Lutter contre l’intimidation à l’école par le design : l’affordance prosociale des milieux scolaires
Bullying at school is an important problem that has mostly been addressed in the field of psychology. Several prevention programs have stemmed from it but studies demonstrate low efficiency (Smith et al., 2004, Limber, 2011) and suggest that future interventions consider broader issues like school climat.  Design is an ecological process (Findeli, 2015), thereby the idea of questioning school climate seemed particularly interesting. The following research-project uses a holistic approach to the problem of bullying at school by focusing on the affordance of a pro-social school environment. We hypothesize that bullying at school is partly an environmental problem and we seek to understand how the theory of affordances can be a relevant basis for designers looking to address this social issue.  The concepts that we offer suggest new solutions to the problem of bullying at school. They aim to modify antisocial dispositions within school environments by offering new opportunities that encourage pro-social behaviour. These modifications demonstrate that opting for an ecological vision based on possibilities is relevant to the field of design. We also suggest a way to apply this vision, which includes using ethnographic narratives to capture the situation’s dispositions and using scenarios to demonstrate the experience brought by new possibilities.  Finally, in light of this study, we hypothesized that the quality of the experience offered by these new possibilities is of utmost importance to maximize the chances of individuals adopting them. Refining the user’s experience is a designer’s expertise and doing so is a further demonstration of the relevance of involving designers in rethinking our public and social spaces for the common good.
Design social Affordance Social Design Bullying at school Affordance Capability User experience