On Circumvention: Designing Stigma-Free Services from Inside the System
Most service design treats inclusion as a wider funnel into systems whose underlying logic stays intact; this workshop introduces an alternative drawn from queer design practice — circumvention, the redesign of a service's touchpoints, language, and affective register so that care becomes accessible without demanding users first conform to the institution that excluded them. Working from the case of Every Health, a queer-led digital health platform that delivers stigma-free sexual health services within full medical certification while replacing sterile clinical aesthetics with a language of proximity, participants will map the touchpoints of a service of their own and locate where its system quietly demands legibility, conformity, or trust from the people it claims to serve.
Facilitator
Felix Kosok
Professor of Communication Design at the German International University Berlin
German International University Berlin
Felix Kosok is a design researcher, graphic designer, and professor at the German International University Berlin. His work explores the intersection of design, politics, and aesthetics.
