Papers by Valentina Volpi
DRS2024: Boston, 23–28 June, 2024
This theoretical paper critically examines the relationship between design for social innovation ... more This theoretical paper critically examines the relationship between design for social innovation and the concept of empowerment. It questions to what extent current empowerment discourses in design genuinely amplify marginalized voices or rather reinforce and hide existing structural inequalities. With the aim of unveiling the emptiness of signifiers, such as empowerment, much like the contested concept of 'social innovation', this contribution aims to encourage a critical reflection on power dynamics through an anarchafeminist lens. Rather than striving for definite answers or providing blueprints, this lens aims to be an open and dynamic invitation to scholars and practitioners to continue exploring (self)critical spaces and interrogate design for social innovation to reveal and confront the complexities, oversights, and potential challenges of contemporary design discourses.
Conference Presentations by Valentina Volpi
Participatory Design Conference, 2024
This exploratory paper challenges the prevailing 'participatory orthodoxy' in design and politics... more This exploratory paper challenges the prevailing 'participatory orthodoxy' in design and politics by questioning whether participation alone is enough to envision alternatives that resonate with collective aspirations. We argue for complementing emancipatory PD discourses with the idea of prefiguration and introduce 'ludic prefiguration' as a holistic and dynamic framework that interweaves elements of game design, cooperative play, and iterative collective playtesting to foster a deeper level of collaboration across the creative and political spectrums of design. This framework advocates for interactions that are not only playful but also 'inefficient' in their exploration, thereby redefining the influence of play on decision-making and questioning traditional perceptions of efficiency in design. At the heart of this approach is an activist commitment to radical imagination and meaningful inefficiency, seeking to reshape the contours of participation and pave new prefigurative pathways in democratising design and politics.
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Papers by Valentina Volpi
Conference Presentations by Valentina Volpi