http://www.florianwille.com/

Going back to one of the first lecturers to introduce us to design methodologies in ZHdK, is Florian Wille. With a background in industrial and interaction design, Florian now works as a lecturer and design strategist at the dreipol agency. He is also responsible for the Design Methods program at the Center for Continuing Education (CAS). It was only visceral, for us to have his input on our project on design methods. Parallel to the time of our meeting with Florian, we had just finalized our 5th iterated prototype; to that, the meeting covered a feedback and collaborative ideation session. Since the meeting happened over an online meeting, as a start, we digitally introduced and shared our current state of the project and our essential goals and aims of it. After our attempt to recap the project, Florian mirrored it back to us in his own framing. He captured the Dandelion project as a collection of methods on how to avoid the biases and stereotypes, through practices like building empathy and understanding. With his more practical approaches, Florian was quick to ask, what is the motivation from designers to use the tools? From explaining our creativity building approach and normalizing perspective changes through habit building, we ideated a solid approach to the narrative of the motivation for designers. Which brings us back to the narrative of: Hacking and bending interventions on the existing tools and methods, as means to make clear its blindspots and help designers empower oneself from beyond its boundaries. To show, with reasoning, how existing methods or tools are not inclusive, and how may designers breakfree from such practices. It is this eureka or eye-opening experience, or sensation, that is key to a designer’s motivation to use the tool kit. Essentially, this brought us back to a notion which we proposed in our very first prototype; an evaluative yet playful process that allows designers to acknowledge their own blindspots due to the blindspots that exist within design approaches in its current state. This expert talk has brought us full circle to our initial roots and initial proposed prototypes. Although, we concluded that the next challenge would be to bring this experience on a daily, frequent and/or sustainable manner.