Caring with[in] Uncertainty

This chapter attends to the connection between care and design, focusing on embracing uncertainty as a fundamental principle. To better understand and articulate our ideas, we used the practice of collaboratively designing, making, and printing an image that represents a timeline of care – Care in Motion: Relational Waves and the Importance of Uncertainty (Figure 12.1). Through this process, we explored how care is an active practice embedded in complexity and uncertainty that contradicts reductive interpretations aligned with quantification. We introduce the concept of the “obligation of care”, challenging conventional notions that care is a commodity. Instead, we advocate for a shift towards more complex and situated understandings aligned with lived experiences and change-making agendas. By highlighting the inseparable relational connections between care, emotions, and bodies, we address dimensions of care often neglected by common design approaches. We discuss the importance of uncertainty, a quality inherent to design and care, and recognise that this fosters creativity and adaptability. Embracing uncertainty becomes central to our perspective, encouraging a transition from a quantifiable, inflexible, and mechanistic approach to an open, messy, emotional, and grounded in embodied experiences. We emphasise that this shift aligns with both design and design practices, as well as care and caregiving practices, drawing on insights from these areas alongside our personal experiences. Our discussion underscores the significance of comprehending design and care as both situated and relational, as we always navigate and co-exist with[in] conditions of perpetual uncertainty. We explore the concept of “radical uncertainties”, emphasising how care and design can navigate complex, ever-evolving challenges. The collaborative creation of Care in Motion exemplifies our approach, functioning as a representation and practice of uncertainty. This playful engagement deepens our understanding of design and care as inherently situated, relational, and perpetually unfolding within conditions of uncertainty. Ultimately, this chapter calls for a transformation in how care and design are conceived to work towards compassionate and responsive practices within and for uncertain futures of change-making.