Feeling-first Design: Workshop w/ Akshara Dash

Akshara Dash, Digital Decay
Akshara Dash, Digital Decay.

Feeling-first Design: Workshop w/ Akshara Dash
Saturday, February 7, 12–3 pm
Second-floor Production Centre, PAVED Arts, 424 20th St. W, Saskatoon

This workshop offers a beginner-friendly introduction to feeling-first design using Figjam, a web-based whiteboard tool. Artist Akshara Dash will share examples of feeling-first design informed by Indigenous and feminist ways of being and guide participants through a creative activity to integrate this strategy into your own practice.

Artist Akshara Dash’s practice critiques post-colonial design systems that prioritize form and function while leaving little space for emotion or lived experience. Dash will present examples from her own web-based projects exploring digital decay, interfaces that resist extraction and optimization, and the use of emotion as a central conceptual tool. Participants will be guided in a collaborative feeling-first design activity in Figjam and take home a step-by-step framework that they can use for their own practice.

Tools and materials needed

  • Participants don’t need a laptop to participate but may bring one if they prefer to use it to take notes or type responses.
  • PAVED has 2 laptops available to use during this workshop. Please contact coordinator[at]pavedarts[dot]ca to reserve one.

Basic skills
This workshop is beginner-friendly.

Register
This workshop is free for PAVED Arts members, $30 for non-members. Purchase/renew your membership here.

Signup Form
Artist Akshara Dash

Artist Bio

Akshara Dash (she/her) is a speculative systems designer, artist, and researcher based in Saskatoon (Treaty 6 Territory). They run Depth, a design studio exploring poetic technologies, emotional infrastructure, and slow, intentional digital work. Their practice spans web, print, illustration, writing, and public speaking. Akshara has spoken at TEDx, led workshops for community and youth-led organizations.