This talk was part of the Royal College of Art Symposium on Design and Systemic Change, organized by Product Design students.

Abstract: Oppression is systemic as it is reproduced across social groups, generating complex patterns of domination. By their token, designers reproduce oppression when they try to save the oppressed from oppression through system thinking or any innovative approach. To change systemic oppression, designers may better think and make things with the oppressed, by the oppressed, for the oppressed.

VideoSlidesAudioSystemic diagrams used in this presentationOntological vocation of being moreOppression as being lessOppression as an unequal exchangeTransectional oppressionIntersectional oppressionLiberation from oppressionReferencesGonzatto, R.F. and Van Amstel, F.M.C. (2022), “User oppression in human-computer interaction: a dialectical-existential perspective”, Aslib Journal of Information Management, Vol. 74 No. 5, pp. 758-781. https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-08-2021-0233

Van Amstel, F. M., Noel, L.-A., & Gonzatto, R. F. (2022). Design, Oppression, and Liberation. Diseña, (21), Intro. https://doi.org/10.7764/disena.21.Intro

Lucy Pei, Edgard David Rincón Quijano, Angela D. R. Smith, Reem Talhouk, and Frederick van Amstel. 2022. Assets and community engagement: a roundtable with HCI researchers and designers. interactions 29, 5 (September – October 2022), 44–47. https://doi.org/10.1145/3554975