Equity Practice in Design

A 2021 update from the Designing for Social Systems Program

By Thomas Both, Nadia Roumani, and Susie Chang

Since its founding, the d.school has taken on projects for social good and taught social sector practitioners design thinking approaches. Over the past few years, we, in the Designing for Social Systems program, have worked to integrate systems thinking and programmatic strategy practices along with human-centered design, to have a more effective approach to making social systems change possible. Addressing the complexity of social challenges requires these additional lenses.

An equity lens and practice are also critical to effectively and responsibly take on these challenges. These challenges that we face are largely rooted in inequity: current and historical oppression, active and passive discrimination and bias, intentional or merely complicit structural exclusion. We, Designing for Social Systems, were remiss in not explicitly naming and tackling how a design practice needs to be equitable and respond to racism and injustice. We have been and will continue to work on equity within our own practice as well as our curriculum.

In order to create social change, it is imperative that we address issues of systemic inequity which lie at the center of this work. In the context of design, this means we must continually address inequity and have a practice itself which is equitable and aware — the two go hand-in-hand. This article discusses a piece of how to do that.

Many activists, educators, social sector leaders, and designers have led the way to lift up equity as a paramount intention in how we operate and practice design. As just one example, in the field of design and design education, the Equity Design Collaborative is a network of leaders in the space (and each part of their own separate organizations). You can read, learn, and practice with the many resources they offer. We’ve been fortunate to learn from a few members of that collaborative. We add our voice to the cause, acknowledging we are walking the path forged by many leaders before us.

Behaviors of an equity practice

In our program, we often express our interpretation of practices by outlining some key behaviors of those practices: what individuals or teams can do to be — for example — more strategic, systems minded, or equity-driven. It helps define the practice. Behaviors are actionable and observable, but also adaptable to different situations. You can read our take on the practices and behaviors of human-centered design, systems thinking, programmatic strategy, and equity in our article about Integrative Design.

Here we discuss some of the behaviors important to uphold an equity practice that challenges racism and all forms of oppression:

Examine history to understand systemic causes

As we enter into work, it is imperative to gain understanding of the historic and systemic causes for the issues we seek to address. A human-centered approach (relying on primary research such as observation, conversation, and prototyping) must be grounded in active awareness of the context: how we got here and what forces are still at play. We all live, and have lived, within a structurally inequitable society. This reality can make it hard to recognize all the facets of discrimination or prejudice in this ‘norm.’ Further, the causes for challenges we face today predate our own experience.

Build self-awareness and interrupt biases

To do the work more equitably we must be mindful of our own identities and biases. Because our worldview is shaped by what’s around us and what we have each experienced, it takes active reflection and seeking new input (listening, discussion) to see beyond that. With that awareness in mind, we can interrupt our biases and question assumptions. We can seek more diverse perspectives; and we may opt to take different roles on a team. As an example — a team member with more similar lived experience might lead an interview or discussion with someone.

Tending to self-awareness and gaining a greater understanding of history and context are two sides of the same coin, that together can help us enter work with more humility, knowledge, and sensitivity.

Center lived experience in teams, processes, and power

Traditional human-centered design starts down the path of honoring lived experience: the method recognizes that understanding people’s stories, experiences, beliefs, and needs is critical to design more useful and meaningful solutions. A more equitable practice takes further substantial steps, asking a fundamental question of ‘who’s included’: in other words, seeking out the voice of the most marginalized. Truly treat those with lived experience as experts, not subjects. Have those most affected be the designers and decision makers. Share and cede power in interactions and in the work. Be intentional to avoid extractive interactions, and hold the goal to build in collaboration.

Collaborative, community design is often called ‘co-design’ (or, taken-further, ‘community-led design’). Read about our efforts to extend co-designer practices, in our article Integrating Co-designers with Lived Experience.

Create space to build relationships and attend to healing

Keeping equity at the center cannot happen without dialogue. Build and hold space to both wrestle with the complexity and dilemmas, and to attend to the pain and reach for healing. Honesty, trust and relationship are prerequisites to acting in collaboration to build equity. And these prerequisites take time to develop.

In the context of project or group work, this can come in the form of scheduled pauses (say, at the end of each day) to ensure space to raise or circle back to an issue, and to reflect on what we might have overlooked in the rush of work. Equally important is leaning into the conversation when issues arise, rather than avoiding it or pushing ahead. Beyond these mechanisms, the bigger picture is dialogue and care for each other. As human beings, we will make mistakes or see things differently from one another; work with the assumption that there is messiness to the practice. Start with relationships, acknowledge the mistakes we make, and attend to healing when we cause harm.

Onward

Of course, we are still learning. We will continue to keep evolving our practice by doing the work and learning from experts leading the charge in striving for the most equitable practices, methods, and solutions.

Many of the above behaviors can be in tension with expediency, emotional comfort, defaults, and convenience. As just one example, co-design or community-led design is an ideal that can be impractical, seemingly slow forward progress, or improperly burden community members. On the flipside, avoiding these challenges risks perpetuating the inequities in place. We are striving for more equity in a fundamentally inequitable world; and decisions we face are not without trade-offs and dilemmas.

An equity and anti-racist practice is always a journey, and can be a difficult one. We will keep working to get better. The good news for designers and design thinkers who strive for equity in their consciousness and action is that the best design practice is filled with qualities that also help us to be equity-centered. A design mindset helps us change how we think about things (reframe), urges us to learn from others, positions us in a posture of always learning, prompts us to create better experiences for each other, asks us to wrestle with our thinking to make sense of things and find direction, compels us to act with intent, and brings out the human qualities of curiosity and wonder. All these are key to an equity practice as well.

Each of us as individuals are continuing to work toward keeping equity at the center of our own personal journeys alongside our collective effort of ensuring it is at the center of our work. As a team we will continue to question, reflect upon, and experiment with our practices, to move toward more equitable approaches and results.

Thank you to our past DSS participants, who continually challenge and push us to deepen our practice. Thank you to our colleagues, who act as partners in the work and coaches for social sector practitioners. We credit our growth to your expertise and intention. You are making our work, design, and the social sector more equitable. In particular, the following people helped shape this articulation of equity practice behaviors: Tania Anaissie, David Janka, Katie Krummeck, Andrew Molina, Louie Montoya, Trudy Ngo-Brown, Bre Przestrzelski, Adene Sacks, sam seidel, Amie Thao, and Susie Wise.

Equity behavior illustrations by Samia Ahmed.