Five years on: Reflecting on design and Occupy Wall Street
Five years ago this Saturday, the Occupy Wall Street protestors brought their tents, as the poster above declaimed. In the two short months they occupied Zuccotti Park, they sparked a worldwide movement that shined a light on “social and economic inequality, greed, corruption and the undue influence of corporations on government.”
As an interested bystander, I wondered how a designer like myself might contribute to the movement. I didn’t see a clear way to have an impact, but as Michael Beirut later wrote, I did believe that designers had something to offer. Then an opportunity presented itself.
“Sometimes, the key to political change isn’t designing a logo or poster. It’s simply having the courage to show up and make your voice heard.” — Michael Bierut, Design Observer
On November 12, 2011, I took a group of 25 interaction designers on a hastily arranged—but once in a lifetime—field trip to engage with the protestors at Zuccotti Park. It was a design ethnography workshop I taught in collaboration with IxDA NYC. Our research goal was to identify ways that interaction designers might help OWS with their cause.
Despite the eviction two days after our visit, I ran a second workshop to synthesize findings and illustrate conceptually how design might contribute to OWS. In the months following, I created a series of “deliverables” (at the end of the day, I am still a consultant) illustrating our investigation and attempting to show the potential of ethnography and design to contribute to social movements like this one. Those deliverables are collected here as a reflection on that investigation:
•Series of blog posts outlining the workshop and what we learned published in a collected edition at Ethnography Matters
•Exhibition at EPIC 2012, an ethnography conference I co-chaired at the Savannah College of Art and Design
•Poster session at the 2013 IDSA Education Summit (Download PDF)
•Blog post and performance for Steve Portigal’s War Stories project
“What I respect most about Occupy is that they tried. And they suffered the natural first consequence of trying: embarrassment. You are going to embarrass yourself.” —Alex_Shephard, New Republic
Though some consider the Occupy movement a failure, it was the start of a cycle of change. As Alex Shephard observes, flawed though it was, there was honor in the effort. But to designers and others used to working in “technology time,” where change usually comes in weeks and months, five years can seem like an eternity to wait. Slow progress may not seem as satisfying and may discourage some of us from getting involved, but if you are willing to take the long view, you can see the impact.
“We currently have a Republican platform that calls for breaking up the big banks. We have a slightly more nuanced Democratic platform that calls for a modernized Glass-Steagall Act, and a Democratic National Convention whose first keynote was given by OWS godmother Elizabeth Warren. Moreover, the entire Bernie Sanders movement, including its 1% vs. 99% rhetoric, is a direct descendant of OWS ― and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has been playing to Sanders supporters for months.” — Dan Primack, Forbes
Reflecting on OWS five years later reminds me of the value in getting involved, even when it isn’t clear how you will make an impact. Cultural change comes slow, but it comes.
