From humanitarian design to design for social innovation: a comparative experiment activating reflexivity on coloniality and power dynamics

This meta-research originates from two experiences of the first two authors, who respectively worked on a Humanitarian Design (HD) project in Uganda with Design Without Borders and on a Design for Social Innovation (DSI) project in Italy with Polimi DESIS Lab. Similar tensions emerged from both contexts regarding the relationship between the design teams and the communities engaged, highlighting the risk of perpetuating systemic oppression and epistemic injustice. To explore these imbalances, the teams were engaged in two sets of sessions, activating reflexivity on social structures embedded in their practices, to uncover potential dynamics rooted in coloniality and power. Where the Ugandan HD project served as a testbed for the approach and three reflexive tools, the sessions within the Italian project confirmed the initial proposition, showing the potentially broad impact of the application of reflexivity on oppressive dynamics within DSI projects. This experiment uncovered the risks entailed by engaging with local communities, raised issues about urbanity and rurality, different forms of knowledge and models of development, challenging the conception of modernity and recognising these foundational elements of coloniality even in a European context. Considering the exploratory nature of this research, the intent is to provide grounding for future critical inquiries within the wider DSI community, demonstrating the need to rethink current design practices from a liberatory and relational perspective.