Norms

As part of the module, Critical & Creative Thinking the master students of communication design at HMKW (Berlin) got the task to create a design intervention that highlights, discusses, and questions a norm of their choice. The developed concepts span over a wide range of themes and explore questions about language, values, gender, heritage, culture, and social behaviour.

“The real secret of the success of our species is that we alone can talk about things that do not exist […] except in our own imagination.”

Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens – A Brief History of Humankind

The imagined realities, described by Yuval Noah Harari, refer to the different agreements made between humans, forming a structure for our social life and behaviour. Language, money, manners, nations or legal systems can only exist because we have agreed on a set of rules which we are expected to follow. Our social norms are also enabled through such agreements and acknowledging that design can either reinforce or question status quo is the first step in taking on a norm-critical design perspective.

At the final presentations of this assignment, we explored our own version of Feedback Sessions described in the book Taking a Line for a Walk - Assignments in design education from 2016.

„A critique session is often introduced by explaining the aim and goals of the work on display. This setup tends to lead to discussions on intention while the actual outcome becomes more or less secondary. In this exercise, we will examine how we connect certain reactions to our own repertory of knowledge and how this affects our gaze.“

The notes written in silence include both an intuitive and analytical reflection. How does the work hit me? What references affect my reading of the work as a whole?

In the second part of the session, the notes were shared in the group and used as a basis for discussions. Gaps between the intentions of the work and the actual visual outcome were spotted and fruitful conversations about how to bridge these gaps took place.