Lentes de intimidade como perspectivas de participação no design

Abstract

We are living through a crisis of affectivity. Relationships are increasingly fragmented, shaped by the logic of performance, productivity, and anticipation. As everyday life accelerates, the inter-relational and affective dimensions tend to slow down — along with the desire and availability to engage with others. This relational fragility, which also affects the way we design, strongly permeates participatory design processes that often claim to be collective, yet operate through normative and instrumental formats, inattentive to the depth of the bonds that sustain the act of doing together. It is in this context that this dissertation proposes intimacy as a sensitive perspective for understanding the quality of relationships in design processes. Here, intimacy is not understood as something romantic or private, but as a relational phenomenon that emerges from being-with, from trust built over time, from negotiated boundaries, from listening that does not anticipate, from presence that makes itself available. Recognizing that interpersonal bonds decisively influence the strength of collaborative processes, this research assumes that intimacy can operate both as a lens for interpretation and as a relational ethic in projects where making is shared. The methodological approach combines three fronts: theoretical deepening of intimacy as a situated experience, open narrative interviews with practitioners involved in participatory practices, and the construction of articulations between theory and experience. From this trajectory, conceptual dimensions were formulated to sensitize the gaze to the phenomenon of intimacy; narrative versions were gathered, expressing diverse ways of experiencing it; and finally, four lenses were proposed, integrating these forms of knowledge and offering a new perspective for rethinking participation in design. These lenses are not intended to be rigidly applied, but rather to serve as fields of attention that help recognize the depth of the bonds that sustain co-creative processes. By proposing intimacy as a perspective, this dissertation does not seek to define a new model of participation, but to call design into the relations that constitute it — opening space for ethical involvement with the other, the suspension of certainties, affective listening, relational temporality, and the willingness to be transformed by the encounter.