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

Design scoping processes that exclude structural problems, large institutional actors, or the state from the field of analysis convert design into an antipolitics machine. Design narratives too frequently invisibilize the matrix of domination and set the boundaries of the imagination to exclude already existing, community-led solutions,

Design generates attention, and attention is an increasingly scarce resource that is not equitably allocated.

design narratives: who receives attention and credit for design work,

most often assumed to be members of the dominant,

their user stories, preferred platforms, aesthetics, language, and so on are not taken into consideration.

we can also understand them as small-scale, pervasive, daily, and constant performance of power.

If You’re Not at the Table, You’re on the Menu

one of the most important ways that narratives structure design is in the scoping and framing of design problems.

Many design approaches that are supposedly more inclusive, participatory, and democratic actually serve an extractive function.