Expanding Design APPROACHES TO Social Impact

Whereabouts encourages new approaches to social impact design. With collaborator Betsy Kalven, I was named Winner of the 2014 Core77 Design Award for Speculative Design. The jury cited our work as sensitive, thought-provoking, and exemplary. 

Our approach privileges design as sociocultural inquiry and provocation over solution delivery. The project consists of a series of bespoke objects — Boda Whisper Helmet, Clique Din Low, Hush Hush Headset. Together, this suite reframes three everyday sound interactions in order to stimulate discussion and provoke imagination in Kampala, Uganda. At the same time, the representation of the project deliberately subverts expectations, challenging Western designers and audiences to reconsider what design can be in developing contexts. 

BODA WHISPER HELMET

We were struck by the physical proximity and intimacy between drivers and passengers on motorcycle taxis (bodas). Sometimes they would engage in conversation, the passenger's chin nearly resting on the driver's shoulder as they spoke, looking like whispers between two lovers speeding through space. Sometimes no conversation would occur. 

This more refined object gauged how drivers and passengers felt about this interplay, gaining insight into practices and eliciting responses. For Western design audiences it highlighted and translated the lovely, quotidian experiences of living in Kampala that we think are as important to pay attention to as social problems.

CLIQUE DIN LOW

Walking through Kampala, you move through a layered soundscape, a vibrant cacophony of public and private sound experiences. Shops play music loudly, radios blare from passing cars, while people broadcast music from their cell phones set to speaker. Clique Din Low, a tangle of interconnected headphones, prototypes a walk through the city intentional in its desire to share a specific sound experience. 

The low-fidelity quality of this object allowed people to shape its meaning. For one man it prompted the question "Is Obama on the line?" Prototyping in public, we gathered strangers that perhaps would never be together so intimately – security guards, maids, students, businesspeople – facilitating unfamiliar interactions. 

HUSH HUSH HEADSET

We found in general that Kampalans speak softly, and we often struggled to hear them. Initially we joked about amplifying their voices, but then realized that would be a colonialist move. Instead we created a headset that amplifies the Western user's voice to themselves, thereby approximating how they sound to Kampalans, and training them to speak more softly—and maybe even listen more. 

This object generated productive conversations between foreigners and Kampalans about the ways in which people listen and speak to one another. 

Special thanks to Vicent Serugo, Philip Gessa, Frederick Katende, Laura Downes, Atu Tesla, Achille Lovle, Pharidah Ddamulira, Erik Anderson, Sunday, Robert, and Coka for their participation, design work, feedback + critique.