Designing for Justice and Change—Starting with Ourselves

Red-orange Justice Fist on Blue to Red Gradient

Design is about problem-solving, and designers—with their talents, methods and processes—have the capabilities to help change the world for the better. However, designers in the end are just human, like everyone else, and are affected by the same social structures in which issues, such as incarceration rates and income gaps, stem from. When it comes to designing for justice and change, designers must start with a different approach than what we’re familiar with: don't begin with users, but with ourselves.

Remember Kony 2012?

Years ago, there was a huge campaign called Kony 2012. Created by Invisible Children, the goal was to bring attention to the atrocious leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA)—Joseph Kony. Six days after the release of their documentary, the film went viral and received 85 million views worldwide. People were able to help bring awareness by participating in “Cover the Night,” which included purchasing t-shirts and posters to plaster in the streets.

From a superficial perspective, the intent of this campaign seemed good and altruistic. But upon reading more about it in the fourth chapter of The Rift by Alex Perry, the reader gains the understanding that the effort seemingly had ulterior motives. The Kony 2012 campaign, touching the heart of American exceptionalism and its savior-complex, had oversimplified the LRA issue and was more about self-glorification than the lives that were affected.

Perry describes the problem of Kony 2012 and other “humanitarian” efforts in the world with this paragraph:

"Simplification can aid understanding. It can also impede it. And in the imaginary, curiously flat Africa of the humanitarian, the people are one-dimensional objects awaiting rescue or upliftment by kindly foreigners. Any recognition of them as fully realized individuals with normal, intricate lives is lost. Africa becomes an exotic, bizarre, violent place, without past or context, a place of good guys and bad guys, simple problems and universal solutions.”

Equity-centered design

Recently reading this passage of the book, I’m reminded of when a few of my co-workers and I (designers and non-designers) took the lunch hour to watch the AIGA Design for Good’s webcast episode titled, Design justice practice: spreading power. Currently, racial injustices are becoming more apparent to American citizens, and many people are wondering how they can be involved and what it means to be an “ally.”

Although not necessarily using the same terms of allyship, in the video Antionette Carroll (founder and CEO of Creative Reaction Lab) defines something similar and proposes what she believes is a necessary first step when it comes to using design processes and methods to fight against systems of oppression.

Carroll asserts that we should begin with humility and equity-centered design rather than the traditional approach of starting with empathy and human-centered design. Basically, Carroll says that we need to start with addressing issues within ourselves before we address the issues of others. In the end, you cannot genuinely empathize with individuals if your own biases, stereotypes and assumptions come into play.

Unlearn and relearn

Going back to that excerpt of how Alex Perry describes the typical humanitarian, those in the effort to break down the barriers of racism must examine themselves to see if they have a similar view. These systems did not just happen, they are man-made and designed. There is a lot of history and nuance, and a big part of the process of dismantling white supremacy is to understand how we were educated in that designed system, “unlearn” those teachings and relearn to make truly just design decisions.