Design and Feminist Thought

It's difficult to know what the future holds. The future is by no means empty - it will be occupied by built environments, infrastructures and things that we have designed. It will bear the consequences of our histories, structures, policies and lifestyles, which we daily (re)produce by habit or with intent in design. The future is already loaded with our fantasies, aspirations and fears, by persuasively designed visions and cultural imaginaries. Design can be understood as a powerful practice that takes part in giving form to the future, or, as acceptera exemplifies, a possible or preferred future. Thus, the future, or futurity, in design may expose relevant issues for design research and design anthropology concerned with 'the possible'.


Contemporary philosopher Elizabeth Grosz, for example, poses a potential of futurity that is given precisely by the ontological assumption that the future is different. It is, categorically, not the past nor the present. Exploring notions of 'the possible' in Henri Bergson's philosophy, she queries the future as other than a 'preformed version of the real' (Grosz 2001: 12). From this perspective, futurity can be a conceptual modality through which it is possible to ask: How can things be different?
The future as different is a political as well as a philosophical question. The future exposes basic philosophical questions about our assumptions and worldviews. That things can be different also raises political questions about what can, or should, change and what difference that makes.

As design takes part in giving form to the future, to possible or preferred futures, we need more and critical ways of relating to issues of futurity. Asking How can things be different? raises philosophical and political questions. These are questions for design as we aspire and/or claim to 'make a difference' and go about 'changing existing situations into preferred ones' (Simon 1996), 'making things better' (to borrow the motto of Philips Design, Baxter 1996) or 'Massive Change' (as Bruce Mau proposes, Mau and Leonard 2004). But the future is not merely something that might be known and thus available for us to determine (or design), a destination that might merely be defined and reached with the right methods. Although the future is not empty, it is open, and this makes all the difference.

In this chapter, I reflect upon issues of futurity for design. I briefly characterize 'concept', 'critical' and 'persuasive' design practices, because they explicitly take on the future by formulating visions, speculating on alternatives and steering toward particular ideals. While important in my own work as a practice-based design researcher, these practices expose issues that I problematize here in terms of futurity. I have (re)positioned my own work over the years, and, increasingly, in relation to futures studies and philosophies of time as illustrated here through a description of the project 'Switch! Energy Futures'. Suggesting that futurity can be a philosophical and political modality for 'seeing and acting' differently in and through design, I frame two proposals to invite further work in design research and design anthropology.

Expansion of the arts in academia has called into question concepts, norms and regulations concerning writing and publishing. Given precedents of ‘critical practices of design’ and ‘research through practice’ grappling with such questions, I take these as ways to reconsider the academic activity of making a book (‘bookmaking’) as a critical and feminist practice of design. Through feminist modalities articulated by Jane Rendell – namely, collectivity, interiority, alterity, materiality, and performativity – I describe two edited books, through which I am able to discuss critical and feminist orientations in bookmaking practice. I argue that feminist practice critiques but also projects, activates, and enacts alternative norms or ideals – here, alternatives to academic norms concerning edited books. Naming and elucidating detailed aspects of bookmaking activity, as mundane critical ‘practise’ continually deliberated and performed, it is nevertheless possible to draw relations to larger theoretical issues. For example, discussing across differently situated/conditioned bookmaking practices makes it possible to trace implications of bookmaking within larger political economies, socio-economic structures, theoretical and ideological commitments.

With the introduction of the Internet as a communication medium, new forms of design practice have begun to come to the fore. However these practices often draw upon the well established canons of the design discipline. The case study of BEME.com, a commercial online portal design for female Internet users, explores the transition from the graphic design traditions associated with women’s magazines to the online design of commercial Internet portals for women. This paper addresses the relationship between design practice and the portrayal of gender in both mediums. Feminist critique of design practice has drawn attention to continuing problems women have as design practitioners and design consumers and a case study analysis of BEME.com offers an opportunity to highlight some of the issues such a critique raises. The paper draws on documents obtained from the commissioning publishing house and visual materials gathered from the online portal to substantiate the analysis.  Whilst located at a cross-road in design practice where design traditions for women’s magazines meet the emerging practice of online design, this paper argues that the case of BEME.com demonstrates that design traditions and particularly design for women and of gender, are all to easily transferred from one medium to another.

On 31st of August 2001, a UK women’s online portal (BEME.com) has been terminated, leaving behind three other UK competitors to fight over the niche market. BEME.com was published by IPC Media a global publisher with expertise in women’s periodicals. It was the dot.com answer to an online women’s magazine. Five years on, the other three online portals are still operational, selling the same gendered images to its female audience. As Ferguson (1983) ones observed ‘... plus ça change ... everything changes nothing changes’. (pp. 190)

Years of feminist research into women’s magazine publishing have exposed how deeply the commercial imperatives are implicated in gendered structures. On the other hand early studies of women’s Internet use focused primarily on raising awareness of a significant disparity between male users and female users online (Harcourt 1999). However, as Martinson and Schwartz (2002) point out, ‘[w]hile current numerical parity on the internet is one measure of progress, issues of gender equality are more complex than simple counts of who is logging on to the internet’ (p. 31). Building on the events of the past five years and the development of the web design industry in UK, this presentation questions the ability of designers to develop strategies to counter gender representations within the commercial women’s magazine publishing on the World Wide Web (WWW). Looking back on the case study of BEME.com what lessons can be learned about designers and their practices within the world of WWW that can illuminate the reasons why today’s women’s commercial online portals perpetuate the same gender stereotypes. Taking critical view of the design practice, this presentation offers insight into the systemic lack of interest on the part of designers working within industry that trades heavily in gender stereotypes, to problematise this process and their role within it.

In building the argument, a reference is made to the context within which the design team took on the BEME.com project. A review is taken of the role of designer and their influence on interpretation of the communicated meanings voiced by the client. Followed by a discussion of various approaches used by the team in dealing with gender norms. The data used in this presentation derives from a PhD research asserting the potential of online portal design to offer alternative ways of communicating to female users in such a way as to resist and combat the gendered status quo. The presentation draws on documents obtained from the commissioning publishing house and interviews with the design team to substantiate the analysis.

The paper culminates with a look into the future of web design for commercial women’s portals. In creating design outcomes for the WWW, today’s web designers cannot ignore the growing influence of information and communication technology as tool of cultural production. Therefore, taking into account the discussed designers’ tool-kit in dealing with gender norms a pressing issue arises as to how radical the design agenda can become whilst continuing to operate within a commercial context?


Bibliography:
Ferguson, M. (1983). Forever feminine: women's magazines and the cult of femininity. London, Heinemann.

Harcourt, W., Ed. (1999). women@internet; Creating New Cultures in Cyberspace. London, Zed Books Ltd.

Martinson, A. M., N. Schwartz, et al. (2002). "Women’s Experiences of Leisure: Implications for Design." New Media and Society 4(1): 29-49.

Lost gloves are very expressive: they greet, they stroke the wood of a public bench, shamelessly wave a middle finger, await a 'give me five' from the top of a wrought-iron fence, point in many directions, or even seem to sleep. Hand gestures convey human emotions in a very effective way; and humans in turn convey a high emotional status to the hand, like in the rhetoric of craft. But whose hands are we talking about? Whose hands are missing? What about those operating outside the Euro-American historical area of influence? Designers working from colonised countries, or from an Indigenous tradition?  This essay engaged with craft  and design from a critical, feminist, and decolonial perspective, but most of all, it used images of lost gloves photographed on the street to build a visual essay in pandemic times.

There is a tension between theory and practice present in many disciplines but not least in the design areas where academic research is still a relatively young activity. Design researchers and practitioners often work in isolation from each other, trapped or immersed in their own daily realities of academia or industry. Differences in language usage and hierarchies mean that mutual concerns cannot be understood as such and that fruitful communication is hindered. In recent years, many debates have taken place concerning the relationship between design research and design practice. The extent of interest is evident by the six year history of the Research into Practice conference in Hertfordshire, UK.

In our respective research and practice in the fields of fashion design/sustainability and online design/gender we have experienced how academia and industry are sometimes very far apart, but also how the personal and professional identities in an individual may be hard to reconcile. Thus, we have identified a need to create an unbiased or rather ”uncontaminated” platform for discussions of topics such as environmental issues or gender, which may typically create political tensions or instigate feelings of guilt. This paper proposes the use of the artefact as a tool that can bridge the gap between researcher and practitioner, and between the professional and personal self.

This chapter presents an investigation into the commercial WWW portal, “BEME.com,” as an example of gendered Web design targeting female users. It argues that Web designers need to be aware of processes implicated in such gendered outcomes. Thus, an analysis of the BEME.com design process is used to identify threats and opportunities in designing for female online users in order to formulate appropriate
design guidelines. The chapter outlines several underlying factors that illuminate these processes, and their social, cultural, and political origins. It is argued that the prevalence and accessibility of WWW makes it a powerful vehicle of change both within design practice and in terms of gender structures more widely. It is in this context that the author seeks to contribute to the existing research by offering
a feminist critique of Web design, arguing that Web designers have an opportunity and a responsibility to affect and effect changes to a gendered status quo.

Internet technology presented the women’s magazine industry with new opportunities and capacities for publication and user interaction. However, the case of BEME.com, a portal targeting female users, exemplifies the tendency - discussed in this chapter - for a commercial context not only to trade in and on gender stereotypes but also to rely on traditional formats rather than take up opportunities for novel conceptions of and interaction with, users. Contemporary design and Internet theory together with a feminist framework is drawn on to explore these issues. It is argued that although web designers might have been aware of the Internet potential to foster new forms of interactive spaces for female users, these advances did not fit within the business models supporting such commercial portals. That design might play with rather than trade in gender stereotypes, where notions of ‘becoming’ drive conceptions of gender and interaction, are suggested as alternative approaches.

Feminist critique of design practice has highlighted continuing problems women have as design practitioners and design consumers.  Therefore a case study analysis of BEME.com, a commercial online portal design for female Internet users, offers an opportunity to address some of the complexities such a critique illuminates. Notwithstanding that Internet technology and design offer new means of communicating with women, a feminist critique highlights that particularly within a commercial context there is an unwillingness within design practice to problematise its participation in the processes that embody gendered meanings.  Instead, gender is often used by design practitioners as part of their creative toolkit specifically when designing for female audiences. Therefore, the paper maps out ways in which design practitioners, whilst creating BEME.com, do not take into account the actual portal users but rather ‘design’ their female audience through reliance on gender as a tool of differentiation and definition.  The paper draws on documents obtained from the commissioning publishing house and interviews with the design team and online/publishing industry professionals to substantiate the analysis. The driving purpose is to draw attention to the fact that today’s design practitioners need to recognise the significance of questioning women’s participation in and consumption of, design practice.