Make welcome: an autoethnography of queering experience design practice

This practice-based thesis uses queer autoethnography to critically explore experience design, with a focus on making, pleasure, and the role of guests. It frames “coming in” as a deliberately designed experience, offering bold provocations for design justice. Grounded in international fieldwork with leading experience designers and shaped by my practice as a lesbian designer, this research traces acts of entering and being entered, documenting how welcome is conceptualised, constructed, and challenged within designed settler environments. It critiques the myth of design, revealing how designers can reinforce kyriarchal structures, and contributes to the emerging field of experience design research by foregrounding the pleasures of making intimate, intentional welcomes rather than institutional ones.