Just Digital Future
Design: At, Into, & Beyond
Design: At, Into, & Beyond
Intention
Our Just Digital Future interview series has put us in conversation with an array of scholars and practitioners engaged in data, design, and diversity work. In our design track, we highlight the importance of radical curiosity, humility, and an approach to engaging with underrepresented community members as partners and co-designers, among other fascinating topics. This article features a 26-term glossary for further engagement.
So many facets of design work require that we anticipate need, weigh multiple parameters, and make necessary changes to safeguard public resources. Some of the design world’s most compelling questions stem from ideas of exclusion, inclusion, and the inevitable tension that arises when we attempt to engineer something yet unseen. Whether we’re navigating a website or shared public space, we constantly witness the extent to which our environments and experiences are curated.
What do you believe about what people have access to? What do you believe about their rights? What do you believe about who should be able to do what, and who should not be able to do what? Those are hard design problems.
On our morning commute, we catch glimpses of hostile architecture. Do the ridges or knobs on a bench render it impossible for anyone to lie down? How far apart are wheelchair-accessible stations on public transportation (if all of them are not equipped…if you have access to that infrastructure or sidewalks with curb cuts at all)? Are there heat lamps in more wealthy neighborhoods and police cameras in poorer ones? Can your website be read by site readers for people with low vision? Are your photographs captioned? Can site text be increased in size? Do these questions deepen or become inestimably more complex if axes of race, gender, class, ability, (in)accessibility and any others are applied?
If design is invested in questions of visioning – we must see ourselves as well.
Interaction
Design is the rendering of intent. What we intentionally design can delight someone. It can also frustrate them. We can change our rendering, with the intention to create more delight & less frustration. When we do that, we’re designing the user’s experience.
The intent that we bring to our work directly impacts how the world is able to engage with it.
A significant amount of our time is spent at work. We seek out roles within organizations that speak to our inclinations and skills. We curate questions for our prospective employers in an effort to see if it’s a place we could belong. Maybe you’re mission-driven with a mind to tackle a deeply entrenched social issue.
The interactions we have serve as a significant source of information that can propel personal and professional change. When we put design in conversation with other disciplines, industries, and modes of thought, we complicate our understanding of the world in the best possible way.
If design is truly the rendering of intent, our work is an extension of our understanding and will.
Developing fidelity with one’s technology/tools/platforms and engaging with others who’ve lived differently only makes for a better informed, more discerning, thoughtful practitioner. Cultivating the courage and patience to understand others' worldviews and experiences is labor that will enable you to operate differently at work. Gathering information in an effort to become more discerning makes for quite the visionary.
Inclusion
An inclusive designer is someone, arguably anyone, who recognizes and remedies mismatched interactions between people and their world.
Inclusive design at its best takes an expansive approach to meticulously curated instances of disparity. It endeavors to know as much as it can so that it may better discern. It aims to listen deeply and respond mindfully to the issues/challenges/provocative questions of the day – and does so by humanizing the cost of poor implementation.
An inclusive designer might ensure that HTML is written for screen readers…which will make the site faster for everyone. A designer with an inclusive approach might speak out against automatic car door unlocking when considering the high rates of femicide around the world.
On a structural level, in order for more perspectives to be heard, they must be present.
Many companies have implemented partnership and mentorship programs. In the case of mentorship, it takes a thoughtful workplace to design programs that are not predatory in nature. By default, many of the members of underrepresented communities will have been expected to assimilate. Understand that it is the new perspective they bring that will enrich your conversations and observations…and ultimately contribute to your bottom line.
Becoming aware of the ways we’re impacted by our environments is key. Developing a kind of metaempathy that holds space for perspectives beyond your own makes us better able to tackle problems.
| Accommodations | An adjustment to a job or work environment that makes it possible for an individual with a disability to perform their job duties. Accommodations may include specialized equipment, modifications to the work environment or adjustments to work schedules or responsibilities. |
| Bias (Algorithmic) | A phenomenon that occurs when an algorithm produces results that are systemically prejudiced due to erroneous assumptions in the machine learning process. (+) |
| Code Switch | The ability and propensity to adapt across shifting sociocultural contexts. |
| Data Equity | An approach to information that helps safeguard against natural human and human-informed technological bias. |
| Embedded Ethics | A distributed pedagogy initiative at the Harvard John A. Paulson School Of Engineering And Applied Sciences that embeds philosophers directly into computer science courses to teach students how to think through the ethical and social implications of their work. |
| Families | A network of individuals tethered to one another through care // "A family is defined by the Census Bureau as a group of individuals who reside together and who are related to each other by blood, marriage, or adoption." |
| Gender | An amalgam of socialization and personality that differs across cultures and shifts over time; the traits, behaviors, and perceived limitations ascribed to intersex and (fe)male beings. |
| Hypersurveillance | Data and footage compiled, at times by coercion or under duress, that violates a human right to privacy and dignity. |
| Inclusive Design | The thoughtful measures taken to consider how products and spaces will be experienced by many stakeholders. |
| Job Training | The resources and tools provided by organizations to equip productive team members including but not limited to apprenticeships, coaching, technological readiness opportunities. |
| Kyriarchy | A complex pyramidal system of intersecting multiplicative social structures of superordination and subordination, of ruling and oppression. // coined by theologian Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza. |
| Labor History | The agricultural, technological, economic, social and legislative actions taken over generations that undergird our working world. |
| Micro-Macroaggression | A subtle behavior – verbal or non-verbal, conscious or unconscious – directed at a member of a marginalized group that has a derogatory, harmful effect. Psychiatrist Chester Pierce first introduced the term microaggression in the 1970s. |
| Naturalization | The process by which U.S. citizenship is granted to a lawful permanent resident after meeting the requirements established by Congress in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). |
| Organizational Behavior | The (un)stated protocols and mores related to values, mission, and interpersonal dynamics within a specific setting. |
| Pipeline Problems | The perceived and confirmed limitations/constraints/barriers to cultivating a diverse talent pool and ability to retain members of underrepresented demographic groups. |
| Queering | To shift the tenor or interpretation of a space, cultural phenomenon, or conceptual framework beyond gender binaries and the cishetero status quo. |
| Racialize | Often associated with people of color, racialization is a natural byproduct of the idea of whiteness as racelessness. |
| Stakeholder(s) | Parties involved in the ideation, implementation, and utilization of a project. |
| Technological Invisibility | Gaps in access and utility that emerge for particular demographic groups due to limited scope or understanding and appreciation of differences in need/experience. |
| Universal Design | A set of expansive working principles and questions about skill, craft, and access that aims to meet multifaceted needs. |
| Value Neutrality | The myth that technology is not informed by bias and other human error. An invitation to consider the relationship between creators, moral imperatives, and social responsibility. |
| Wage Theft | A phenomenon in which employers withhold (or reroute) the earned compensation of its employees, often including breaktime, overtime and minimum wage violations. |
| LatinX | A recent gender neutral alternative to Latin@ that cultivated a national conversation about representation, linguistic fidelity and academic-speak. |
| You | An individual whose life is shaped by the products of design. A cultural beneficiary and benefactor who can apply their agency to (in)tangible processes, systems, organizations, experiences, and working relationships. |
| Ze, zir, zis | A series of gender neutral pronouns adopted by Harvard (among others) in 2015. |