Tropical vibes with peoples from Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta: dialogic reflection in joint inquiries as feelthinking-doing in design practice and research

Reflection as a resource and capacity in Social Transformation Design leads to understanding the nature of designing as a communal act. This article explores the polysemic use of reflection and the role that design practitioners and researchers could play in the Global South, and how their work may become a decolonial practice, transitioning from a design-led intervention approach to a collaborative process of joint inquiry. We explore how to decolonise ourselves, by reviewing work done in the past in the Colombian Caribbean shores. In collaboration with People from Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta and a team of designers, researchers and several organisations, we built a palaphitic building for cultural tourism practices.We look at what the process entailed in retrospect, to understand how to move from dialectics to dialogics. In an effort to rebuild ourselves as decolonial researchers and practitioners. In the work that we're reviewing, we tracked four different categories of reflection. We identified two sets of intertwined results. The first set is related to transitional forms of reflection that fluctuate from design interventions to joint inquiries, and; the second set is related to the process of how people flow from a dialectical position to a participatory dialogical feeling-thinking-doing.