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Design theories, Australian Aboriginal, Colonialism, and Participatory design techniques

This thesis expands upon design theories and methods for understanding and speculatingfutures. New perspectives on participatory design techniques combined with Indigenousapproaches to knowledge production are presented as experiments of decolonising futuresthrough creative critical mapping practices. Informed by my Australian Aboriginal and Europeanancestry, I outline the practice-led research including ways for readers to apply the creativeexperiments, provided in a series of reflections and appendix guides. I ask what might be anappropriate way of enabling people to map options for their futures. I consider how one mightcreate a design practice that collaborates with people intent on navigating decolonising options.The research reveals strategies for decolonising the self, one’s practice and design. Itdemonstrates the designing of effective modes of listening, articulating and communicating withpeople about plural options for their futures.The thesis theoretically develops a critical lens on modernity and colonialism, particularlydetailing how continuing and emerging conditions of coloniality debilitate Indigenous peoples’ability to transition to decolonising futures. It then provides methodologies for a practice ofdecolonising mapping in which one’s relationship with modernity and coloniality can beunderstood. The creative experiments apply these methodologies in educational, arts-based,community-based and other event-based and organisational settings. These diverse settingsdemonstrate a spectrum of new strategic combinations of, for example, Aboriginal yarning,relational mapping, design fiction, plausibility and futures thinking and concept articulationtactics in strategic sessions, participatory workshops, major public arts events, an interactivewebsite and other environments and mediums. The work contributes not only to scholarship indesign research, studies, thinking and education, but also beyond the broad design communityto policymakers, government, organisational management and other community and socialgroups who are looking to think about, talk about, and mobilise futures. The practice in thisresearch should be understood as creative experiments, not as ‘proof of commercialisation’ or‘product’ designs. The primary focus of this qualitative research contribution is onexperimentation, creative insight, iteration and reflection of how mapping with people in situatedcontexts can occur, rather than what has been articulated. Experiments in this research alloccurred in Australia, mostly in South-East Queensland. Archived evidence of the creativepractice is represented with photos and graphics integrated throughout the document chaptersand in a comprehensive appendix. The implications of this research are that it contributes toredirecting the locus of design from a service provision activity towards a rapidly emergingcritical design field. This thesis exhibits a unique theoretical, methodological and creative bodyof work of critical mapping as an articulatory design practice.