Category Archives: Feedback

Monica Bueno – Chat

Last Wednesday, I had a conversation with Monica Bueno, a service designer who has worked with agencies like IDEO and is now based in Boston, running her own consultancy. I reached out to her because she’s Colombian, and I thought she could provide valuable insights into how she applies concepts like averages in her design practice.

I introduced myself and explained my research topic, and she shared some of her experiences with using “extreme users” when designing services at IDEO. When planning a project and talking to users, they always included extreme interviews. Monica explained that designing for the average doesn’t allow you to understand the extremes, which is necessary for creating an effective product that avoids generalizations. Instead of relying solely on data, she conducted very deep interviews and anthropological exercises to gain a profound understanding of user behaviors.

In another consultancy she worked with, the focus was less on individuals and more on behaviors. This approach was more psychological, analyzing consumption patterns and creating behavior archetypes.

Lastly, she talked about using a “jobs-to-be-done” approach, which is more practical and focused on efficiency. This method allowed her to quantify decisions more easily, which is often a priority in the corporate world. She emphasized that the depth of user understanding depends on the client’s appetite for investing resources in knowing their customers.

I found the conversation fascinating because, based on my own experience in a design agency, I could relate to what she was saying and understand how it applies in practice. However, I realized that for my project, it might be more useful to speak with a product designer.

At the end of our chat, Monica kindly offered to connect me with people in London, especially to help me explore job opportunities.

Festiva Ideas + Dragon’s Den Feedback

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Since the beginning of Unit 4, I’ve had the idea of creating a mirror with the silhouette of an average person, surrounded by data and information on design biases and the issues they create. I shared this concept in my tutorials and with Carolina, the MAAI student who helps with our creativity activities, and she suggested it could even work as an exhibition piece. I thought this mirror could really bring my research to life by allowing people to engage with it directly.

In the picture, my first prototype of what I thought it could be the mirror:

As deadlines approached, I started to panic about actually bringing the idea to reality, realizing I needed to figure out the logistics quickly. I asked Zuleika for help, and she challenged me to think about making the installation more interactive. She asked, “What do you want people to do with this information? How can you give them agency in this subject?”

Later that day, I presented in our Dragon’s Den session. I felt unexpectedly confident, even though I was nervous, since I’ve been discussing this topic all year. Emily, one of the dragons, was especially impressed by the branding for “Flag the Gap,” saying, “Your project is about making the invisible visible.” That completely resonated with me and she even suggested to make another intervention about using red flags in the space, and I think that could be an activity for the exhibition. I saw it as a chance to bring again Flag the gap and that excited me so much!

While reviewing my notes for my reflective journal, I rediscovered a metaphor I’d noted earlier—giving people glasses that allow them to see the red flags we often ignore. This is a random drawing I made after a tutorial and it says “that allows me to identify new realities”.

Concidently, a random post made my bring click: as a millennial, Twilight was a big part of my teenage years, and the simple trick of looking through blue plastic to see a “Twilight world” seemed so smart. Could I create a similar effect for people to see the “red flags” we miss due to lack of awareness?

This led me to explore anaglyph effects, using two colors. I think this concept could work well, but I still need to figure out the practical side. My idea now is to create a room where people can wear glasses or use another device to reveal hidden red flags around them. Here are some referents I found on internet:

Zuleika thought it was a clever direction but pointed out some important aspects to clarify:

Think through the symbolism of using blue and red—how does it tie into my message?
Define a clear call to action.
Make the installation affordable and portable.

Interestingly, I realized that during Unit 1, my first intervention touched on ignorance, referencing the red pill/blue pill choice from The Matrix. It’s funny how things connect in the end.

What do you want to learn?

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As I expressed to Richard my concerns about having to do interventions, he stopped me immediately and said, “It’s not about doing interventions because it’s a mandatory thing; it’s about what you want to learn.”

It’s all about making intangible questions tangible.

Ahhh… that changed everything in my mind. We do interventions to learn more about our ideas. It might have been something evident but I managed to overlook it somehow.

Trying to reframe what I’ve been researching during the summer and the new conversations I’ve had with the experts I interviewed last week, I revisited my conclusions:

People—at least the women I had contact with—do not have the language to speak about design. It’s clearly a privileged discipline. How can we give them a voice in this topic rather than having them feel intimidated? There is something to work with here.

I also had an important insight about “Flag the Gap.” I think I was holding on too tightly to my idea because it felt like something that could have so much impact or potential. But as Richard said, you’ve learned from it, and that’s perfect. It made me reflect on when I was in university and took some ceramics classes. The first lesson the teacher gave us was: never get attached to your ceramics; there’s a big chance that they are going to break. You invest a lot of hours into something, into your creation, but it can happen that while they’re in the oven, they break. Art is also about letting go. It was a hard thing to swallow because I still believe “Flag the Gap” has the power to become amazing. But at the moment, I need to experiment a little bit more, maybe with new topics and I feel ataching hardly to Flag the Gap is blinding me somehow. And who knows? Maybe Flag the gap will revive after.

Interview with Emilia Máquez

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I had a conversation with Emilia Márquez, who was the director of the gender department at the NGO where I worked in Colombia. She has always been involved in gender and advocacy issues, especially in topics related to public policies and inclusitivy.

I told her a bit about my project and asked her, from her experience, what gap she thinks is still not being addressed or what we should pay more attention to. She shared the following insights:

She challenged me on the lens through which I’m understanding gender and how I’m considering an inclusive perspective, since these conversations usually have a cis-centered and white-centered focus. It assumes an idea of gender based on what is understood by white people: a thin, petite woman with a body shape different from the average man.

She mentioned that an interesting topic for her could be the creation of clothing sizes, based on a study done by two people in the USA, which gave rise to the statues of Norman and Norma, the model of what was considered “normal” in the USA in the 1950s. This still has a direct impact on how we relate to sizes today.

For her, a relevant issue is: what are the definitions of “normal” in statistics? Because this creates a huge bias and directly impacts how we relate to things.

The materialization of objects ends up materializing us in return. Materiality ultimately produces us.

What if we create a lab to explore new ways of relating to objects?

Regarding intersectionality: clearly, you won’t be able to test your intervention on all body types, but it’s important that your theoretical framework be applicable to all bodies, so that each person, through their life experience, can relate to what you’re proposing. That’s intersectionality.

It would be interesting to look at it from a participatory methodology where people can express how they relate to the subject, using experiential methodologies that spark curiosity to imagine parallel worlds.

What do we need? To talk about new sizes? To create new sizes? To not care about sizes? Size justice for overweight people?

This was for me one of the most important conversations I had during the masters becuase she invited me to challenge an specific issue that I can relate too.

Interview with Sofía Díaz

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After taking time to think carefully and prepare the presentation for the assessment, I realized I still needed more feedback from external advisors. So, I took on the task of reaching out to even more people.

I have a spreadsheet where I have a track of anyone who I have ever contacted. Here’s the link.

The idea I have so far is to create a board game as a tool to spark conversations about behaviors we’ve made invisible. This was my major insight: How do we identify what we don’t know? How do we imagine something that doesn’t exist in front of us? Very complicated, right?

So, I already have a list of people whose opinions I want to hear. I’ve sent out many emails, and I’ve had a conversation with Sofía Díaz.

She is a great university friendwho has dedicated her professional career to working on gender-related issues, specially from the sustainability focus. I reached out to her because I’ve always respected her opinion, and I know she has experience working with communities in Colombia, always with a gender focus. Right now she’s working with a charity that do workshops on gender and sustainability in rural areas of Colombia.

During our conversation, I shared my creative process, and I think what stood out most to her was the perspective on the design of objects as a reproduction of the oppressive system. I tried steering the conversation back to gender norms, but she kept circling back, genuinely surprised by something she had never considered before.

Here are some key points from her comments, which also reflect much of what I think about my project:

Objects evolve with the populations, and we all interact with them in different ways.
There’s a clear difficulty in inventing something new, but above all, what are objects really?
How masculinized are our thoughts?
The feminine struggle lies in the fact that we’ve never truly known what our bodies need. It’s hard to recognize those needs and fight for them because we were never taught.
She asked me, What happens after the game? The encounter alone is already positive, but how can we turn this into something bigger?
What do we do with so much frustration?
What can we do together? The sense of togetherness makes us feel like we can handle anything. We need to awaken that emotion. En manada
What we can’t see, we can’t change, but we’ve never liked inhabiting rage and frustration.
Going out into the streets with a group of women responds to impact and change—transforming the gaze.
But definitely, I would make the target group even smaller because each population has a different relationship with objects.
Thinking about carrying a little red flag all our lives—this is the fight to recognize what we deserve.
There’s no dialogue with our bodies, and we are afraid to talk about what we feel and what happens to them.

At the end she was very happy to be part of the conversaion but was not sure on how much she could add to what I’ve done.

I have a feeling that most of the times when I reach out to experts it becomes a little bit like a tutorial and it’s hard for me to cut that habit.

Intervention No.2

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For the second version of my intervention, I decided to incorporate all the suggestions and opportunities that where evidenced from the first one.

Instead of an activity ment to be done in their individual time, I made it collective with guided support.
Instead of focusing solely on the environment and material objects, I shifted the focus to lived experiences of the normalization of misogynistic gender norms.
I also added more guidance and closure to the experience.

To test this, I invited a couple of Colombian women I met through my colombian scholarship program to engage with my intervention.

I set up a large piece of cardboard with categories representing different layers of a person’s life, such as education, health, relationships, public space, and work. I then asked them to flag and describe instances where and how they felt marginalized in these specific areas. My main goal was to facilitate a conversation that led to a visualization of these red flags and create a kind of map showing where these issues occur in someone’s environment, as a collective conversation.

As we began, more questions arose:

What do the participants need to do once we’ve flagged everything? What’s the purpose behind it? Simply flagging didn’t seem enough.
The instructions were still too broad, there are many instances where they felt the gender norms.
There are likely many things that could be flagged, but there’s no awareness at the moment that these issues could or should be flagged. So, how can they identify them?
How to deal when the topics and conversations are too triggering for someone.

Once again, the feedback allowed me to see the gap in my proposial and with it came the the idea of creating a board game to facilitate conversations about gender normalization. I wanted to make it a visual and interactive activity for identifying these issues. The image of red flags spread across the space reminded me of games like Risk, and I thought this could be an interesting way to approach the topic.

As I kept on thinking about this new idea, I realized I needed the insight of a psycologist into how to approach this conversations with the entire respect and ethics it requieres. Laura Vega, the psycologist I talked to, recommended exploring the idea that not every situation is entirely “red” for everyone; there’s a whole spectrum of what people consider normal, depending on their own experiences. However, she noted that having a collective space to process and reflect on these differences could be valuable. Instead of planning a game focused on placing red flags, perhaps it could involve removing them as a way to address and overcome these issues.

Tutorial Feedback ~ Ouch!

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My tutorial feedback made me realize that there’s still a significant gap in my project—ironic, given that my project is called Flag the Gap.

As Diana mentioned, I have the ingredients to bring everything together, but I need to find the right connection in my thought process to create something impactful.

I also had a call with Beatriz Leal, a Chilean feminist design teacher, seeking external validation. She gave me similar feedback and encouraged me to be more critical about how I refer to objects. She pointed out that I haven’t acknowledged the agency of objects and suggested that another angle for the project could be understanding the reasons behind their creation. However, I reaffirmed to her that this isn’t the direction I want to pursue.

So, what am I interested in? What am I trying to really pursue?

After some reflection, I believe my research is about raising awareness about the normalized gender norms that shape how people experience their daily lives. but what do I mean by normalized gender norms? The socially accepted ideas of how men and women should behave, and how distorted they are that people have found their ways of adapting to it. For example, for feeling safe women walk during the night with the keys on their hands just to feel safer. The gender norm is the expectation that women must constantly be vigilant and take extra precautions to protect themselves from potential threats, especially when alone in public spaces at night. We have normalized this behaviours. We have made this our reality.

The flag is the normalization in our mind and behaviours.

It’s not just about objects, but about our overall perception of reality.

Of course, there are still some gaps. Why am I focusing on individuals rather than the system? Honestly, addressing a massive capitalist, sexist system is a complex challenge. I think I have a better chance of making an impact by focusing on individuals.

But there’s another gap. So far, I’ve only spoken with women. I need to engage with men and even non-binary people—that could provide some valuable insights.

And still, this is a growing process, so I think I might shift with time.

Feedback about Flag the gap after intervention

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So, after leaving my participants by themselves with the stickers to explore, it was clear there was something going “wrong” because as I tried to aske them how was it going they kept on saying to me that they forgot about it and that they needed more time to do so.

These are some of their own comments:

They are genuinly interested in this topic, they felt intrigued and excited about an excersie that allowed them to question the ir environmet.
Nevertheless, as they faced the public space, they were fearful about disrupting the public space with red flags. They were afraid of the consequences of their use and didn’t dare to risk it. For example, one of them wanted to place one red flag on the gym or in a public bathroom but didn’t think it was appropriate.
They were confused about if they should place the sticker on an object that they felt was baldy designed but questioned if the gender variable was really the reason why it felt unconfortable for them, or just the fact that they were smaller. They asked for better guidance in this area, since it wasn’t clear and suggested more detailed information in the instructions I gave to them.
One of them suggested more interaction with other people since it felt as a lonely process.

My own conclusions to the feedback are:

Letting them to interact with this by themselves was not an accurate approach since it still felt too broad for them and without the guidance they kept forgetting to do the activity. I had to remember them a couple of times of it. Everyone has their own responsibilities to do and trying to add a new one felt like too much for the,
The gap I was still trying to make them identify was still too broad, and it clearly demands a more delimited focus. Maybe that also had an impact into the lack of intervention they had.
There’s still some interest and opportunities to keep on working it this, I think maybe as a guided activity could work better. The idea of the red flags was clear though and it made sense to them.

The ball keeps on rolling

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So, I’ve distributed a couple of my beautiful envelopes with the stickers and instructions to two different persons: Erin and Lydia. They will have the chance to interact with them for a week so I’ve got to come with the ethical participation format and some feedback questions so I can keep on improving.

Engagement:

From 1 to 5, 1 being not easy and 5 being super easy, how easy was it for you to understand and follow the instructions in the envelope?
Did you find the process of identifying and flagging gaps engaging? Why or why not?
Could you talk me through your thought process when you decided to use the stickers? What things did you have in consideration?

2. Experience:

What emotions or thoughts did you experience while placing the red flags?
Were there any challenges you faced while participating in the activity?
In one word, how would you describe the activity? Why?

3. Effectiveness:

Do you think the red flags effectively highlighted the gaps you identified? Why or why not?
How did others around you react to the flags you placed?

4. Suggestions:

What improvements would you suggest for the instructions or the overall activity?
Is there anything you would add or change to make the intervention more impactful?

5. Outcome:

Did the activity prompt any new thoughts or reflections about the spaces or objects around you?
Would you be interested in participating in similar activities in the future? Why or why not?

Dragon’s Den

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After the Dragon’s Den presentation, I feel very motivated to continue my project. I am very proud of myself because I worked so hard to feel as confident as I did presenting my project in another language. The Dragons congratulated me on my presentation, its aesthetics, and how passionate I am about my subject.

I think they noticed there are still some aspects to refine, and I’m aware of it, so it was helpful to get their insights and perspectives on my project.

One of the Dragon’s asked me why did I add stickers to the presentation. Being honest, I just like stickers. LOL.

My favorite piece of feedback was to think bigger about the impact of my project. It showed me that my idea has a lot of potential. I still don’t know what that could be, but I’m trusting the process and enjoying it as it goes.

Another sweet thing that happened after presenting was that one of the guys from the masters who saw me present reached out to me and said that he felt inspired after seeing me do it with so much confidence! It was a nice comment to recieve.

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