Towards equity through and by design
I am a user experience designer, researcher, and facilitator of ideas who believes that as designers, we must (1) openly examine our relationship to power, (2) recognize how our relationship to power impacts our relationship to design, and (3) actively challenge the perpetuation of dominant systems of power and privilege through and by design.
I believe that there is not enough critical reflection within our design communities on power, privilege, (in)equity, and design. As [user experience] designers, we are often responsible for designing experiences for people — not with people, and that, in and of itself, lends itself to a dynamic in which designers hold power over people. When those with formal titles as designers are deemed to be experts of a process, and consequently given power to decide and design for others, we see final products that benefit designers at the expense of those for whom the designs are supposedly intended. We not only see inappropriate or unsustainable solutions, but a design process that fails to acknowledge systemic root causes of a given design problem. We see the reproduction of inequity.
I think the conversation about equity and design, especially within the broad community of folks who consider ourselves design practitioners, is long overdue.
Contrary to some of the normative value systems to which we may be held, I believe that good design is not just making a beautiful product with good form and function. I believe that design is not just about coming up with a cutting-edge technology or an innovative ‘solution’ to a social challenge. I believe that design is political, whether or not we choose to see it as such. I believe that as designers of all industries and disciplines — and even as people who do not formally identify as ‘designers’ — we have to recognize the ways in which design plays out within institutions and systems which, by design, are inequitable.
Equity matters in design because it goes hand in hand with justice; without equity, we don’t have justice. Equity matters because inequity is violence, and inequity actively destroys life on Earth. Equity matters because it doesn’t yet exist.
Equity is especially important in design because design has the potential to transform dominant systems of power. Inequity has been designed into the fabric of policies and practices to govern the distribution of resources, to determine who gets a seat at the table, and to control how information is conveyed. I believe that design is a process rooted in decision-making, and too often, design processes reproduce harmful power dynamics and rely on exclusionary decision-making. Design that centers equity, however, authentically includes and values stakeholders in all positions of power and leadership, acknowledges specific forms of privilege and oppression at play, and actively challenges normative dynamics throughout the design process.
There are a number of practitioners and organizations leading conversations and movements that more actively center equity within design. Colloqate, Creative Reaction Lab, and The Design Justice Network are, among others, advocating to bring equity to the forefront of design. [If you’d like to recommend another resource or organization to include in this small (but mighty) list, be sure to reach out.] There are pockets of people and groups — who do and don’t identify as designers — who aim to reframe and leverage equitable design practices to genuinely shift systems of power. And yet, we have a long way to go, and a lot to learn and reflect on. From developing a more inclusive and diverse industry of designers, to prioritizing design equity within design education, to more critically examining historical inequity within our training as designers, there are many pathways in which we can work towards a more equitable world through and by design.
I am a queer, mixed race person of the Japanese diaspora who is committed to co-creating and fighting for an equitable world. Through my work as a co-organizer with the queer Asian American Pacific Islander community, and as a co-facilitator and co-designer of high school civic activism programming in Chicago and Boston, I have collaborated with others to challenge existing systems of power and to (re)imagine equitable approaches and possibilities. It is my hope that as a designer who believes in the importance equity-centered design, I will continue to learn and take action with others in order to shift the ways in which we think about, learn about, and practice design.
