Creative Reaction Lab: Case Study

Antionette Carroll was raised by her grandmother in St. Louis (in the historically underinvested municipalities of Kinloch and Normandy), Missouri. Her grandmother “was the epitome of a strong black woman…When I think about what I wanted to be in life, I always looked to her, because she seemed like she could handle it all,” says Carroll. “One of the things I also started to recognize was that she was a product of trauma, and tried to hold everything in.”

The year 2014 proved to be important for Carroll. Antionette started her year off with a New Year’s resolution to follow through on her commitments. Later that year, Carroll attended the five-day StartingBloc Fellowship Institute for social entrepreneurs, which made her “really think about what was my role in society, not only in my community, but also within this larger fabric of the world.”

During those few days at the Institute, she had flashbacks to times she saw inequities at her design agency: a woman who was being interviewed for a position and who talked about her children in the interview then being questioned to see if she was up for the job as a mother; another opportunity when a vice president used the “N word.” When Carroll reported it to HR, she was met with: “Well, when I first came here, the culture bothered me as well. But I learned to conform.” She made the decision there to be a force for good, “because I’m not only myself affected by it — the inequities affect us all.”

Things came into sharper focus as 2014 progressed. On August 9, Michael Brown, Jr., an 18-year-old Black man, was fatally shot by 28-year-old Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson. This was a pivotal and cultural moment happening in Carroll’s backyard. Being from that community, she had been at the epicenter of the movement: “the uprising was about losing a young man and there unfortunately continues to be many men like him. It was around the segregation, disparities, and inequities within our community.” It was in the wake of this murder that the Black Lives Matter movement was born.

Photo by James Eades on Unsplash

Carroll felt that this was one of the first times she started to think about the power of design and creators to make social change. “I started to understand the reality that creatives are more than just our craft. We navigate complexity in ambiguous situations every single day,” say Carroll. She started to think that if designers continually navigate the complexities of life, then “why are we not at the table for social justice, equity and inclusion?” This was her “A-ha!” moment when she created a space that eventually was called the Creative Reaction Lab.

Theory of Change: Empathy in Action

In the weeks after this event, as those in her hometown of St. Louis was grappling within their communities, Carroll created a hackathon to develop innovative responses to Michael Brown’s shooting. A hackathon is a gathering where various teams of people collaborate on a solution to a problem in a short period of time, like 24 or 48 hours. Creatives, protestors, and local government officials participated to collaborate on ways to heal in the wake of this suffering.

At the end of the workshop, more than 60 pitches were given for everything, from public art, awareness campaigns, and local government programs. Five ideas were selected to be turned into prototypes, and by the end of the experience, deeper pitches were given funding. Here’s a few of the ideas that came out of the experience:

• Cards Against Brutality, a card game (an antithesis to “Cards Against Humanity”) “around addressing media narration and framing of victims of police brutality and preserving their humanity.” The purpose of this game is to elicit discussions about police brutality in communities.
• Vibe Switch Challenge, a traveling interactive art exhibit, website, and social media campaign aimed at deflating “race and gender stereotypes targeted at ages 14–25.” Those participating in this campaign are presented with a picture of a minority population and a host of stereotypes and are asked to “switch it up” to see alternative futures. The creator of this platform created it to “overcome all of the hype and prove that people are more than what others make them out to be.”
• Look Beyond the Fear, a campaign that looked at the reality that our culture has a fear mindset and used fear tactics to dictate why we have our biases and why we have our beliefs. “It originally addressed the fear of black men — there’s data to support that. But they wanted to expand it to look at your political affiliation, same sex marriage, all these different things, that we use our fears to dictate why it shouldn’t be. But in reality, it is just our own personal biases.”

These projects were looking at how we address and call out the stereotypes that we’re facing. Throughout all of these approaches are community members, activists, and creative professionals “looking at the reality that we have lost our ability to look at these victims as humans, we forget that they were neighbors and friends, sisters, we forgot who they were, and just look at them as the imagery that we want to put in front of our eyes to make us feel better about what happened.”

Designing for Equity

This initial hackathon gave rise to the Creative Reaction Lab, which Carroll calls her “mission and what keeps me up at night.” She devoted herself since that time to focus on correcting inequities in the communities she is in, and makes a distinction that equality is not equity.

Equality is sameness and equity is fairness. She uses the image to the right to describe the difference. In this instance, equality is when everyone gets the same bicycle no matter where they are, and the bicycle stands for anything — the same amount of social services. It doesn’t account for the wide array of needs and desires of the populations that are affected. On the other hand is equity, where each person has an end point in mind, but different modes of transportation, such as a tricycle for the handicapped person, a taller bike for the bigger person and a small bicycle for the child.

What is equity? Carroll gives some insight into why equity matters:

In the United States equity matters because of our current lack of it, especially amongst historically underinvested communities such as Black and Latinx populations, females, transgender individuals, people with disabilities, etc. For example, the Black and Latinx populations face disproportionate racial and economic inequities, limiting social, economic, and cultural growth due to systems of policy, education, housing, etc., and these disparities propagate because of the barriers that have been built between the residents.

Equity “revolves around systemic outcomes and exists when they are no longer predicted by an aspect of an individual’s identity,” according to Carroll. Having equity (and thereby inclusivity) is the ultimate form of empathy by helping to meet the needs of others. In fact, empathy and equity go hand in hand. Many people believe inclusivity is about equality for all, but instead it’s about achieving equity rather than equality. Carroll says: “equality is equal access. Whereas, equity is equal outcomes.”

Given her background in the design field, she fully believes in the power that it holds. She’s well aware that everything around us has been designed — mostly by the dominant groups in power, which often are wealthy, white men. They may not have been aware of the impact of the spaces that they designed, and the considerations of the other non-dominant groups. Carroll says that “if oppression, inequalities, and inequities are designed, they can be redesigned.” That is absolutely at the center and the mission of Creative Reaction Lab.

The design method that Carroll is referring to is Design Thinking or Human-Centered Design. There are some distinct areas of improvement with those processes according to the CRXLAB team, however. CRXLAB believes that “some people that use design thinking are often separate from the communities they are trying to understand; they go into the community to observe and then leave to create a solution.” CRXLAB created the Equity-Centered Community Design (ECCD) process (see left) that focuses on dismantling systemic oppression and creating solutions to achieve equity for all.

The ECCD “acknowledges and utilizes the role of people, systems, and power when developing solutions or approaches that impact ‘the many’ within different communities.” ECCD is a unique, creative problem-solving process based on equity, humility-building, integrating history and healing practices, addressing power dynamics, and co-creating with the community. The CRXLAB team believes “some people that use design thinking are often separate from the communities they are trying to understand; they go into the community to observe and then leave to create a solution.”

The team at CRXLAB works primarily with Black and Latinx youth to design new ways to bring equity to their community. The team are masters at equity-centered design and teach this method and trauma-informed design across the world. “It’s hard for people to be empathetic when they don’t have a lived experience,” says Carroll. “With our work we talk about centering the expertise around living experts and valuing that above all else.”

This program looks at a specific scenario, and first looking through the lens of history and healing, where “history is unpacked to unveil power structures and open a space for relearning. Empathy and humility are used to involve the community in co-creation during every step of the process.” This Community Design process is empathy in action. People they call Redesigners for Justice™ breaks down a moment in time and sees the underlying power constructs and history and then deconstructs the design of the system with diverse co-creators that infuse empathy along the way that works for the communities they’re supporting/researching. The CRXLAB team is doing incredible work around the country blending together design-based problem solving with a focus on equitable outcomes and building community.

Carroll compares the process of dismantling systemic racism as “designing cathedrals”: the effects of the work will probably not be seen in her lifetime, but hopes it will be seen in the next generation and beyond. But that doesn’t make her work any less important; dismantling systemic racism is one of the most urgent challenges in our world today.

Key Learnings and Takeaways

While the entire ECCD Field Guide is a superb resource to bring equity design to your organizations and communities, here are some tangible ways that Carroll says can bring empathy and equity into your spaces for positive change:

1. Find Your Purpose

At each of the talks she gives, Carroll hands out sheets of paper that are a personal manifesto of sorts. She asks each person to fill out the impact that they want to make in the world — their purpose. Because her sense of purpose is so strong, she wants others to be inspired to action and that systems of oppression have been designed, we can all use our purpose to design places of empathy and equity and make our mark on the world.

Questions to Ask:

• What am I meant to do in my life?
• What is my purpose?
• What kind of impact do I want to do with this one precious life?

2. Embody the Equity Designer Role

Carroll knows that “design is not just about making things look good, but it’s about making things work.” IBM defined design in the 1960s — and still defines design — as the “intent behind the outcome,” and the ECCD adds that there are unintentional impacts to design. Carroll feels that when you look at it through the lens of equity, you design differently and focus on the impact.

The ECCD examines the “intentional (and unintentional) impact behind an outcome.” Carroll emphasizes that unintended impacts are often overlooked in design. For example, an unintended impact of using smartphones regularly can make us feel isolated and may lead to depression, or moving school from in person to virtual participation can create a big divide between those who can and cannot afford childcare, internet access, and the tools to do their daily work.

She says that is partly because “we have not been taught self-reflection when it comes to prejudice, bias, our relationship to ourselves, and our communities.” These elements block empathy and compassion from occurring. As a result, they emphasize both humility and empathy in the ECCD, which they define as such:

Humility is recognizing the influence of your own biases and perspectives when trying to understand another’s emotions, thoughts, experiences, and actions. Empathy is the active attempt to understand another person’s perspective by imagining how you would feel, think, or act if put in their situation. Empathy and humility help us understand others while also acknowledging our biases….Building humility and empathy is critical for self-awareness and reflection, both of which take time and trust.

But we must not be afraid to do the hard work of designing more equitable spaces, because she says that many people are afraid to start because they won’t do it right. Carroll says that “we need to try our best — it’s hard and messy, and complex. No one has figured it out.” She adds: “if we keep trying to tell ourselves that it can’t be done, then we will never actually accomplish it.”

That’s why she and her team have created Equity-Centered Community Design. We have to think about the reality that power dynamics, history, and healing is across every step of the process. “How are we inviting diverse co-creators, challenging our own biases and privileges, and all these other things that we’re constantly dealing with to actually become empathetic with other people?” Many designers love talking about empathy, but don’t truly empathize with the people they’re working with and use their power to influence the outcomes.

Questions to Ask:

• What are the things that are keeping us from designing with more equity?
• How will we start?
• What are our biases and assumptions (both obvious and subconscious) that are showing up about the population(s) we’re working with?

3. Understand the Community You’re Entering

In areas like international development and social entrepreneurship, equity design can easily fall into the “savior complex.” According to Psychology Today, this is “a psychological construct which makes a person feel the need to save other people. Carroll has seen this construct show up time and time again when dealing with systemic issues like racial oppression.

To relieve you and your design team of this complex, Carroll suggests that you look at the obvious intent and also unintended impacts of the design strategy when entering a community. “Most people don’t think about how they’re entering a community. We can create trauma just trying to create something for our own agenda, and not actually thinking about the actual ripple effect of that in the community.” For example, the CRXLAB team works painstakingly to figure out what words to use when they are engaging with a community, because some words trigger members of that community.

Questions to Ask:

• What is our intent in this community?
• What does “helping” mean to you and this community?
• Are our actions helping them to be better or us to feel better about helping others?
• Am I being invited to help this community? Do they want me to join?
• What language does the community use?
• What are some unintended impacts on the community?

4. Understand the Systems Dynamics, the “Narrative and Livelihood Shapers” of the Community

Carroll is crucially aware of the intersectionality of various identities such as health and race. Any system produces what it was designed to do. As Carroll puts it: “if oppression, inequalities, and inequities are designed, they can be redesigned.” So, Creative Reaction Lab is building “a movement of designers of justice” with a mission to educate, train and challenge black youth to design healthy and racially-ethical communities. She calls these people Redesigners for Justice™.

They focus on four various sectors, which she calls “Narrative and Livelihood Shapers,” which are: education, media, government, and health. These shapers are powerful: they form our underlying belief systems in our culture, and “impact quality of life, life expectancy, and the perceptions we have about ourselves and others” and are part of the dominant narrative that the CRXLAB team is fighting against.

She says it’s not enough to just uncover the implicit bias and microaggressions, but wants to move in a place of action. In her work, she’s seen incredible amounts of trauma in the community, and she doesn’t want to inflict more challenges on those populations. She and her co-creators constantly think about how they’re entering a community, to honor the past and bring to light these shapers. By naming them, they’re able to change it and redesign it.

Questions to Ask:

• Which system “Narrative and Livelihood Shapers” of education, media, government, and health exist?
• What are the dominant narratives these shapers are creating? What implicit bias or micro aggressions exist that isn’t initially shown?

5) Pay Attention to Power Dynamics and Honor Living Experience

Being an equity designer requires you to shift your mindset In the equity design process, there is the designer who holds the power, and people from a community in which you’re serving who typically are powerless. Both perspectives are necessary. The CRXLAB team calls people in the community “living experts,” and they can unlock countless insights that you may never see because of your worldview.

“It’s essential to have designers always be conscious of the roles they play, and ultimately they need to think about the moments in which we [they] need to lean into power, and when we [they] need to back up and give power to someone else.”

Questions to Ask:

• Have we included community members who have living expertise and knowledge? How so?
• Who holds the power in the design that we’re creating? Who doesn’t have the power?
• How can we ensure that we’re using power in the best way to give voice and power to the voiceless?

6) Work Toward Approaches, Not Solutions

A part of the design process as well is this belief that we must have a “silver bullet solution.” In equity design, that simply doesn’t exist, according to Carroll. “We have many vantage points we need to take. We can’t have a one-size-fits-all approach to address these inequities within our community.”

Calling these ideas “approaches” instead of solutions removes the belief and burden that they will help the communities, and they must be tested in the community to ensure it works. Finally, Carroll implores designers to “please don’t design in ivory towers, but live and immerse yourself on the ground.”

Questions to Ask:

• What language are we using: solutions or approaches?
• Are we focusing on a single solution or multiple approaches to solving these challenges?
• What other parts of the problem(s) could we shine a light on that could add to our approaches?