Assistant Professor of Industrial Design, Virginia Tech
Dr. Isabel Prochner is an industrial designer and professor at the Virginia Tech School of Design. Socially and community-engaged design is a significant focus of her research and practice. These priorities evolved in response to calls for more pluralistic perspectives and practices in design. She works to bolster social responsibility and transition to more equitable futures. Her work is significantly informed by Costanza-Chock’s concept of design justice, which sees the need for systemic change in design. It prioritizes the needs of marginalized communities and centers community voices. Prochner recently published her second book, Designing for Sex and Gender Equity, and has a contract with Routledge to write a new human factors guidebook for industrial designers based on diverse anthropometric data.
Design for Equity, Shaping Futures
This talk will summarize a major research and writing project that culminated in the book Designing for Sex and Gender Equity, published in the Routledge Design Research for Change series in December 2023. Drawing on dozens of original designer interviews, this project explored how design interventions can and do support sex, gender, and intersectional equity and what barriers stand in the way. The project included case studies on a wide range of topics: personal protective equipment, toy design, design interventions for mental health, design and sexuality, modest sportswear, virtual assistants, design and beauty, and design between and beyond the binaries. This Women in Design Deep Dive talk will bring attention to sex, gender, and intersectional issues related to design artifacts and provide examples of creative design responses to these issues based on the work of contemporary designers practicing in the case study areas.
The Audience Will Learn:
