ADA5222 · Indigenous design thinking and relationality

Overview

Design Thinking compiles various approaches and strategies originally developed by designers to provide alternate solutions to problems. This unit is a reconfiguration of design thinking from an Indigenous position, based on relationality and Indigenous ways of knowing. It offers a more flexible and relational approach to problem solving in the business world. In it you will examine the reconfiguration of the colonial project in order to regain value from an Indigenous positioning and design thinking paradigm and posit how this contributes to unique ways of approaching problem solving. You will also be introduced to ways of building upon and capitalising your existing knowledge and lived experience in order to explore opportunities to apply these to a range of disciplines, settings and in contemporary society. The methodology of this unit provides participants with multiple approaches and opportunities based on the principles of sustainability, real lived experience, empathy, deep listening and decolonising theories. Indigenous design thinking and relationality will offer you a deep understanding of the relationality that Indigenous culture has with the premise of Country, its impact on practice, design thinking and its relationship to your own place and situated experience.

Offerings

Assessment

The Handbook does not list a final examination among the assessment items. That is not a guarantee there is none.

100% in-semester assessment

Assessment details may change. Please refer to the assessment information in Moodle closer to the start of the teaching period.

Requisites

Learning outcomes

1. Demonstrate an understanding of design and design thinking, with a critical reconfiguration from an Indigenous positioning;
2. Identify and discuss the major forms of Indigenous design, creative practices and ways of knowing;
3. Critically examine and evaluate the changes to Indigenous creative practices, design, relationality and ways of knowing through colonisation;
4. Examine how Indigenous design thinking and relational ways of knowing can provide solutions to complex issues, premised on their models of colonial resistance;
5. Reflect on the value of Indigenous design thinking and relationality in your own situated experience and how to apply this to project-based problems.

Workload

This unit is taught across three weeks with one week of intensive (6 days) contact hours plus two weeks of independent study.

Student experience, not official rules. Nothing here changes what the Handbook says.