7 - Critical Literacy and Critical Design

Summary

Introduction

Information and information systems are designed in many ways and on many levels, including the choice of content included or excluded; graphical layouts and linguistic choices; the crafting of internal structures, links and metadata; and the contextual embedding of units and systems into networks of others. Much current research and development in infor - mation design-related areas emphasise ‘solutionist’ approaches, whereby design is intended to resolve externally defined ‘problems’, while simultaneously striving to achieve user experiences that are as ‘seamless’, ‘intuitive’, ‘transparent’ and ‘immersive’ as possible. The argument here, in contrast, emphasises critical literacy-motivated needs and possibilities of designing for the opposite; of designing in ways that highlight and problematise the limited and biased character of information representations – and that make visible and inspire reflection and dialogue on critically informed future improved alternatives. This argument is achieved by way of introducing concepts and theories associated with the field of critical design to elaborate theoretical and empirical understandings of and approaches to critical literacy.

A primary motivation for this combination is the recognition of a foundational ‘problem of representation’ affecting conditions for and consequences of all forms of information construction, use and exchange, with related power imbalances. This position postulates two particularly important things: (a) for objects, entities, experiences, events and actions to become information, they have to be represented somehow; and (b) that this representational requirement is not only unavoidable but problematic. Representation in the sense implied here is what gives potentially informative resources and entities a form, structure and context with subjective and social meaning potential (cf. Blackwell, 2013; Buckland and Ramos, 2010; Johansson, 2012; Johansson and Stenlund, 2021). Whether sorted in mental categories, expressed through spoken discourse, visualised as data points on a map, enacted by a bodily gesture or processed and published as a written academic publication, representational tools in the form of concepts, classifications, grammar, visual forms, colour schemes and even body language are necessary verbal and non-verbal representation schemes (‘structuring devices’, Buckland and Ramos, 2010) for the construction of information that is meaningful and communicable across bodies, minds, places and times.

The problem, in this view, is that all representational tools are situated constructs and, as such, malleable to social and material limitations, bias and variations across times, cultures and contexts (cf. Beaulieu, 2002; Blackwell, 2013; Drucker, 2014; 2020).