Design Justice

Abstract

An exploration of how design might be led by marginalized communities, dismantle structural inequality, and advance collective liberation and ecological survival. What is the relationship between design, power, and social justice? “Design justice” is an approach to design that is led by marginalized communities and that aims expilcitly to challenge, rather than reproduce, structural inequalities. It has emerged from a growing community of designers in various fields who work closely with social movements and community-based organizations around the world. This book explores the theory and practice of design justice, demonstrates how universalist design principles and practices erase certain groups of people—specifically, those who are intersectionally disadvantaged or multiply burdened under the matrix of domination (white supremacist heteropatriarchy, ableism, capitalism, and settler colonialism)—and invites readers to “build a better world, a world where many worlds fit; linked worlds of collective liberation and ecological sustainability.” Along the way, the book documents a multitude of real-world community-led design practices, each grounded in a particular social movement. Design Justice goes beyond recent calls for design for good, user-centered design, and employment diversity in the technology and design professions; it connects design to larger struggles for collective liberation and ecological survival. The open access edition of this book was made possible by generous funding from Knowledge Unlatched and the MIT Press Frank Urbanowski Memorial Fund.

Pandemic-Driven Technology Adoption

“…Eubanks (2018), McIlwain (2020, and D'Ignazio and Klein (2020) all emphasize the vital importance of a more equitable approach to technology and data efforts by focusing on the discreet needs of communities to ensure their concerns are resolved rather than exacerbated by these tools. The mechanisms through which these voices are engaged in the design process has a significant impact on the extent to which the outcomes meet participants' needs (Costanza-Chock, 2020). When this research is considered together, there is a vital thread running through research about the limits and biases in technology is that when issues arose, the technology didn't correct itself.…”

Language as Participation: Multilingual User Experience Design

“…In the extraction model of UX, representative users are engaged in the research process because they possess valuable information that can be leveraged for the good of the design. Engaging people in the design process can be positive, but as Constanza-Chock argues, "in most design processes, the bulk of the benefits end up going to professional designers and their institutions" [8] rather than benefiting the people or the communities who participate in those processes. The extraction model of UX can fall into "damage-based" [9] approaches to research that can harm and exploit communities' ideas and labor.…”

“…In this paper, we theorize and illustrate an approach to UX research and design that counters this extractive approach. Through what we call Multilingual UX, practitioners and researchers can work towards design justice [8] by resisting discriminatory design practices that treat multilingual communities as an afterthought. Instead, we propose an approach that centralizes the needs and knowledges of multilingual users through participatory design that position multilingual users as active creators.…”

“…To illustrate what multilingual UX looks like in practice, we offer two examples from design projects, one international in Nepal and one in the US at a non-profit that serves immigrants and refugees. We conclude by offering four strategies for multilingual experience design to work towards design justice [8] for marginalized multilingual communities.…”

A Public University Futures Collaboratory: A Case Study in Building Foresightfulness and Community

“…In other words, futurity has frequently been the manner in which communities of color have projected themselves into the future in order to endure the ongoing violence of oppressive, colonial systems (Brown 2017; Broyld 2019) and have crafted free spaces for themselves in spite of these forces. Another guidepost for us was the work of Costanza-Choch (2020) that defined a design justice framework, underscoring the need and importance of disrupting historically dominant power structures in designing and re-designing the systems and structures of the future. To this end, Audre Lorde’s (1984) famous quote can be recognized as a call for and a direction toward future systemic transformation, heard anew when considered from a futures perspective:“For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.…”