The goal of social movements is for people to carry out, resist or undo a social change — to reshape an environment that does not support their needs. Social movements challenge traditional models and mindsets, and when successful, can change social norms and perspectives, and even legal policy (see Figure 1).
Social movements and their root causes are complex, but the world’s societies have been shaped and matured by their existence at both local and global levels. They have compelled change in deciding who can own land, vote and be married.
Enabling change through social movements is a messy process and draws parallels to how designers approach their work. Those involved shoulder the responsibility of diagnosing and naming the societal problems they seek to change, reframing the challenges to aid communication and ultimately offer potential solutions and corrective action (Smith 2014).
A leading principle of human-centred design (HCD) aims to position user needs and behaviours at the centre of the design process, incorporating physical, social and environmental factors (Norman 2013). To better understand how broader social and environmental factors influence users, designers need to consider the ever-changing realities of the society for which they are designing.
At present, the mindset and expectations of technology are shifting as societal realities change through current social movements. Some include:
- the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement that is campaigning for the accountability of the policing and justice systems for non-white citizens globally
- the environmental movement that is demanding more action be taken by governments and corporations to combat climate change
- the LGBTQ+ movement that is focusing on social equity and liberation from biphobia, homophobia and transphobia.
Although it can be slow moving, these movements have forged changes in technology design. From companies pledging to audit and remove words with historical ties to slavery and white supremecy (HT Tech 2020) to moving to green technology and packaging (Butler 2018).
Similarly, the HCD discipline has seen a paradigm shift over time. The design discipline has grown from a need to consider ergonomics and usability of hardware to now being an integral part of product, service and policy design. HCD seems to be as reflexive and evolving as the world which is being designed. Dill explains that ‘as designers, we are constantly trying to design for a world of change. Three months later, two years later, things are different and people are constantly looking for better ways of doing things’. Emerging and existing social movements can be used to tell the story of these changes that are happening in our society.
This article provides some insight into how social movements can inform technology designers about the societies in which they are designing. It examines how design leaders are considering and approaching HCD at three different levels:
- the existing systems that designers are developing and how they may perpetuate inequality
- the tools and processes that designers use to represent users to ensure that not only empathy is promoted, but crucially also the relevant political, social and environmental realities
- the mindsets of designers that need to include both reflexive thinking about who is involved in the process and their own position in relation to the world.
Social movements in the context of HCD highlights the need for designers to consider all three levels throughout their process to see where improvements can be made. While there are many designers who are already considering these challenges, this article includes references to some whose work aligns closely to the intersection of HCD and social change.
The system
The world around us is designed to serve some but fail others — the design process risks perpetuating that imbalance.
Social movements occur when the imbalance of power is no longer acceptable or bearable for those affected by it. It might take a lifetime or even generations of imbalance to instigate change as the rules, processes and systems where these imbalances occur might also have been in place for generations. Social equity designer Antoinette Carroll (2018) says that even ‘systems of oppression, injustices, and inequities are designed’.
The most common example of inequality in technology systems is the prioritising of white experiences over non-white experiences. Such systems include facial recognition (Crockford 2020), skin detectors (Hale 2017), image identification (BBC 2015) and speech recognition (Bajorek 2019). These errors were not specifically designed to harm people, but ignorance and a lack of thought for such issues during the development stage resulted in the technology perpetuating societal imbalances and access to technology.
Similarly, the widely accepted history of HCD is based on the popularised work of European and North American designers (Szczepanska 2017), which offers a specific lens of what constitutes ‘good’ and ‘bad’ design and processes (Khandwala 2019). This is in stark contrast to social movements’ goal to challenge long-standing societal perceptions and allow new voices and opinions to be heard. Rawsthorn (2014) also reflected on this need and states that ‘the people who need design ingenuity the most, the poorest 90% of the global population, have historically been deprived of it’.
Designer and author Kelly Ann McKercher (2020) sees this previously accepted way of thinking as a way of resisting quick fixes, magic bullets and going deeper to where there are systemic patterns, behaviours, structure that create bad or perverse outcomes and hinder rather than help people’ (2020). To incorporate an ‘equity lens’ in design practices, McKercher (2019) suggests:
Identify[ing] the factors that are contributing to inequity in outcomes in your context (for example, uneven distribution of resources, social norms, policy, social practice) and notic[ing] where systems-level change is possible.
Designers should view previously established systems as being designed to allow some to sink and others to swim. Observing current social movements can reveal which pre-programmed technologies and systems are being perpetuated or silenced.
The tools
Designers are asked to consider the context in which their audience exists, but common research and design tools fail to capture the social, political and environmental complexities of their audience.
Ever since the idea of ‘empathy’ entered into design discourse as a fast and cost-efficient method of innovation (HBR 2011), it has been tightly coupled with HCD methodology. Highly cited designer David Kelly (as cited by Pattison, 2011) states that ‘the main tenet of design thinking is empathy for the people you’re trying to design for’.
Social movements are driven by people who feel underrepresented, unheard and marginalised by governments and mainstream society. People in this position often feel that they are living in a world designed for someone else — someone not like them.
HCD tools are a way for designers to bring life and meaning to non-tangible processes (Sumarsono 2020), but many design tools (for example, personas, journey maps, empathy mapping and design thinking) only capture a narrowly scoped part of a research participant’s life. Stanon et al. (2016) offer an example of design research failing to address the underlying needs:
A designer might go into a poor Black neighborhood in a U.S. city and conclude that the community’s lack of connection to mainstream financial institutions can be attributed to a simple lack of knowledge, expertise, or technology. Yet the history of institutional segregation and racist exclusion from financial services (e.g. mortgages) in those neighborhoods paints a very different picture of deep economic disenfranchisement that will not be undone by any one-dimensional ‘hack’ (intervention).
Designers who are aware of this tension understand that it is crucial to tailor research and design methods for the unique needs of marginalised communities (Erete, Israni & Dillahunt 2018). Further, failing to document these underlying structures excludes nuanced user needs and perpetuates product design that keeps people feeling marginalised.
Stanon et al. (2016) suggest that designers should consider expanding the scope of design thinking to include methods that provide dedicated time and space to analyse ‘political power dynamics’. This modification includes adding elements of social design such as ‘reflect’, ‘democratise’ and ‘contextualise’ to the traditional five-step design-thinking process.
Designer and education Fahmida Azad (2020) noticed a similarity between her role as a user experience (or UX) designer and her activism work — she explores an analysis method to discuss, diagnose and name problems experienced by women through a method called ‘consciousness raising’. This concept has been used by activists since the 1960s to allow those affected to ‘give the problem a name, in order to take action’. Azad (2020) also describes the risk of undoing ‘decades of work’ if technology designs do not incorporate the knowledge gained from social movements and disciplines such as the social sciences. By acknowledging the limitations of HCD tools, analysing whether any relevant information is missing and allowing flexibility as needed, designers can better understand the current social context in which technology users are operating.
The mindset
‘You are not your user’ is a mantra that is often repeated by HCD practitioners and can be considered through the practice of positionality.
Acknowledging the differences between the designer and the end user is a fundamental theory in HCD practice. Tools and methodologies reflect this through concepts such as lead user design (Eisenberg 2011), participatory design (Elizarova, Briselli & Dowd 2017) and equity design (Carol 2018).
Social movements teach designers how individuals can concurrently belong to multiple groups of potential marginalisation such as gender, race, wealth, religion and physical ability. This thinking, which originates from Black feminism, women of colour activism and the LGBTQ+ movement, seeks to address the lack of representation of those who exist at the intersection of several marginalised groups (Lépinard 2018). Azad (2020) says that this means ‘paying attention to the complexities of people’s lives so we do not oversimplify and clump people into homogenous categories’, which may lead to ‘unique combinations of discrimination’.
The theory of ‘intersectionality’, which has its roots in social movements, was coined by lawyer Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw (Coastan 2019). It can be used as one model for designers to consider who is being represented in the design process. Intersectionality can be integrated into design practice by following the mantra of activist Marian Wright Edelman (2011) ‘you can’t be what you can’t see’, or by considering how inclusive the design process is.
Similarly, designers can also use this theory to locate themselves, their potential biases and life experiences in relation to the world for which they are designing. Carroll (2018) states that ‘we are all an embodiment of everyone else’s biases’, and designers are not exempt. By examining the potential for bias throughout the design process, it becomes clear how deeply ingrained it is. Carroll also suggests that if we are truly to become more empathetic, ‘it needs to start with building our own humility and acknowledging our own flaws before looking at others’.
The concept of intersectionality challenges even further the way in which HCD practitioners consider who is represented in their audience during the research phase, and how design success is measured. In addition, the process of acknowledging one’s position and corresponding attitude towards the world or relevant society can offer an important moment of reflection during the design process.
Conclusion
Design problems exist in shifting environments, which can be observed by the many social movements that occur around them. Social movements push boundaries, demand reflection and advocate for change.
This article shows how designers can use social movements as a lens through which they can view and consider the world. Designers need to be mindful of several factors throughout the design process to increase the likelihood of more inclusive design. Firstly, the social and technological systems that provide the basis for new design can unintentionally perpetuate inequality unless properly examined and understood. Secondly, common design tools and methods risk excluding the social, political and environmental factors that are of concern to society, as they are designed only to capture the needs and motivations of technology or research, and do not include the wider context. Thirdly, understanding designers’ mindsets can be crucial to recognising the complexities of those for whom they are designing, and their own position in relation to the design. Representation includes the careful expansion of research to include those who are marginalised, whereas the designers’ positions must be examined to communicate their bias.
Design leaders share the same leadership traits as those who are active in social movements. They are described by Ganz (as cited by Mack et al 2014) as those ‘who step up, who accept responsibility, who care deeply enough to commit, who begin to do the work of enabling others to join them to achieve purpose under highly uncertain conditions’. By considering the systems, tools and mindsets that they operate within, technology design leaders can better understand their role and responsibilities within a changing society. HCD practitioners should consider what social changes are we in the midst of right now and whose voices and perspectives are being included or not included.
Note: Please get in touch if anything in this article is incorrect, needs updating or is harmful in any way.
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Image 1 used the Humaaans mix-and-match library from Pablo Stanley.
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