Lorna Simpson

Letizia Consiglio: Reflection on themes and their future influence

In Letizia’s reflective blog post she began by talking a bit about the Critical Design project, explaining what it is and her initial reaction to it. She then mentioned the Better Lives theme of diversity and what it means to her and then went on to discuss how diversity is relevant in her project as well as how it informed the project. 

Letizia spoke about the current global problem of the Coronavirus and how it has affected her as well as others. She utilised this topic as a way of displaying her understanding of another Better Lives theme being social responsibility and how everyone is having to be socially responsible more than ever at this time. 

To end her blog post, Letizia spoke about how social responsibility will be something that she will continue to think about for the rest of her life and how it will encourage her to be kind and considerate. 

Throughout this blog post, Letizia does mention all three Better Lives themes however she only expands on two of them (diversity and social responsibility). She clearly understands the two that she wrote more in depth about although, in terms of ‘how the Better Lives themes might change how you work in the future’ she only reflected on how social responsibility will affect her. This blog post is well written and well informed however I think to take it that bit further, Letizia could have expanded on the topic of sustainability and answered the question by reflecting on how all of the themes might change how she works in the future. 

The outcome for this project (messaging fashion) was a group presentation and I am actually really happy with the outcome that my group created.

The circumstances of the pandemic lockdown meant that we had to work together over video calls instead of in person and surprisingly we managed to make it work. We had a group call everyday at mid day where we all showed the research or work that we had done since the last call and then figured out what we were all going to do before the next. We had a WhatsApp group chat to share research, photographs, information etc. as well as ask questions and discuss the project. We utilised Google Docs to create our presentation meaning that we could all access it online and had the ability to edit it at the same time from separate devices. We all created our own slides making sure to spread the workload evenly and then presented the slides to each other to ensure that we all knew all of the information. 

When we had finished creating the presentation, we did a few practice runs, each presenting our slides, and timing it to guarantee that it would be under or around ten   minutes which was the allotted time we were given to present. When we did the presentation for real, we managed to get it a few seconds under ten minutes so I’m really glad that we practiced it. 

Our presentation was clean and contained bullet points of important information which we then expanded on verbally. We had a good amount of imagery to ensure that it was visual and interesting to look at. 

In terms of my personal development throughout this project, it improved my ability to work in a group which is something that I was not too excited about doing. I was the leader in a lot of the discussions and decision making however I also encouraged everyone to voice their opinions and listened to their suggestions.

I have always been a confident presenter however presenting on a group call by sharing a screen is something that I had never done previously to this project and brought a range of new challenges. In some ways I found it easier to present because I didn’t have lots of people watching me (not that it phases me usually) and I could focus more on the screen. Also, the fact that I had to turn off my microphone when I wasn’t speaking meant that I could practice what I was going to say if I felt that I needed to. 

This project was really interesting to do during this strange pandemic and I would say that in some ways it was easier such as being able to relax at home whilst working however it was also harder for example I couldn’t just ask a question to my tutor if I needed an answer straight away. I’m happy with how the final outcome turned out and I feel that my group presented well and that I also learnt a lot.

Sustainability, diversity and social responsibility are the three Better Lives themes. I believe that they are all fundamental components to everything that we do; from the way we live our lives to, perhaps more importantly, how we, as creators, work and put ideas or content out into the world. 

For me, sustainability is extremely important, especially in our current time. With global warming and climate change being more relevant than ever, I feel that everybody should be making sustainability a top priority in everything that they do, both personally and professionally because if there is no planet, then nothing else even matters and that is something that I think people often forget. 

Diversity is something that is being talked about a lot more in recent times and has come a long way; that’s not to say that we don’t still have further to go, I just think it’s good to acknowledge the positive developments in topics such as this. In the past, the lack of diversity in fashion has led to people feeling excluded however as we are seeing more of it on the surface such as in catwalk models as well on a deeper level with designers etc. things are changing and advancing for the better.

We all expect brands and companies to conduct themselves responsibility and to address a broad assortment of social, environmental or political issues. In other words, we expect them to be socially responsible. By using recycled fabric or paper or ocean plastic etc. brands can reduce their impact or footprint and, as with a lot of things, if one brand does it, more will follow meaning that the competitiveness of brands wanting to be the best or do the most furthers the social responsibility of all brands and therefore betters the world. 

All of the points that I have made are to say that when working in the future as well as the present I will aim to be as sustainable, diverse and socially responsible as I can. The Better Lives themes have taught me to think more about what I’m doing both personally and professionally on a deeper level like noticing the packaging of things that I buy or produce and trying to make decisions that are sustainable, diverse and socially responsible. 

Of all the lectures in the series that I watched, I found Lorraine Gamman’s the most interesting. Her lecture was about empathy. In the hour that she presented, she explained that empathy is understanding and perspective taking or imagining the other person’s point of view however it’s also having an emotional response and feeling or identifying with that person. She also touched on the topic of user centred design and how it requires designers to have empathy with users, displaying how if designers do research in order to understand the user and their feelings or situation then they can design better for them. Lorraine mentioned active listening, cultural probes, empathy probes and going undercover as ways in which designers can do this research. 

One thing that I found really fascinating in this lecture is Lorraine’s idea of using criminals or mis-users to better designs. She stated that criminals know the most about the problems with the products for example a pick pocketer would know all the tricks to steal something from a bag and would therefore be able to tell a designer how to make the bag safer. 

Something else that Lorraine discussed is the concept of an empathy deficit and theories about why empathy is necessary in our world. Barack Obama famously wrote about this topic as well as Jeremy Rifkin who wrote a book called The Empathetic Civilisation and Peter Bazalgette who wrote The Empathy Instinct. 

Lorraine spoke about ‘empathy things’, saying that they are not just objects and experience, but events that foster empathy between people. She mentioned The Empathy Museum and a project called A Mile In My Shoes in which people could take a pair of shoes and listen to their owners story. 

Empathetic clothing accessories and fashion approaches are also topics that she spoke about as well as many other impressive projects and how they can empower vulnerable people or bring awareness to subjects such as animal welfare. 

This lecture really made me think differently about empathy as previously I would just think of it personally and how I use it in my personal life however I have come to realise that empathy is a really important tool for a designer or creative and how it can be used to improve projects and ideas. The projects mentioned throughout this lecture clearly display how empathy and fashion in general can create better lives. One example being going into prisons to speak to criminals about what they did and then allowing them to design a better product. This is positive in many ways as the prisoner feels they are helping on a large scale and that they have a purpose and then at the end of it all there is a product that has been created. I watched lectures on culture, inclusion, cultural satiability etc. and they have all opened my eyes to how fashion can better lives.