Designing Gender: A Feminist Toolkit
Design researcher and lecturer Sarah Elsie Baker reached out to Sixto-Juan Zavala of Queer Botany for a contribution to her book Designing Gender: A Feminist Toolkit. An interview with Zavala is in chapter six: Sustainable practice and design beyond binaries.
From Bloomsbury:
This book offers an ideal first step for designers looking to disrupt contemporary design practice by challenging gender inequality. Drawing on feminist and queer theory, it outlines key concepts and applies them to a broad spectrum of design activity. By developing feminist design approaches and methods, it provides a practical resource for designers wanting to make a change.
Designing Gender covers essential topics including definitions of sex, gender and sexuality, histories of women in design, parity in professional design practice, diversity of users, non-binary design approaches, and sustainable and equitable futures.
Filled with examples from around the world, the book recognises the culturally specific nature of gendered experience. Interviews with designers working in a diverse range of fields including user experience design, visual communication, interaction design and critical design, highlight the challenges and opportunities involved in designing a more equitable society. Each chapter showcases key methods and tools and culminates in hands-on activities.
You can preview the book on Google Books and you can purchase it from Bloomsbury.
Sarah Elsie Baker is Senior Lecturer and Research Fellow at Media Design School in Auckland, New Zealand. Her research interests are focused on design and social inequality, specifically in relation to user experience and design futures. She teaches design research and methods, as well as courses exploring gender and design.
