Radical Inclusive Attitudes: The Challenge of Doing, Undoing, and Redoing the World-in-the-Making

Social complexities have increased in the aftermath of global phenomena such as the migrant crisis, intensifying socio-economic inequities, racial discrimination, and backlash against the universal rights of minority groups. These are challenging how designers respond to social issues. Human-centred policies and socially inclusive design methods, gravitating towards designer-centred perspectives, fall short of encompassing systemic, intersectional, and transdisciplinary perspectives and limit possibilities for action. Consequently, we are calling for a paradigm shift from the centralisation of power held by design processes to situation-centred approaches (which we define as design-uncentred) that prioritise local communities, strategies, movements, and activism. Responding, we introduce the Radical Inclusive Attitudes (RIA) concept, a cultural design framework to challenge conventional thinking about inclusive design in favour of critical, collaborative, transdisciplinary strategies that can best address complexity. Findings from the Designing for Inclusive Attitudes (DxIA) project illustrate what the Radical Inclusive Attitude (RIA) concept is (or aims to be). RIA was developed from a triangulation analysis of resources such as insights from (i) a co-design workshop run at an international design conference, (ii) a situational analysis of an immigrant hospitality model case study, and (iii) a thematic analysis of data collected via virtual workshops with an international collective of design researchers. We are introducing a novel approach to navigate and explore social complexities while creatively acting in the situation. Conclusions highlight relevant implications of the RIA design framework for the third and voluntary sectors and policymakers and foster the decolonisation of the design process.