Spirituality based codesign
Gustavo Berwanger Bittencourt, Karine de Mello Freire · 2022
Different views and critical practices have aimed to build a Participatory Design that is truly democratic in its process and results. Among different approaches, the studies of Akama, Hagen and Whaanga-Schollum, and of Light and Ibarra urge designers to build their processes from perspectives that are both personal and alternative to those developed in the Global North, with the goal of establishing a respectful, reciprocal, and relational, or sentipensante1 , Participatory Design. This paper connects such theoretical background with a codesign process, which was carried out with a group of parents, caregivers and health professionals involved with Prader-Willi Syndrome. The initial conclusions pointed out that spiritual disciplines rooted in alternative ontologies can inform processes, attitude, feelings, and behavior in design, but it is essential that designers have intimacy and proficiency with their chosen spiritual discipline and make room for self-reflection as well as for self-criticism.