I'm sitting at an auditorium in Cuenca, waiting for a roundtable discussion to start. The title of the discussion is "Cuidar los proyectos de y desde el diseño" (which translates awkwardly to something like "taking care of projects of and through design"). I was invited by my former roommate and current host in Madrid, also a person to whom I owe amends, Isa. Isa is part of the panel.
The host of the roundtable is full of bullshit. He's the kind of person who adds flourish to stupid questions. But his personality is warm and he has good intentions. It takes me a lot of effort to understand what is he actually asking. Should I be a participant of the panel, I would ask him to summarize his question in a single phrase, stating that I am dull and I have trouble following what he is saying.
The roundtable finished. We went to the lobby for coffee and "eco" pastries. Eco pastries are still unhealthy. Now I'm listening to the results of a workshops they held yesterday. The first one was about the threats of AI and how to tackle them from a design perspective. They couldn't give an answer to a single issue the many they proposed. Waste of time.
Now they are presenting the results of a second workshop, taking into account the feminist perspective in design projects. Upset because no men signed up. The problem is men. More bullshit. These things make me skeptical about my profession as a whole. The conference itself is organized by an association of design associations. I wish I were joking.
This is throwing bureaucracy at problems. Making people think that we are resolving problems when we are really wasting time, resources and attention. Then we will all pat ourselves on the back and congratulate ourselves for saving the world.
Am I a cynic? Yes. I'm not proposing a solution. I'm just taking them down. Perhaps the fact that they singled out that "AI was designed by white males from 30 to 50 years old without taking into account the opinions and needs of other communities". How would that happen? Would we have more roundtables with more thick rimmed bald guys asking bullshit questions? I was thinking: I wish I had an AI that would filter the bullshit out of this conference. Then I would enjoy silence, punctuated by the rare nugget of wisdom. Then again, this probably applies not only to this conference, but to the world at large.
I want to make an effort at highlighting the positive aspects of the conference. One of the panel participants, a young woman, is actually well-versed and academically trained in AI matters. Her participations were clear, to the point, and with that sort of certainty only people who know what they are talking about possess. Isa was humble in making it clear that she didn't understand AI, she wants to resolve problems for human beings and educate other humans on how to do this. It's easy to fall into the game of giving bullshit answers to bullshit questions.
The results of another workshop was presented, it was on inclusive design. Unfortunately I was busy writing this and I missed it in its entirety. It could have been great, but I doubt it. I'll pay attention to the results of the next workshop.
"Impact in education and design" is the title of the results of this workshop. They made an empathy map and a workshop on the prototyping of "impact ideas". It seems this was the continuation of a series of workshops they've done through every couple of months, since 2022. Photos of happy participants in Granada and Valencia. Nothing about the project itself yet.
The empathy map. Four quadrants: "What does she do", "what does she think", "what does she feel", "what does she see". Seems to be missing a lot of important dimensions, from the top of my head "what does she want?", "what does she need?". Results are put on a website. "it's very interesting, please visit".
Prototyping workshop. 1. Create a publication. 2. Create a presentation. 3. Promote. 4. Collaborate with institutions.
"We have conclusions but we don't want to present them now because it would take too long". Literally that's what he said after wasting all our time on bullshit. I'm getting angry.
Oh dear. I lose faith in my profession by the minute. Ok, a presenter is stepping up for the closing presentation. The title of this conference is "Have the courage to design for good". Morality and design. This should be interesting. The presenter comes form the Danish Design Center. I'll pay attention.
I write this 48 hours after that last sentence. The presentation was very good, given by a charming Danish woman with whom Isa and myself would sit at lunchtime and had the chance to converse about design and personal matters. What I liked about her presentation is that she was skeptical about some of the things she presented "co-creation is the new black, but we don't acknowledge the challenges in it". "There is an important overhead to democracy". She was the president of the association of associations of design associations. That is, the European institution that oversees the country associations. They seem to have a foot at the door in European government. It's politicians all the way down. That's not true, eventually we find a layer of designers who actually design. If this happens in a very hands-on craft, I don't want to imagine actual politics.
The party was amazing. I danced like crazy. Everybody did. More than one person told me I danced nice and I looked like I was enjoying myself a lot. To me it's still mind-blowing unthinkable that I do this and I enjoy it so much. It gives me a different way to connect with people. I may not like them on a stage of a design conference, but I like them on the dance floor. We are all human beings before our professions.