The Continuum Deck of Freeing Design & Vigorous Futures
a card deck of emancipatory design approaches
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The next release from GraffitiVersal, “A Continuum of Freeing Design & Vigorous Futures” card deck, contains approaches for emancipatory design. It contains both content detailing an approach for designing for equitable & just outcomes in the present (the Freeing Design Deck) and content detailing an approach for designing for thriving worlds in the future (the Vigorous Futures Deck).
Freeing Design: Inspired by design, community organizing, and diversity-equity-inclusion-belonging practice, the Freeing Design Deck demonstrates a design that is participatory, democratic, and centers those most approximate to the social issues as the ones most appropriate to develop the right solutions. Aspects of the Freeing Design Deck—specifically the Design States—are modular in that they also used within the Vigorous Futures Deck.
Vigorous Futures: Informed by the same values of the Freeing Design Deck, while also strongly centered in the values of Afrofuturism, Speculative Design, Political Science, & Economics, the Vigorous Futures Deck can be used as a game to speculate design solutions for future issues that have yet to pass or to design real life artifacts and solutions that give insight on how to approach current situations.
The Continuum Deck has been made to provide design-centricity to the experiences of the intersectional and the marginalized in our world - be they of Black, Indigenous, Brown, Latinx/a/o, Asian, LGBTQ2IA, People with Disabilities, and/or Working Class communities.
Here are the Details:
Two Decks: Freeing Design, Vigorous Futures
Card count: 90
Card size: 3.5 x 5.75
Foldable accordion style instruction booklet included
Comes in a rigid box covered with original art and that will keep the cards preserved.
The entire deck was created, written, illustrated, and designed by Alvin Schexnider. The content of the deck has been developed, workshopped, taught in graduate school, and tested over a 4 year period. You can learn about the background of the Deck here on our Medium post, “Travelling through the SpaceTime Continuum to escape racism.”
Customer Testimonials
“Just as the future is created joyfully, messily, nonlinearly, surprisingly, and sometimes clumsily, this prompt holds so many simply profound entry points into how to have systemic, brave, world-building conversations and facilitation. How do we design for thriving flourishing worlds? ”
- Craig, Community Designer
“I have been exploring using the Continuum Deck in my upcoming Fall Human Computer Interaction class. There is a project based around a scene in Black Panther about sharing Wakandan technology in U.S. urban communities. In the class students learn human-centered design principles and are challenged to prototype a new technology for a particular audience. I believe the deck will help them more effectively co-design and test with users.”
- Perry, Professor of Human Compter Interaction
“I have used your cards in 2 remote facilitations - and 1 in-person since i got them - about making design anti-racist and beyond. I want my participants - and myself - to see the journey of combatting racism and discrimination in all its forms to be, yes, about correcting wrongs of the past and acknowledging the harm of white supremacy - but also - to liberate us when we imagine a future towards something that embraces radical possibility. Practically speaking, I am concerned that people who use "HCD methods" just think they are automatically "diverse" because theoretically they involve other perspectives. But how might we resist the temptation to apply this discipline in a way that adds superficial inclusion while actually maintaining the white supremacist cis-gendered earth melting status quo? We used cards to initiate ground rules conversations about our work together AND in the context of assessing ideas that had been generated. Do these ideas expand our possibilities for the most liberated future for this planet?”
- Abby, Public Sector Executive Consultant
Here’s a sample of some of the cards in this deck…
What's included in this card deck?
Two Decks, grounded in emancipatory design
Freeing Design Deck
Freeing Design is emancipatory design - that which is made to emancipate designers from colonial, White Supremacist, patriarchical, classist norms that are embedded in human centered design, UX/UI design, service design, and the like. Freeing Design is also emancipatory in that it allows the design practice and process themselves to be freed from the above isms that deprioritize the input and decision making agency of oppressed groups versus those with power in the design process. Freeing Design is participatory, democratic, and centers those most approximate to the social issues as the ones most appropriate to develop the right solutions.
Deck content: Design Tenets, States, Revivify Cards
Design Tenets will guide your design project. What are the tenets you most prioritize for a project?
The cards included in the Tenet group include:
Humility & awareness as the goal
We are not the experts
Authentic proximity to the least heard voices
We are continually learning
Design States in totality represent the emancipatory design process that undergirds the Continuum Deck. Each State has one or more cards. Design State cards hold practical steps that a team can take in the design process.
The cards in the Design State group include:
Humility
Awareness
Assemble + Understand
Clarify & Learn
Connect & Integrate
Dream & Ideate
Prototype & Build
Test & Refine
Revivify Cards are essentially ground rules or boundaries that a team member or the whole group can come back to and invoke in order to keep conversation and dialogue alive in the midst of difficult conversations about identity, privilege, power, and oppression.
The cards in the Revivify group include:
Meet people where they are
Define key terms
Assess where people are
Keep power dynamics in mind
Vigorous Futures Deck
The Vigorous Futures Deck can be used as a game to speculate design solutions for future issues that have yet to pass or to design real life artifacts and solutions that give insight on how to approach current situations.
Deck content: Future Design Tenets, Scenarios, Systems Lenses, Design States, Warps
Vigorous Futures Flow of Cards: Future Design Tenets > Scenarios > Systems Lenses > Design States > Warps
Future Design Tenet cards help set as your north star / values for the project or game.
The cards in the Future Tenet group include:
Solidarity
Non proprietary
Intersectional
Decentralized
Restorative
Accessible
Just
Anti-Racist
Anti-Oppressive
Collectivistic
Interworking
Loving
Planet-Centric
LGBTQ2IA+affirming
Each Scenario Card has a state of positive and a negative possibility of said Scenario (for instance, one Scenario could be Housing Abundance vs Housing Insecurity). Choose a scenario in the future that you are trying to design for.
The cards in the Scenario group include:
Carceral Systems vs Abolition
Unemployment, Underemployment vs Gainful, Meaningful Work
Income Disparity vs Income Equality
Anti- Immigration Climate vs Borderless Nation-States
Climate Migration vs Safe Climates in All Spaces & Places
Discrimination / Oppression vs Universal Acceptance
Technological Bias vs Technological Affirmation
Healthcare inaccessibility vs Healthcare for All
Housing insecurity vs Housing Abundance
The Systems Lens Cards hold different lenses by which a solution might be achieved–for instance, Cultural, Political, Environmental, Technological, Economic, or Commercial.
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The cards in the Systems Lens group include:
Political
Economic
Cultural
Environmental
Technological
Health
Legal
Ethical
Design States in totality represent the emancipatory design process that undergirds the Continuum Deck. Each State has one or more cards. This is the same set of cards from the Freeing Design Deck.
The Design State cards from the Freeing Design Deck are modular-they are used here as well. They include:
Humility
Awareness
Assemble + Understand
Clarify & Learn
Connect & Integrate
Dream & Ideate
Prototype & Build
Test & Refine
As you are in the testing State, you can use Warp Cards to take your design process and your prototype through new/added alternative scenarios to see if new insights can be made.
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