Our Lady of Technology Tarot Cards (2021)

Tessa Forshaw, Rich Braden, Ailsa Petrie, Natasha Bach

Abstract


For too long, tech has had a (misplaced) reputation that it is by men and for men. We have consistently seen this play out in design thinking classes we teach at the Stanford d.school and Harvard DCE, as well as workshops with clients: women participants regularly remove themselves from conversations about emerging technologies and defer to their male colleagues.

This has consequences for all of us. Excluding voices in the innovation process means that we’re not designing products and solutions with all needs in mind. It also means that innovation spaces lack a diversity of perspectives that they sorely need.

Our Lady of Technology Tarots Cards aims to change that.

Drawing on the tradition of tarot, these cards reimagine the 22 Major Arcana to represent the big technology trends that are influencing life as we know it. Each card provides a definition, characteristics, and applications of a specific technology, such as IoT sensors, machine learning, and bioinformatics.

Driven by our observations and conversations with our female students, colleagues and clients, we created the deck as a tool to help women, and any others who have felt excluded from tech conversations. Our aim is to build competency in a space that has long kept a diversity of voices out. We hope that by using this deck, all learners will feel empowered to not just see what the future might look like, but to help prototype and design it too.

You can learn more about them here: https://designawards.core77.com/Visual-Communication/108183/Our-Lady-of-Technology-Tarot-Cards

Photocredit: Ailsa Petrie

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