In an effort to honor the indigenous history of Hawaiʻi, The University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s Brian Strawn (MDes 2012), Director of the University of Hawai’i Office of Planning and Spatial Experience and Principal Investigator for the project through the University of Hawai’i Community Design Center, partnered with students in ID’s* Spring 2023 Communication Design Workshop to create informational prototypes that make visible the island’s indigenous land division system, along with other spatial concepts, in ways that current students and community members can easily understand. ID students studying with Professor Tomoko Ichikawa were tasked with translating complex, culturally ingrained concepts into accessible technology.

But introducing indigenous ways of knowing into our current reality requires a decolonizing design process. Brazilian researcher and member of the Decolonising Design Collective, Pedro JS Vieira de Oliveira PhD, defines decolonizing design as “the deconstruction of the Anglocentric and Eurocentric thinking when it comes to the practice and the design by itself.” At a recent conference, Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD) University’s Dean of Design, Dori Tunstall, suggested the ethos of Respectful Design as a method of achieving that decolonization. Respectful design, she said, acknowledges the power dynamics, potential harms, and tensions in designing while valuing other ways of being and knowing. These concepts were embedded in the expectations and execution of the students’ cross-cultural work.