Six ways we try to tackle power imbalances in design research
This piece was written by Bonnie Cheng and Signe Williams, Design Researchers in Camden’s Strategy and Design team.
“I was terrified! Absolutely terrified! So that I would do and say what I thought would be what they wanted to hear, not how I felt. Because they had the power, and that’s how it felt throughout the whole process, that they were just looking down on me, like hawks.”
This quote, from a resident who participated in Camden Conversations, the council’s family-led child protection enquiry, shows that, however well-intentioned council officers may be, the power imbalance between a local authority and residents can lead to significant harm. But this participatory research project was also an example of how research and engagement with residents can help to address these imbalances. Research can bring the voices of people who use our services into the service improvements and policy changes that the council delivers.
So research can help to lessen the impact of the unbalanced officer-resident relationship. Yet, while doing research, researchers also need to consider how power affects their relationship with the participant, and thus the research process and its outcomes. We often talk about this using the concept of “positionality”. Positionality refers to the position of a researcher in relation to a research participant; the wider historical, political, economic, religious, social, and intellectual contexts of the people involved in the exchange.
This blog is a reflection on what we can do to address power imbalances and mitigate the extent to which our positionality influences our research process and its outcomes. We will reflect on ways that we, as Design Researchers in the Strategy and Design Team, have found that power imbalances manifest in our work with residents*, and discuss the different ways that we are trying to correct for them.
1. What we look like
Often, the appearance, identity and life experience of our team is different to that of the residents we engage with. We are disproportionately White and middle class, while 40.5% of Camden residents are from Black, Asian and Ethnic Minority groups. Many of our team do not live in Camden or have lived experience on our estates.
This may shape how we set up research; who feels safe and comfortable responding to our recruitment and interacting with us; and the takeaways we prioritise in decision-making. Across Strategy and Design, we are making changes to foster a more diverse team. As researchers specifically, we aim to identify and correct for these biases as we plan and conduct research, and ultimately to take every opportunity to elevate marginalised voices in our outputs.
2. The language we use
As designers, we can use jargon which feels alienating to those who are unfamiliar with “design language”. The words we use in research, such as “analysis”, “sample”, or “data”, can also have clinical or medical connotations, which can induce fear, uncertainty, and distrust. This can turn some people away. For those who do participate, it can cause adapted or modified behaviour during engagement: they may provide more positive feedback, minimise their negative experiences, or feel anxious and stressed.
We are constantly experimenting with the language we use, to make it as plain and simple as possible. For example, instead of inviting people ‘for an interview’ or ‘to take part in research’ we might ask if they would like to speak with us or have a conversation. And rather than telling people that speaking with us will involve ‘prototyping’, we say that we would like to get their thoughts and opinions on some things we are making.
We also ensure that all our materials and approaches are reviewed and updated to be as clear, inclusive, and inviting as possible. We have partnered with Camden’s Data Protection team to eliminate legalese from our consent form and privacy notice. We have also found that talking residents through different options for opting in or out of things, such as being recorded or contacted about future research, means people feel more in control and free to choose according to their preferences, enabling informed consent.
3. Agenda setting
Our research projects typically stem from cross-organisational or service priorities. Researchers will then plan who to speak to, and how, based on this already-established scope. This means that a frame is often set before research begins, and residents may have limited opportunity to influence the initial aims of the project.
To mitigate this imbalance, we use our research activities as an opportunity for residents to lead us and to set the frame for what’s next. For example, when we conducted research to support the development of Camden’s forthcoming Community Wealth Fund, leaders wanted to know whether Camden should invest £30 million into an investment vehicle for local businesses. We wanted to know whether there was demand for this funding, and if so, what types of financial investment and non-financial support were desired.
As part of our research, we found that only offering loans may exacerbate systemic inequalities, as some Muslim residents would not partake: interest is haram. We learned that in order to design a more equitable fund, alternative financial vehicles would be required. This led to a specific recommendation for Cabinet to ensure the types of financing we provide are equitable for the communities we serve.
4. Engagement
We try to make it as easy as possible to participate in our research. This means removing barriers and providing inclusive options, such as offering interpreters, presenting childcare vouchers, and being flexible about when and where to meet with participants. We always compensate participants for their time through shopping vouchers or other types of compensation where appropriate.
We also try to ensure that our time together helps the residents who engage with us feel as empowered as possible, and that they are able to express themselves to the fullest extent. During a recent “learning journey” our team undertook on equity in our design practice, led by social design house Rooted by Design, Rooted shared how important it is for the design process to deliver an empowering experience for participants, as well as something that (hopefully) produces an outcome.
As part of a recent research project evaluating financial support available to Camden residents during the cost of living crisis, a resident who was homebound and experiencing a loss of hearing preferred to send their feedback to us in writing. We adapted our process into a set of questions written in Easy Read format, which were mailed to them along with additional paper, a return envelope, and alternative pick-up options.
When planning research, we also follow a safeguarding process to ensure that everyone involved is safe and comfortable. We always meet where residents feel at ease, and emphasise that they are in control of the session: we can end, pause, or prolong at their choosing. Prior to the session, we ask if there are any keywords or topics we should avoid or use, and we are trained to be on alert for any signs of trauma or distress during interactions.
We are continually refining our process for signposting and escalating potential safeguarding concerns. We most recently updated it with our learnings from a trauma-informed design research course that we undertook along with steps for reflective practice.
We also do our best to make physical and psychological spaces feel welcoming. This could mean modifying activities to ensure participants feel recognised for their uniqueness, expertise, preferences, and choice, or designing the physical space we share. For example, if we meet participants in person, we offer food or a hot drink and we eat together. This is a small detail, but signifies that we are in this experience together, as equals. Details matter, however: providing food and not eating it signifies that we are the provider and the recipient — an implicit message which reinforces the existing power dynamics.
5. Nurturing partnerships
There is no such thing as a “hard to reach” community — only communities with whom we haven’t yet built trusting, close relationships. One way to begin establishing these relationships is to partner with organisations who have developed ties with residents who have been historically marginalised, misheard, or ignored, to ensure we are able to hear and elevate their voices.
For example, collaborating with organisations such as the Somali Youth Development Resource Centre (SYDRC) has enabled us to speak with different resident groups and start to build that trust for future work. Beyond our (deep!) gratitude, we also ensure partners are compensated for their time unless our work together is part of an existing contract.
6. Transparency and Setting Expectations
Some people will agree to participate in research in the hope that as council officers we might be able to help them resolve individual issues with council services. For example residents turned up to one workshop hoping that it would also be a drop-in surgery for a council service that currently doesn’t offer in-person support.
So when inviting residents to take part in research we make sure to communicate who we are, what we’re doing and what will happen when people take part. In order to set the right expectations, we need to consider that many residents see the council as one entity. It is important that we take the time at every point of engagement to clarify our remit as internal researchers working separately from the services that our participants use.
When people do ask us for help, we must know where to signpost for resources and the right services for support. As part of building this capacity, our research team took part in a training on ‘making every contact count interactions’ (MECC), which provided us with helpful tools to work into our practice.
We must also be transparent about what we can deliver and what we mean when we say that our research aims to build evidence bases for change that is grounded in lived experiences of service users. For this, we believe that sharing timely outputs and next steps from the work with our research participants is important. While we work in a political context where full disclosure of ‘work in progress’ may not always be possible, we have found that there is always a level of output that can and should be shared back.
We are trying out different ways and formats of doing this as we complete different phases of engagement. For example, we concluded a recent workshop with a community group in Camden, by asking the participants what they would like to see happen next. We have since shared back a summary of the key things that we learned from them as well as practical examples of how their input has shaped the work and what the next steps are.
Acknowledging our positionality as council officers and reflecting on some of the power imbalances that results from it has helped us make changes to our research processes to mitigate how they might affect our outcomes.
As a research team, we are now turning our learnings from this process into a concrete set of ‘design research principles’ to guide our work and help us improve. We will share these when they are ready, but feel free to contact us on LinkedIn, or in the comments, if you would like to discuss this issue now, or want to share your own experiences.
* As well as engaging with residents, much of our work as design researchers at Camden involves working with front line staff to learn from their lived experiences of delivering the services and policies that we want to improve. For this piece, we have chosen to focus on research carried out with residents.
