#281: Entities Detonating Potentials: Interuniversity Design Workshop TiUD as an Exploratory Lab for Actants of the Futures

The Interuniversity Design Workshop is an exploratory laboratory that promotes the study of design activism, sustainable design, and transition design. The seventh edition of the workshop aimed to visualize the organizations, institutions, or companies that must be created to enable Mexico City to reach its potential for social well-being. The object of this educational experience is to enable design students to discover new ways to promote social activation through design as a professional activity. A group of 60 undergraduate design students from five high education institutions (HEI,’s) analyzed their own contexts, emphasizing the identification of potential sources of wellbeing; later, they were given the task to design interactions, including giving shape to the agents that would make them possible. Their projects revealed three key findings: (a) that students are able to identify potentials through contextual observation; (b) that the creation of new actors can potentially activate new realities; and (c) the proposed entities hint potential future roles of designers in Latin American contexts. This study contributes to the field of design, looking towards a fairer, more pluralistic and diverse future.