It splatters! A recipe to codesign the world from our insides, expanding relational practices in participatory design research
Josymar Rodríguez Alfonzo, Liesbeth Huybrechts · Nordic design research conference · 2025
This paper examines the relationship between sustenance labour and Participatory Design (PD), focusing on cooking, eating, and digesting, with the aim of contributing to the significant shift PD is undergoing towards more relational approaches. We discuss how the first author’s design and research practice evolve as she engages with her fieldwork as an 'eater'. By tracing the intimate connections between bodies, materials, stories, and environments in making a recipe — caraotas en coco — we highlight how the recipe expands our ways of relating, becoming response-able from within. The recipe acts as a medium of translation, taking the form of a participatory design workshop where we explore cooking, eating, and digesting as sites for ideation and serious inquiry. As participants engage whole-bodily with sustenance labour, they uncover the relational qualities inherent in these actions. These 'descriptive revelations' enable careful reassessments—tuning into their insides to work with difference, instantiating interrelations and developing relational sensitivities. And, as these 'splatter', we trace their potential to inform and reshape designers’ participatory approaches.