Rainbow recipes: Creating empathic communicative spaces with Italian LGBTQIA+ parents and exploring their doing family
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School of Arts, Design and Architecture |
Master's thesis
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Date
2023
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Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Master’s Programme in Design
Language
en
Pages
87
Series
Abstract
The Italian context presents significant challenges for rainbow families, notably due to the absence of legal recognition of non-biological parents. In addition, LGBTQIA+ parents lack comfortable spaces for expressing themselves and their perspectives. This thesis aims to create empathic communicative space for rainbow families, through the help of design probes. Engaging with same-sex Italian couples through this method, the thesis explores the meaning of becoming and being a rainbow family within the context of the everyday life. It explores doing family, through a focus on the emotional sphere. Positioned within empathic and method-making design frameworks, the research employed design probes and semi-structured interviews. The probing process involved interviews with parents from three same-sex Italian families, unveiling various aspects of the rainbow family experience. Insights into the emotions associated with parenthood, the involved actors, interactions, and family values informed the creation of design probes, fostering a playful and reflexive communication space. The resulting empathic space facilitated participants in opening up intimate conversations, revealing new perspectives and reflections. An additional insight was unfolded through the probes, regarding the perception of external actors about same-sex couples as family. The tangible output is personal narratives and emotional representations of the involved rainbow families. By creating an empathic space for rainbow families and collecting their narratives, this thesis offers different perspectives through which relate to LGBTQIA+ families and broaden the concept of family.Description
Supervisor
Mattelmäki, TuuliThesis advisor
Dolejšová, MarkétaKeywords
rainbow families, design probes, empathic design, method-making, participatory design, LGBTQIA+ families