriverse or a world of many worlds, has sort of been, in some ways dominating conversation about the future of design for the last couple of years. And it had a really big presence at the Design Research Society conference here this year. It’s had its own track. Many, many speakers, probably some of the most enthusiastic conversations were on this topic. And I think this idea that there can be at any one given time, multiple intersecting beautiful in some cases conflicting worlds in which design both occupies, operates and works is a really powerful concept that is driving where design is heading. And I was very excited to talk to these amazing leaders, and I’m looking forward to sharing that with you. 

Lee Moreau I’m here with Renata Marques Leitão at Northeastern’s recording studio. It’s June 24th. Hi, Renata. How are you? 

Renata Marques Leitão I’m good. 

Lee Moreau Tell us a little bit about yourself. 

Renata Marques Leitão Hi. So I’m an assistant professor at the Department of Human Centered Design at Cornell University, and I am also convener of the pluriversal design SIG of the Design Research Society. That is a research network that connects people who are interested in pluiversal design, in the pluriverse, in expanding our understanding of the world, and also changing how the world operates. 

Lee Moreau And how long have you been doing that? 

Renata Marques Leitão I’ve been doing that for five years. 

Lee Moreau Okay. And I ask because the pluriversal design is really kind of gotten people’s attention in that, 

Renata Marques Leitão mhm. 

Lee Moreau Five year range, but it goes back further, right? 

Renata Marques Leitão I-I think this is something that that we started to talk about more and more about the pluriverse in 2017. 

Lee Moreau Okay. 

Renata Marques Leitão That was like the date when Arturo Escobar started to connect his work with design. I think that’s the point when we started to talk about the pluriverse. 

Lee Moreau And how has that affected your career trajectory? That was about eight years ago or something. 

Renata Marques Leitão Yeah. I think that because I’m Brazilian, I am originally from Brazil, and I had the chance of spending a lot of time when I was young, when I was about 11 to 14 years old in a native village. So I had and I have been working with indigenous people for a long time. So many times when I was doing this kind of project that this kind of collaboration with indigenous people in North America, my colleagues still had those ideas that helping. It doesn’t matter how much you change the language or say that you’re designing with that of designing for, but you still have the same mindset of correcting a problem that they have. And I think that because I had my experience back in Brazil, I understood how creative and innovative the communities can be. 

Lee Moreau Mhm. 

Renata Marques Leitão So just the role of the designer should be completely different. So when I got to know Arturo Escobar, his work, I felt validated. I felt okay. All the things that I’ve been proposing for years, suddenly I recognize that myself. Suddenly, I see someone that is very knowledgeable, who are writing exactly about the same things. So for me, it was kind of a meeting with myself when I found his work. 

Lee Moreau But this notion of helping, I’m using air quotes here, right? Helping —

Renata Marques Leitão uh-huh. 

Lee Moreau On its face, you know, that sounds like a very noble thing, but break that down for us. Where’s the problem? 

Renata Marques Leitão First, I have to say that the sentence that we should always think about is the the road to hell is paved with good intentions. That’s the first thing. Second, everything about colonialism had the good intentions. You know, it was about converting, saving, like you had to convert it into Christianity to save people souls. So all the violence and the exploitation, centuries of violence and exploitation had always had this facade of help. So sometimes it’s very difficult to separate what is real help in why it is simply oppression. That is very important to understand. Where is the line between the two. 

Lee Moreau And how do you start to work with your students to articulate that line and to kind of pull those things apart? 

Renata Marques Leitão Yes, because I think that we have to start to identify what I name theories of change, how change happens. What are our assumptions about how change happens and what’s the final result? What do we want to produce? What is the pathway towards change? So and then our partners, they also have their theories of change. They also have their pathways. And you can’t really imagine that your pathway, just because you are a very educated person is better than their pathway. So it’s a lot about recognizing our assumptions, especially assumptions about how change happens. 

Lee Moreau And as you’ve been doing this over time, has it become easier to articulate this to students, or are you still finding that you’re kind of having the same conversation over and over? Meaning meeting has has the has the discipline moved in such a way that it’s kind of catching up with some of your ideas? Or are you still maybe carving a new path? 

Renata Marques Leitão I think that that both. Both in different levels. I think that people now are much more aware of several levels of oppression. But there are many things that are still very invisible. And when I say invisible, I see particularly native indigenous local of people that many people think, they are very far from me. I have nothing to do with them. Yes, you do. Yes you do. We have those computers. Where do you think the metals, the gold that we—

Lee Moreau The battery stuff. 

Renata Marques Leitão And everything. Where do you think it comes from? The cloth that you wear. Where do you think it comes from? Where do you think it ends up? You are connected with people who are invisible all the time. So this layer of invisibility, I think people are still not there, still not there. Because to see to understand those communities, to see, acknowledge who they are I almost think that people need correcting glasses. And those correcting glasses. is pluriversal theory. You have to it’s very theoretical to understand how our mind tricks us to not see. So many times how we like paradigm, how we understand that the world works really makes certain aspects of reality completely invisible. So you need a little bit of theory to be able to-to see. 

Lee Moreau And Renata, you’re leading an entire track, I think, here at the conference. What are you hoping to get out of that track? Are you trying to maybe demonstrate or bring some young people and students into this conversation? 

Renata Marques Leitão Absolutely. And the name of the track is Pluriversal Design as a paradigm. Yes, Paradigm is a word that is very important. And I really see it as there are two paradigms in design, the universal and the pluriversal. And for me, it’s very important to say, I’m not saying one is best and one is right and one is wrong. No. Both are important, but they create different like the goals are different. The theories of change are different. What you’re trying to accomplish is different. So what I’m trying to make people understand that it’s not because we are talking about diversity, plurality, inclusivity, that you’re talking about pluriversality. It you can talk about diversity, plurality, inclusivity within the universal paradigm or the pluriversal paradigm that that was the intention of creating this track to understand that, okay, there are two different paradigms. Both are essential. Both are super important, but they operate in a different way. 

Lee Moreau Can you articulate for our listeners that shift from universal design to pluriversal design and how disruptive you hope this can be? 

Renata Marques Leitão Yes, universal in especially because when I think about the universal, I think about the design because I think the thing is about idealism. It’s about improving. It’s about making life better. 

Lee Moreau Sounds wonderful. 

Renata Marques Leitão Wonderful. But it’s based on one idea of how the world works that is like Eurocentric or modern or developed or whatever. It’s one idea for how society works. And then universal is the idea that it should work for everyone. It should work for everyone. Everybody should be able to have a good job, able to have a house, to — and I agree. That’s that’s that’s great. There is nothing wrong with this universal for the people who live within the society. 

Lee Moreau Mhm. 

Renata Marques Leitão But then you talk about 80% of the world that doesn’t live within the society. 

Lee Moreau Right. 

Renata Marques Leitão So we’re not trying to make them work within the same system. You have to learn to respect them. The way their world works. And because now it’s impossible for them to thrive, to flourish. So everything that we talk about pluriversal is talking about different ways to flourish. So it’s not different flowers, different plants, but the idea that that design should be universal, so we should cater for everyone. Everybody should wear the same clothes or use the same and use the same products. Then you do respect the different pathways toward flourishing. So that’s the difference. 

Lee Moreau That’s fantastic. Renata, tell me how all of this connects to your lab at Cornell. And by the way, how does that connect to this pluriversal model, this idea of flourishing? Because I think, you know, bringing those things together—

Renata Marques Leitão So my lab at Cornell is Pluriversal Futures. That just because I like different ways to flourish, a different pathway to flourishing. And now I am collaborating with a few communities in the Amazon forests because I really think that the future of humanity relies on the tropical forests. We need to have the tropial forests as intact as possible because they are carbon sinks. And if they are degradated they become carbon sources like a gigantic, ginormous carbon source. So the integrity of the forests. 

Lee Moreau Which is happening. 

Renata Marques Leitão Yes, it’s right. It’s happening. It’s happening. The thing is that you go to the forests are not just the trees, are social systems because there are people living there. And now in this universal paradigm, you think that there’s just two ways. The way they’re either indigenous or the modern. But the reality is that there are many, many, many, many populations that are in between, but they don’t have pathways to create a good life to flourish. So that’s what I’m investigating. How can we support local communities who are not purely indigenous and they are not urban to flourish? Because if we don’t find ways to support them, we are doomed. Because the forest is going to be degredated. That’s that’s something. So that’s why I think that pluriversal futures to go together, because if we don’t support people who are in the tropical forests, there is no future for anyone. It’s not for them. You’re not just a— say-say: Why should you be worried about the communities of the forests? Not because of them. Just because you’re ethical. I say we should care about them because we are selfish. That’s it. 

Lee Moreau So Ithaca, New York, is a long, long way from the Amazon. 

Renata Marques Leitão Yeah. 

Lee Moreau How do you. How do you bring these two worlds together? 

Renata Marques Leitão Zoom. /laughs/ WhatsApp.

Lee Moreau Okay. 

Renata Marques Leitão Yeah, Zoom. 

Lee Moreau I mean, it’s a challenge, though, clearly. I mean, it’s not. It doesn’t happen automatically. 

Renata Marques Leitão It doesn’t happen automatically. So that’s why it’s important to have very strong friendships and partnerships because they’re not going to be there. I’m not going to be there. The people who are really leading the project are people who live there. 

Lee Moreau Mhm. 

Renata Marques Leitão And I think that it’s good that it’s like this because I’m just I’m basically part of this to pay them salaries and give them some money to do the work. I think that’s just created a situation, a pretext, so they can do the the kind of work that they would love to do anyways. 

Lee Moreau In this notion of pluriversal futures. I got to ask like, where are you — what’s on your mind right now related to the future of design? 

Renata Marques Leitão I am a passionate designer. I’m an absolutely adore our profession, I mean, just our discipline. I think it’s a very important way of thinking about reality. We put together a theory and practice. So I really believe that’s becoming more and more important, making closer collaboration with other disciplines because we are able to get anthropology in, we are able to get the methods to intervene to be there. So I think the future of design is the future of change, of transformation, of creating new futures. For me that’s the future of design. 

Lee Moreau I’m hearing hope. 

Renata Marques Leitão Hope. Design is hope. Yes. Yes. How can we have hope without a design? For me, that’s the discipline of hope. 

Lee Moreau Renata, it was wonderful spending time with you. Thank you so much. 

Renata Marques Leitão Thank you so much for the invitation. 

Lee Moreau We’re currently here at Harvard’s SEAs Building at Harvard University’s campus, and I’m here with Frederick van Amstel , who most of our listeners probably know from his appearance on one of our shows and also from all the amazing work that he’s done. It’s good to see you again. 

Frederick van Amstel Yeah, good to see you, too. 

Lee Moreau So, Frederick, for our listeners, why don’t you introduce yourself? 

Frederick van Amstel Sure. So I previously were at Brazil at Federal University of Technology Parana, publicly funded university that had a lot of student quota for low income students, Black students, women and people that were, as we say, oppressed. And I was doing their important role of trying to make sense of how design can be useful for these people, because they usually don’t take courses in design because they believe to their communities this is just producing luxurious services and products that they will never be able to afford. And then we found that this laboratory of design against oppression, LADO. And we started to develop project design projects with communities of oppressed people. And those projects were nothing like luxury or service and products. And our students started to pour in and become interested on the social responsibility of design. So how can design actually be part of this uplifting process that Brazil as a developing nation, is going through? And that attracted the attention of people in the U.S. because apparently, 

Lee Moreau Like us. 

Frederick van Amstel Yes, exactly. Yes, exactly. So the U.S. present me actually, the University of Florida gave me the opportunity to try these things here and check whether design can be part of this process of uplifting, of developing further and having more equality or equity and other kinds of qualities that we lack in this unequal societies where things are separated from each other, fragmented. And we see design actually we practice, not just see design as a means to connect people have hard conversations while they make something, and that making is progressed towards the point that it can be manufactured or it can be reproduced in a larger scale like a service that has been designed. That’s some examples of things that come out of this process. 

Lee Moreau How’s the transition been so far? 

Frederick van Amstel Yeah, it’s amazing how design is actually conceived and practiced differently in each nation and sometimes even within the same nation. For example, with this short trip that I just have done here all the way from Florida to Massachusetts, I can already spot that there are different currents of what design means in this nation, which is also very interesting because it should be like that. 

Lee Moreau So do you see a particular mission or mandate for you in this new role? 

Frederick van Amstel This new role is about, first of all, to make sense of this multicultural formation of the United States and the ways how this has kept people apart from each other. So basically, I’m still learning about it, but it seems like the U.S. tries to create spaces and positions and roles for people that come from different cultures so that everyone feels included, but at the same time everyone feels excluded from other groups. And especially after noticing hierarchies, because some groups, some spaces have better resources, more accumulated things at hand. I started to question that through design. Can we actually create situations where we speculate about futures, where we actually create transitional strategies or services that can help us move towards a society where these resources are more distributed? And that always brings me back to how I started this, because U.S. has been very influential on my own upbringing with this concept of free software or open source software, as you prefer to use here. But I know that there’s a difference because I learned from countercultural people from California, but other places, New York. They were always inspiring me at the beginning of my career to study design as a means to overcome oppression. They would say design or in that case, free software should support people in their freedom. So they should use technology in the way they will need, especially to help someone else’s in need. And at some point, I started to think about, well: Can we design for freedom? And that philosophy also came up because what is freedom? And in U.S., for example, there’s this concept of freedom is being yourself and not being forced to behave and to say things that are not truthful to your inner being. However, where I come from in Brazil, when we speak about freedom, it’s more about what we can do. 

Lee Moreau Mhm. 

Frederick van Amstel And if we lack freedom, it’s always we lacking freedom. 

Lee Moreau Right. 

Frederick van Amstel And we don’t talk of so much about individual freedom. And I think design has this marvelous opportunity to make this all tangible. So we are talking about different philosophies of making our worlds. Worlds that are embedding the concept of individual freedom and how exactly which kind of mechanisms and in design I was always wondering: what is our design code? What is the kind of contribution we give back to society? And I start to figure out and you help me so much in that podcast, 

Lee Moreau /laughs. 

Frederick van Amstel That design is culture. 

Lee Moreau Yes. 

Frederick van Amstel It’s culture production, and our code is cultural code. However, it’s not like other cultural production activities where most of the contributions are consolidating language. You could say that design has some language. But I believe there’s a lot of materiality that goes beyond language. For example, all these tactile properties of stuff around us. These are all design features that we copy and we adapt and we change over and over through our culture into change. And that’s why U.S. is really a very important place to be, I want to learn and develop further design. Because of this multi-culture formation, we can see so many traditions of materiality and how we shape worlds. However, sometimes some worlds they’re not very respectful to other worlds and they use those materiality against other worlds to coexist. 

Lee Moreau So the materials are used to oppress others, to reinforce separation, to —

Frederick van Amstel Exactly. 

Lee Moreau Yeah. 

Frederick van Amstel The classic example is hostile architecture that we can see. For example, in your big urban environments, they have these benches that you cannot sleep on them or you have places where animals cannot share spaces with humans and all of these kind of devisive mechanisms to keep people apart without having a sound or democratic basis. This hasn’t usually is not something that a collective would like to, for example, like traffic lights, collectively, democratically we want that that division because we— 

Lee Moreau We all appreciate that. 

Frederick van Amstel We appreciate that materiality. And it’s not exclusive, actually, it’s excluding people who wants to over use it for their own individuality. And again, we are coming back to this contradiction. And I love this word trying all these to mend between opposites and extremes, ways of doing design. This has also been a very important modal of my design research activity, for example, individual freedom versus collective freedom. And I see design as being this mediation. Sometimes we put more weight on individual freedom. Other times on collective freedom. But we can never design anything completely on the extremes. And it’s no longer design. 

Lee Moreau You’re very busy. It’s clear. 

Frederick van Amstel Yes. 

Frederick van Amstel Tell me more about some of this design research that you’ve been engaging in and how that is influenced by this plural versus model of design. 

Frederick van Amstel Yeah, I think one of the most important things that design research does not aim to only make products. Design research is this short circuit in a way. We think about science being done in the labs and technology development or engineering done in everyday life or outside of the lab or in companies. Design research is trying to bridge this gap and making and thinking, being part of the same thing. So when when we start delving to design research, we realize that we can make theories. That’s a modal because theories, these concepts, they are quickly transformed into artifacts. But artifacts do not-do not realize everything that they can be. Because from one theory, you can create multiple artifacts, a series of styles. We can have in time stream of design, research and changing society. All of that. For example, modernism. 

Lee Moreau Mhm. 

Frederick van Amstel Think about how many different things have been built out of this concept. And it has to be made somewhere, right. So nowadays, for example, we are crafting this theory of pluriversality, and you probably have this as a whole- a lot of people are also making this new way of understanding how we make ourselves part of a world that can fit many worlds. And that’s has been a very growing topic in this design research society community. There is this special interest group led by Renata  Leitão and Lesley-Ann Noel. They have done a marvelous job. But this discussion is is overflowing to other special interest groups through other people who are also concerned about how can we handle this democratic challenge that we are currently facing. Pluriverse is one of the answers that the design research community have focused on. They didn’t invent the term, they are drawing from other areas. But what is unique from the pluriversal design approach that is emerging now that we are making together, is that we are not just not reducing language and discourses and public speeches, but we also making the stuff that these worlds are made of. And while we make this, we also remake ourselves. So we understand that people are never totally made, people are never done, and they can be also considered design projects in themself. 

Lee Moreau That’s beautiful and extraordinarily hopeful. 

Frederick van Amstel Imagine that. 

Lee Moreau Yes. 

Frederick van Amstel And and it’s not just about individual being, but collective beings. What kind of being do we need to make out of ourselves to collectively exist? When differences are positive and not negative. And that’s very different from ideas like multiculturalism. Old fashion in United States where there’s all ghettos and separate — the pluriverse is not like each world is separate. It’s not the same as multiple worlds. It’s a world. One world that can fit many worlds. And you say: How one can fit many? That’s the contradiction that animates this democratic endeavor. And it’s a new kind of democracy, because it’s-in this democracy, we can never refer to some kind of fixed, one-size fits all universal set of values. So we cannot say, well, American culture is this. And any kind of conflict that we cannot solve will be solved by American culture values. 

Lee Moreau So it eliminates that conversation entirely. 

Frederick van Amstel Yeah, because America is supposed to be the pluriverse in this concept. 

Lee Moreau In principle. 

Frederick van Amstel In principle, America should be the pluriverse where many worlds can fit. And therefore America should be able to mediate. And that’s also a design challenge, I would say, between those different disputing, computing, but also complementing world views and practice and materiality. And why not? Bodies, beings, ways of dressing, ways of talking, and all of this diversity that comes out of this is not something that we should think about to be imposed, like the pluriverse is different, for example, of discussions about how can we turn our policies to be more inclusive or more diversifying or this and that because the service is not a prescription, it’s not- doesn’t tell what you should do. It’s actually invite you to make what the pluriverse is about while being part of it. And if we start from the ground, from the basic premise that we already there, we just need to make it better. We just need to make better. For whom? For what? In which- in which way? 

Lee Moreau And that’s where design comes in. So in that hopeful note, when you think about the future, what do you see whether that’s in your academic role or just as you look out into the vision of this pluriversal notion actually taking hold, where people actually understand that it’s there and and adopt it and feel comfortable there? 

Frederick van Amstel I think the biggest challenge right now is to think about what’s the difference between a pluriverse where everything is welcomed and a pluriverse, where certain things which are detrimental of the pluriverse itself should not be allowed. So how do we create mechanisms or tools or services or whatever you want to call a data processing whatever- AI. Could they help with this challenge of people who come and use democratic grounds to destroy democracy? 

Lee Moreau So you’re suggesting there must be rules of the pluriverse the same way there are traffic rules that you talked about earlier. 

Frederick van Amstel Maybe there are not rules. In design we also have other ways of guiding people and steering people, especially like in the persuasive behavior, steering design, the sustainability. Why— why not we can think about steering people towards more democratic ways of conviviality of living, which are neighbors living with different people on the internet? I think that’s the the next challenge how do we make those utopias an actual reality? As the greatest Brazilian musician,[],  said once: we should have not a utopia, we should have a use-opia, so we should use those ideas. 

Lee Moreau Use-opia. 

Frederick van Amstel Use-opia. 

Lee Moreau That you engage. That is material. 

Frederick van Amstel That is, yes,. 

Lee Moreau Lived. 

Frederick van Amstel It’s lived. And I think the pluriverse is a use-opia that we are living right now. Every dialog in this interculture exchange that produces an object tool result, which is this podcast episode, which is a product. 

Lee Moreau Yes. This is our product for today. Frederick van Amstel, thank you so much for being here. I hope you have a great rest of your conference. I know you’re very busy, but thank you for taking time. 

Frederick van Amstel Yeah, thank you Lee. It was great talking.

Lee Moreau Design As is a podcast from Design Observer, check out another one of the podcasts from Design Observer, The Design of Business | The Business of Design, which is back for its 12th season this year. 

Ellen McGirt DBBD is going into its 12th season, my goodness, it seems like a lifetime. We have a wonderful sponsorin Deloitte that has given us a lot of leeway to dig in and do some excellent reporting. I’m going to be a solo host this year. Which is going to be new for me. But it gives me time to get more guests on the air. And we’re very much focused on the heavy business of equity. And I know that this is a word that’s not in favor at the moment, that there’s lots of lots of conversations about race and justice and inclusion and diversity, which I think is really a distraction from the bigger job of what business should be. So we’re really focusing on the people who are redesigning business for equity and how that can work and work and be hopeful and joyful work as well. 

Lee Moreau You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. 

Lee Moreau We’re at Harvard University right now, and I’m here with Lesley-Ann Noel. Hi, Lesley.

Lesley-Ann Noel Hi Lee. It is so weird to be here next to you in person and not looking at you in a little box on Zoom. 

Lee Moreau Now, you are a familiar voice to a lot of our listeners on The Futures Archive and at Design Observer. You’ve been on my podcast several times. It’s great to have you back. Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel is a designer, researcher and educator, she’s the new Dean of the Faculty of Design at OCAD in Toronto. She’s also the co-founder and co-chair of the Pluriversal Design special interest group here of the Design Research Society. And she’s the author of Design Social Change, which is a recent publication from Stanford’s d.school. What are you most excited about here at the conference in particular? 

Lesley-Ann Noel Yeah. For me, I think what I’m really excited about is I think that there are some discussions that I started having with a colleague. I co-chair, a special interest group within the DRS. And I think our discussions in 2018 were very fringe. And it’s just interesting to see in 2024 how what we are interested in, which is designs from others — that’s a terrible way of describing it. But it’s, it’s, it’s like that, right? What we are interested in has moved more and more and more into either into the mainstream or into other conversations. So I almost can’t keep track of the conversations where people are talking about pluriversality or, you know, so there was a little fringe movement that is now coming into the mainstream. 

Lee Moreau It doesn’t feel niche to me anymore. 

Lesley-Ann Noel No. 

Lee Moreau If it once did, it does not at this point. It feels actually very central to this particular this conference. I feel like 20% of the content is kind of leaning in that direction, right? So—?

Lesley-Ann Noel Yeah, yeah. You know, when people start to talk about things like resistance and reflection and that becomes very tied to the way that we talk all the time. And so that’s been exciting to move from the fringe into the main conversation. And it’s also been exciting because I’ve been coming to this conference for a little while. It’s interesting to see how all of us who were junior people have kind of moved up in the conference space. And actually, yesterday I spoke with somebody who I considered very senior, and she noted that as well. You know, she said: Oh, wow, all of these junior people are moving up professionally, moving up academically. You know, we’re writing solid research. We’re not these baby researchers anymore. So that’s that’s been exciting to to see people grow. 

Lee Moreau There’s also a lot going on when you start to acknowledge and recognize that sort of transition taking place, right? It means that there’s certain leaders making space. 

Lesley-Ann Noel Yeah. 

Lee Moreau People rising up, people who are sort of establishing their work in a way with new audiences and things like that. So here at the conference, this is a place where a lot of conversations about what’s happening in academia take place— what’s happening in your world?

Lesley-Ann Noel So conference wise, /laughs/. 

Lee Moreau /laughs/. 

Lesley-Ann Noel I’ll rank them first, and start with that. 

Lee Moreau Okay start with that.

Lesley-Ann Noel Yeah. So I’m here as I said earlier, I co-chair the pluriversal design special interest group and I also work with a group of people slightly outside of the special interest group around pluriversality So there’s a group of about 25 people and then six of us will come together for our project and then we’ll move apart and then another six will come. And so seven of us, I think, we did a workshop yesterday that was tremendous. It was so successful, a four hour workshop on pluriversal ways of knowing, making and engaging. And four hours is a long time. 

Lee Moreau Mhm. 

Lesley-Ann Noel And people stayed until the end and they were just excited about thinking about bringing new perspectives into their work as designers or design educators. And then the other work I’m doing in a conference is we have a track around pluriversal design. So there are two sessions that I’ll be chairing. 

Lee Moreau It’s interesting as you tell the story because, you know, 3 or 4 years ago when we started talking, you were using sort of techniques and mechanisms to enter conversations around pluriversality, right. Talking about recipes. Talking about —. 

Lesley-Ann Noel Yes. 

Lee Moreau Right. So there were kind of ways to allow people to access or engage who might be unfamiliar. 

Lesley-Ann Noel Yes. 

Lee Moreau You don’t have to do that now. 

Lesley-Ann Noel No. 

Lee Moreau So in that sense, it’s a platform. 

Lesley-Ann Noel Yes. A colleague of mine who works in a state where equity is becoming very policed, actually said, that a strategy to continue talk, to have this conversation is around pluriversality and globalization. And so it’s become another way to have conversations that maybe the State might be policing. 

Lee Moreau Yeah. It’s being acknowledged in some sense. So part of the the uptake or the utilization is probably not the right word, but the kind of adoption. 

Lesley-Ann Noel Yeah. 

Lee Moreau Is a signal that something’s working, right? 

Lesley-Ann Noel Yes, it’s working. People can talk about a world of many worlds, regardless of their interests. Now, there’s a core theory, of course, and a core group of people that this theory was written around. But it resonates with a lot of groups and including, well, people of color, people from other geographic locations, people with other gender identities, people, anybody who feels a little bit othered,. 

Lee Moreau Mhm. 

Lesley-Ann Noel I find that they have found this conversation of a world of many worlds resonates with them because it kind of gives them space to say: OK, I can exist as I am because maybe I occupy this other world and we just learn to talk with each other. 

Lee Moreau Lesley-Ann this is all really exciting stuff when you think about the future of design. Looking out at the horizon and maybe beyond. What do you what do you see? What what excites you? Maybe what makes you nervous? What’s out there? 

Lesley-Ann Noel What could make me nervous, could make a lot of people nervous is just how much change is coming. I co-wrote or was part of a series with a few colleagues of mine where we talked about existential crises. And I think that there is more existential crisis coming for designers in the future, because as we ask all of these new questions, some of the, you know, one big question is: Okay, so what’s our role? What do we do anymore? And I think a lot of us will spend a lot of time reflecting on redefining what work we do. And some of that new work won’t look like design. And that might be frightening for some of us because as designers  we our tied to our identity, you know, and I think I’ve experienced that where sometimes I’m like, okay, why do I design anymore? But I’m still designer, I’m designing all the time. And so I think that could be something that’s frightening coming for a lot of people. 

Lee Moreau Yeah. 

Lesley-Ann Noel and then the other thing, though, that I think is exciting is how bold people are becoming in their practice. So I, of course, work with people  interested in pluriversality. So it’s always I’m always reading papers from people who would traditionally be considered on the fringe of design research. And as I read these papers over time, I am impressed by, again, how bold they’ve become in writing about their design practice more confidently. So like, we have Indian authors writing more about jugaad as a clear design practice that they see is not tied to any other designe way of thinking. Or I think we have a paper about Senegalese design history which who would have written that before? And so I think that that’s exciting for me in particular to see people from all of these different places with really different design principles or design philosophies, writing about their work and knowing that their work is good enough because maybe 25 years ago we would we would have still been doing this work, but we would have been we maybe would have had a little impostor syndrome where we’re like, okay, and who really thinks this is design? And actually, I’m going to quote one of my colleagues, Nii Botchway in South Africa over the weekend when we were preparing for the workshop, he said: There are no imposters in the pluriverse. Because we all respect each other’s knowledge, so none of us are coming in with any imposter syndrome. And I think that that’s kind of —

Lee Moreau That’s beautiful. 

Lesley-Ann Noel Isn’t it fantastic /laughs/ and I think that that’s to me, what’s exciting, that a lot of us who might have had imposter syndrome might lose that imposter syndrome and write more and share work more confidently in the future. 

Lee Moreau That’s amazing. Lesley-Ann thank you so much for being here. 

Lesley-Ann Noel Thank you. 

Lee Moreau And thank you again to Renata Marques Leitão, Frederick van Amstel, and Lesley-Ann Noel for taking the time to sit down with me. Design As is a podcast from Design Observer. For transcript and show notes, you can visit our website at Design Observer  dot com slash Design As You can always find Design As on any podcast of your choice. And if you like this episode, please let us know. Write us a review, share it with a friend and keep up with us on social media at Design Observer. We’d love to give you a seat at our roundtable however we can. Special thanks to Maxine Philavong at the Northeastern Recording Studio and Design Observer’s editor in chief, Ellen McGirt. This episode was mixed by Judybelle Camangyan. Design As is produced by Adina Karp.