Crafting everyday resistance through lightweight design

Abstract

This pictorial examines the relationship between inquiry and activism within academic settings through the design of protest artifacts. Inspired by lineages of feminist print production, we illustrate our own process of creating simple acts of resistance through electronic posters and buttons. Naming these interventions "lightweight design interactions," we hold on to the ways design practice might work as modest, partial, and incremental shifts in the circumstances through which design futures unfold. Lightweight design interactions encourage us as design researchers to look beyond the bold creation of alternatives (new design artifacts) to the subtle nurturing of the circumstances that make alternatives possible.