D E C O L ONI ZI NG I NDUST R I A L D ESIGN
FOSTERING A MULTILINGUAL DESIGN STUDIO CLASSROOM
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nglish is not my first language. It’s actually not even my second. I spoke two very different dialects of Chinese at home before beginning any formal education in English. This, combined with being a firstgeneration student, made it pretty unlikely that industrial design would be my path. I didn’t see myself reflected in my professors or in Eurocentric design history; nor did I see myself in the field as a whole. I want to be to my students what I myself didn’t have. Since I began teaching in 2016, I have often provided emotional support for racialized students who experience discrimination and systemic, institutionalized oppression in their education. The future of industrial design looks like the increasingly diverse students in our classrooms. It is essential that our studio classroom environments allow them to be their full selves and affirm their lived experiences. White and English should not be the default; they are not what makes good design. Below I have outlined some strategies and considerations for cultivating a multilingual design studio classroom. Recognize Positionality As educators, we should be transparent in acknowledging our privilege and positionality as a model for self-reflection and awareness. Positionality is the social and political context that creates your identity in terms of race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, etc. Positionality influences your understanding and outlook of the world. For me it looks like this: I am the daughter of ethnically Chinese Vietnamese refugees born and raised on Treaty 7 territory in Southern Alberta, Canada. I am continuing to interrogate my own positionality as an able-bodied, light-skinned East Asian and cisgender woman who has had the privilege to pursue higher education. I bring my own lived experience as a racialized student and design professional to my practice as a designer and educator.
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I speak English with a Canadian accent and that affords me privilege too. Encouraging all students to consider their own intersections allows them to consider the position from which they give and receive critique. This becomes especially important in design research, where we, whether an educator or student, should take stock of our power and how that influences the spaces and communities we enter. Examine the Context Consider that students may be struggling in our studios not because of their abilities with concepts or language but because they have been trained in a different academic culture. Studio classrooms regularly require active and experimental participation—behavior that could be considered disrespectful or inappropriate in another cultural context. Establish expectations and course vocabulary from the beginning so any conversations that happen begin from the same baseline. What is a model? What is a prototype? Through presentations and critique, we’re encouraging students to practice the vocabulary of design. Students will be better able to participate if we first define the terms. I once heard that you should consider your first language to be the language you do math in. Similarly, I would expect creative ideas to arrive to us first in our native language. When you are making notations on sketches, before anything takes form, should you have to filter these through a translation first? Encouraging students to incorporate their multilingual experience into their work brings richness to their ideas. Allow them to write in the language that their ideas arrive in, translating later, if necessary, for their process documentation. Broaden Opportunities for Participation Creating more low-stakes alternatives for participation helps the students acclimatize to studio culture and become
