World-building and world-breaking: The role of the designer in systemic governance

Currently, the dominant paradigms of design are inherited from the statistical global minority (also know as the Global North). This results in products, systems, and user experiences that impose a singular, often exclusionary, worldview onto a diverse planet. To design a genuinely equitable world, we must move beyond these affirmative, inherited frameworks.
This talk argues for a critical shift toward pluralistic design propositions authored by the Global Majority. By introducing African Life-Centric Design (ALCD) as a speculative and highly practical framework, we explore how decentering Western UX methodologies can reshape our reality. ALCD offers a critical lens to prototype new freedoms, proving that when we change the architects of our systems, we change the future of how humanity interacts, survives, and thrives.

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