February 3, 2021 Reflection - Meaning and the Impact of Design

Reutimann, R. (November 7, 2019). Lensball in metro station [Photograph]. Unsplash. https://unsplash.com/photos/xx-Z8fuF83Y

In today’s social innovation class, we were privileged to have many guest speakers, with one being Kurtis Lesick from Alberta University of the Arts. The big question proposed at the beginning was, “How are we to approach the world?” and to reflect on this by asking ourselves what this means and how we might do it. With the guidance from Kurtis, our class then both learned and discussed what meaning is, how we derive it, and how this relates to design. As designers and innovative thinkers, we have to be mindful and aware of the unconscious biases that we all have, and how what we put out into the world can create both solutions but also more problems. It is also a responsibility to apply human-centered design practices to gain perspective, but the work does not end at that. We have to understand that all of our actions contribute to society, whether that is big or small, and thus materializes it.

We will never all interpret, interact or get the same meaning from something in the same way as one another, but we can be more conscious of how what we put out into the world can create an effect.

Kaylee P.