Communication with Self, with Others, and with Futures: Making Artefacts in Design Thinking Workshops

When language is a barrier to constructing knowledge, visualising and prototyping can facilitate communication internally with one’s self, externally with others, and speculatively with the future. The cognitive effects of the making process help participants express tacit knowledge, and surface assumptions that may have otherwise gone unnoticed and unchallenged. Within design thinking workshops, the collaborative act of hands-on making helps mediate power dynamics and contributes to social learning. As ideas are explored, prototyping supports a speculative discussion about possible and preferable futures. This collaborative process of shared meaning-making helps give agency to previously excluded voices, such as youth and minorities, and has implications for socially inclusive practices. These ideas are discussed and illustrated verbally and visually.