It is interesting how research leads you to take unknown paths. At the beginning of this year, I had some clear areas of interest in the box of uncertainty task: as a lawyer, I wanted to research law and design. I was also interested in gender issues, and lastly, in ignorance. As time passed and with different experiences I lived, such as being part of the university Hackathon, I decided to start researching deconstructing the truths given about Design Thinking and Innovation. Through that research, I ended up reading about the Maintainers and all their community efforts about re-signifying repair and maintenance, which I think is absolutely brilliant. Nevertheless, I feel like I’ve been distanced from my main concern, which is Law, Design, Gender. And I still think I don’t have an angle to start my next project. I’ve found so many interesting agencies, NGOs, and people through my research, but I’m still kind of afraid to contact them because I’m still not sure why I’m contacting them. At the same time, I think I need to start talking to people, I know that. But yeah, it’s scary.
And I just wanted to clarify, that even if the repair and maintenance topic is probably something I’m not going to focus on in my big final project, it was soooo interesting reading and talking about it, and it really changed my perspectives on how I relate to my surroundings. So I’m grateful and appreciative of the EPP task.
Also, I’ve started a spreadsheet with all the quotes from books and readings that I’ve found interesting. I don’t do it as often as I should, but it’s an interesting work in progress: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lMAqkazBqhIudidgiZQKKO1Xo_nTUuqrPTNnoPp10aI/edit?usp=sharing
In Colombia, we have this common expression – “ponerse la 10″ – which literally translates to putting on the number 10. It comes from football players who are the team captains and normally wear the number 10 on the back of their tshirt. This expression is used when someone takes action with an initiative, leads a group, or solves something people have been dreading. It basically means being someone who moves a situation forward.
You can hear it in every type of situation:
In a group of friends when someone leaves the party to buy more beer for the group: “se puso la 10.”
In a workplace, when someone goes to ask the boss if there’s going to be a raise this year: “se puso la 10.”
Between siblings, when one decides and buys the present for their parents for Christmas: “se puso la 10.”
I’m normally someone who has that number 10 on their back. I like to be responsible and act fast with structure, so when I have teamwork, I tend to assume most of the tasks. That leads me to sometimes hating being the number 10 person because it translates into not an equitable division of labor. But then also, I wonder how much of that is self-imposed. For example, this week we had to prepare the final presentation. We all did our parts of the investigation, and the information looked good, but the design part of it looked bad – through my eyes. It seemed like someone grabbed the information and used AI to make the ppt, but it looked disarticulated. No one said anything about it, so I just said to myself and to the group, I’ll do it. I put on the 10 and redesigned it, but I was slightly annoyed that no one else offered. I didn’t mention that to my group because reflecting on it, they all have put on number 10 at different times, sometimes in tiny stuff that is not easily appreciated, and also because I quite enjoy doing ppts.
I think collaborative work is a constant state of wearing that number 10 on the back and doing stuff and also, sometimes letting someone else wear it. In general, I think that’s how we worked as a group. There was no particular tension but we handled and managed uncertainty with the tools we had, and I think we prospered into a good outcome.
I absolutely loved the lecture we had about AI and the future of work because it practically laid out the considerations we should have with the information that exists about AI. It made me think of how now a days we are constantly talking about how to prepare for the future, but the truth is, we don’t really know what we are preparing for so it’s -in a way- kinda useless. Are we simply telling ourselves lies to move forward? Nevertheless, the reflections on the means of work were extremely enriching, and in the end, AI is just that, a means of work, much like the hammer that once revolutionized the way understand manual work.
Despite these advances that seem so relevant, making us understand society as such a complex figure, this week we witnessed how we are still so primarly human. There was an act of bullying in a class which lead to a lot of conflict and segregation between our classes. I found it absolutely unbelievable that this was happening in a master’s class, and especially that the next day we all went to a lecture as if none of it had happened. I know that handling such situations is complicated, but I would have liked to hear a more active and immediate response to inappropriate behaviors by certain individuals. On my part, I can’t stop thinking that it is important to initiate a disciplinary process since bullying and such behaviors reflect a superiority complex that NO ONE should have, and it deeply hurts that this occurred in front of everyone. This course is obsessed with the word “positionality,” and sometimes I feel we have used it to our advantage because we prefer to remain silent rather when we should shout and manifest our inconformities.
At what moment in life does one become aware of you? You are always there, from the moment we are born, but it’s only after someone mentions you that I became aware of your presence in my life. To be fair, being away from my country has made me reanalyze you. Sometimes I don’t feel as comfortable as I used to, and I realized it’s because you’ve changed.
Sometimes I love you, sometimes I don’t. The fact is you will always be here and probably will show me different aspects of you – of me.
(To be continued)
Carolina
From Sasha’s class
Having to make a list of the things that make me who I am was a comforting challenge. Being away from home has sometimes led me to lose some parts of myself to blend in more easily. Even so, I’ve never felt more Latina in my life. Still, thinking and reflecting about my list reminded me of many of the reasons why I’m here, and it’s to create change. That’s why being aware of my positionality is such an important thing to do, and I really value our spaces to do so, but I recognize it should be something done daily in our lives.
Another thing that left me thinking after Sasha’s session was the list of attributes workers of the future will have to master: adaptability, curiosity, empathy, and agency. In the end, he said these future workers will be heroes, but in a way, those attributes are still needed nowadays, and in a way, we – today’s workers – are heroes too! We are just too deep in our reality to see it, but we truly are heroes in the way we adapt to every single change the world has.
About teamwork:
During this week, I valued teamwork a lot since I was feeling a little bit under the weather, and my group went and had an interview with Alessandro, a librarian from the British Library. A very crucial part of teamwork is being able to rely and trust in and I felt I could do that with my team.
When considering the idea of a functional team as a formula, numerous factors come into play. However, reflecting on my personal experience, I believe the most crucial element is establishing a connection between team members. Creating a sense of camaraderie and allowing for vulnerability significantly enhances group dynamics. Undoubtedly, this is not an easy task, given that individuals may not share the same interests or personalities.
I’ve observed some groups in my course struggling. Some conversations about this issue reveal that they may not have invested time in understanding each other. There’s only this need to accomplish the task and that’s it. Fortunately, in our group, we’ve made conscious efforts to create a positive environment by showing genuine interest in each other’s lives. As a result, people seem more open and engaged.
In all honesty, I also think luck plays a role. Some teams click from the beginning, while others don’t. A recent experience at the university’s Creative Hack made me think of this. All participants were asked to form groups quickly, and despite choosing a group with a positive vibe, good intentions, and friendliness, our ideas didn’t flourish. Group work can often feel frustrating, to be fair.
Shifting subjet, I’d like to reflect on this week’s seminars. Frankly, I struggled to grasp most of the concepts presented. If we aim to develop tools for effective group work, incorporating team-forming sessions is essential, perhaps more than discussions on compassion or the impact of coffee. I acknowledge the importance of class reflections, but I also believe that actively creating cohesive groups could be more efficient, especially considering the diverse backgrounds we have. While such scenarios might not be common in real life, having the tools and knowledge can empower us to propose similar strategies in the future.
During my first semesters of Law, while studying the different theories of Justice, including Rawls and Kant, I remember reading The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas when we started reading into altruistic theories. It was a long time ago, so I forgot the name and regularly tried to Google it, but I never found it again. However, it remained a significant part of my journey as a law student. The moral dilemma it presented, sacrificing the happiness of a few for the greater good, reflects on our own society every day. When are we the child inside the room, and when are we the people watching? It depends on our positionality and how it fluctuates with our relationship with power. Are we gonna be in any moment able to walk away from Omela? But most importantly, do we want to?
That story followed me from my past into my present, shaping what was originally my future.
This week, I have also reflected on the narratives we possess and sometimes adopt, even if they don’t truly belong to us. But who decides what these narratives are? Can anyone really know? I believe it’s about what feels personal to you, and sometimes people impose narratives on us. Then, when are we having real narratives for us?
Have I ever had the power to choose my own narrative, truly? Have I ever imposed narratives into peoples minds? If so, I’m sorry, I guess part of my own narratives where imposed from the begginig. Or am just saying that to feel good with myself?
Many questions, and still, unclear answers.
Just to conclude, I’m delighted that I finally found the name of the text I’ve been contemplating for so long. That story was kinda my Roman Empire (tiktok reference) for so long.
This task was an interesting challenge because there are so many uncertainties that we think about every day, but we often don’t realize about them and let them pass. However, acknowledging and naming them became a very validating, self-reflecting activity. I say that it was validating because it allowed me to actively understand where some of the many concerns and uncertainties have come from.
To start the project, I began with some creativity exercises that helped me activate my brain to tackle those difficult questions. For this, I participated in a “Thinking through Drawing” workshop given by the university. During the workshop, we were invited to not think too much, we just drew as the ideas came, and afterward, we reflected on what we did. The teacher also asked us to think about one project we had to develop, and of course, I chose this one. From this exercise, I could see what my main uncertainties were because they surfaced easily while I was drawing.
Uncertainity #1: Law, legal design, and how it is presented to society.
After working in the human rights NGO, I discovered I was very curious and interested in approaching different ways to understand and create better legal services, specially because I saw people struggling to understand their own rights or anything law-related. That’s when I stumbled upon legal design. To give some context, according to Margaret Hagan, the director of Stanford’s Design Lab, “legal design is the application of human-centered design to the world of law, to make legal systems and services more human-centered, usable, and satisfying.” For me, legal design is about democratizing law, giving people the opportunity to understand their rights and act with knowledge. Law is supposed to be for everyone, but in reality, only some privileged individuals have access to it, mostly people who have the priviledg to study or to affort a lawyer when needed. Following this path, I decided to work in a design consultancy where I collaborated with clients applying legal design and conducting creative workshops using the design thinking methodology to create improved and more empathetic legal services. This was a crucial experience because it taught me basically everything I know about design and design thinking. Nevertheless, I kept wondering if legal design is the only way of improving law? Could there be better ways of interacting with law in a more humanistic approach?
My experience working with design thinking applied to law and legal services was the only thing I talked about. Being in this course has made me reflect on what questions we are not asking yet and how we could formulate better questions. I decided to start reading about design methodologies, and in my exploration, I discovered the book “Re-imagining Design” by Kevin G. Bethune. As I started reading, I found his conversation about how multidisciplinary innovation is the future and how designers should question the reasons they are designing. It resonated with me because, after all, I’m a lawyer doing an MA and sometimes finding the connection between two disciplines so different could be hard. In his book, he briefly mentions a TED talk called “Design Thinking is Bullshit” by Natasha Jen, and as soon as I read about it, I watched it immediately.
Surprisingly, this talk made me question everything I’ve taken for granted in the last couple of years. Natasha points out how design thinking is the watered-down version of what designers do and makes interesting points about how design thinking promises innovation, but innovation is not really a thing; it’s a quality that cannot be instantly delivered as design thinking promises. She criticizes the common bootcamps agencies and universities sell to teach design thinking. I found this very very interesting because I’ve been part of this bootcamps, even so, I’ve been facilitating in different moments this bootcamps! Understanding how design thinking also plays a part in the capitalistic ways of approaching solutions made me view it with different eyes. People want the instant satisfaction of resolving big problems without having a more holistic view of the problem.
This made me reflect on my experiences working at the design consultancy and question if legal design is the only answer to creating better and more humanistic ways of approaching law. It made me question what are the things that I’m still not seeing, and it definitely made me feel uncomfortable about what could be the next step because I really don’t know what could be the answer.
Uncertainity #2. Gender equality and design
Related to legal design, as a feminist, I also became very passionate about understanding how design (and law) has become part of contributing to the reproduction of systemic oppression and made me think about if the entire system has been designed for a default male standard, is gender equality ever possible?
To back my thoughts, I started reading two books: “Invisible Woman” by Caroline Criado Perez and “Design Justice” by Sasha Costanza-Chock.
The first book states with data that most services created and designed have a customer – the default male, and there is no data that represents how women experience those same experiences males are living. The data does not give women a voice to ask for better services because the system is not interested in having this data. Why has the reference man still been a reference for every service created, even in medicine? For this, I also found very interesting watching a video called Everything is designed for this man, even drugs
The book “Design Justice” explores precisely how this cis-normality has given some unwritten rules on how design should be interpreted and how the system is biased against women or any other gender that’s not male. The author also states: “Design Thinking is deployed to reproduce a colonial political economy with design imagined at the top of the value chain as a key process to be managed only by firms from the Global North.” As a lawyer and a design enthusiast I find such a big responability of being aware of this things that were never taught to me. How could we make design better? How could we make law better?
Taking for granted how things have been designed is such a dangerous assumption. I feel uncertain about how could this situacion improve in a more systematic way, but I find in fascinating.
Uncertainity #3. Ignorance is bliss
It generates a lot of uncertainty for me how people, including me, decide to stay ignorant of certain situations to continue living happily. It happened to me when I worked defending victims of police violence. Once I quit, I decided to stop reading the newspapers, listening to the radio, and talking to friends about politics. I decided to be blissfully ignorant. But I know it is not the solution because I’m also aware that being participative in everyday situations and taking an informative stance is also a form of activism. How could we overtake the truth of things that happened and not decide to remain ignorant?
Conclusion
I chose these uncertainties because I want to find answers to my feelings. Maybe I won’t find an answer to everything, but at least I tried, and this course is about that – trying with purpose.
