Indigenous design thinking and relationality

Design Thinking compiles various approaches and strategies originally developed by designers to provide alternate solutions to problems. This unit is a reconfiguration of design thinking from an Indigenous position, based on relationality and Indigenous ways of knowing. It offers a more flexible and relational approach to problem solving in the business world. In it you will examine the reconfiguration of the colonial project in order to regain value from an Indigenous positioning and design thinking paradigm and posit how this contributes to unique ways of approaching problem solving. You will also be introduced to ways of building upon and capitalising your existing knowledge and lived experience in order to explore opportunities to apply these to a range of disciplines, settings and in contemporary society.

The methodology of this unit provides participants with multiple approaches and opportunities based on the principles of sustainability, real lived experience, empathy, deep listening and decolonising theories.

Indigenous design thinking and relationality will offer you a deep understanding of the relationality that Indigenous culture has with the premise of Country, its impact on practice, design thinking and its relationship to your own place and situated experience.