Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need (Information Policy)

Is it always (or ever) possible to reduce cognitive load for all users simultaneously? Perhaps not. Instead, designers constantly make choices about which users to privilege and which will have to do more work.

Design justice practitioners choose to work in solidarity with and amplify the power of community-based organizations.

Eric Von Hippel’s

Center for Media Justice, Coding Rights (Brazil), the Critical Making Lab, Data Active, Decolonising Design, the Design Studio for Social Intervention, Design Trust for Public Space, the Digital Justice Lab (Toronto), FemTechNet, Intelligent Mischief (Brooklyn), MIT CoLab, SEED Network, Social Justice Design Studio, and the Tech Equity Collective,

VSD never questions the standpoint of the professional designer, doesn’t call for community inclusion in the design process (let alone community accountability or control),

When the lived experience of underrepresented communities is omitted from the product development

“techie parachuters” for a quick fix, instead of investing to build capacity within a community.

“Appropriation is the process through which technology users go beyond mere adoption to make technology their own and to embed it within their social, economic, and political practices.”

Most PD processes also aim to develop feelings of investment and ownership in the outcome by all participants,

most often assumed to be members of the dominant,