8 Equity-Centered Design
This type of process is useful if you aren’t sure where to begin and you want to involve your stakeholders in defining the problem and generating a solution. Design thinking has been criticized as being one size fits all and trying to gloss over some of these more complex issues, but equity-centered design, if done correctly, will help you uncover biases before the process even begins. The information on the Stanford website provides additional activities you can utilize to help create a shared understanding of the challenges your users have that you can address as you go through each step and generate solutions, then implement them and gather additional feedback as you test out these ideas and build on what you are learning. As with some of the other methods we discussed, this process requires time as well as the ability to identify patterns and themes while focusing on one or two solutions to follow-up on. Asking open ended questions and letting users drive the direction of the guided conversation can also be challenging but can yield meaningful results and a potential to create or update services and initiatives in new and interesting ways.
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In this case and due to the complex nature of research data, we opted to implement a two-pronged approach where we asked participants to fill out the customer journey templates prior to the design thinking session so that we could better understand their pain points ahead of talking to them. In addition, we wanted to provide them with an opportunity to describe their processes directly, rather than discuss them passively with us as that can also have an effect on how the qualitative data is represented. It allows the story behind their research to emerge as opposed to focusing solely on the data itself which is important, but not a central player in the narrative we are trying to uncover about researcher challenges.
How can design thinking powerfully serve as a force for equity + address the effects of oppression on education? Liberatory Design as an equity-centred practice creates the opportunities for the equity practitioner and the designers to build from their skillsets and develop a new approach to their work. THE PRACTICE This is not a step in the traditional DT process – this is something we are introducing to our DTK12 work. We will be bringing in new curriculum around this area, want feedback, your thoughts, ways you can connect this to your own work and life.
- Identity: Who am I/we? Who are our users?
- Power: How are we respectively situated (relative to opportunity, institutional power)?
- Context: What is our situation, our equity challenges?
- Partnership: Given the above, how can we create a partnership that is liberating for all in the process?
So really, being aware of and reflecting on the impact of your own beliefs and biases in relationship with/to your users and their context is practiced throughout the design thinking process.
Try it yourself!
- What biases are you or could you be bringing to this process?
- What are the systemic inequities your design might be propagating?
- Are there any voices/perspectives that might be excluded from this design and/or design process?
- How can you better understand who your users are and what their challenges are especially in terms of the discrimination they are facing whether implicit or explicit?
- How can you build trust with your users so that they are providing you with meaningful and authentic feedback?
- How can you define those challenges as well as make the biases within them more explicit?
- What are some ways in which your solutions are addressing these inequities?
- Do the solutions themselves favor one group over another or do they have built-in assumptions that can be challenged?
- How can you ensure your model(s) are reflective of their user populations and their needs?
- Are there any unintended consequences to your design-especially those that might further marginalize vulnerable populations?
- How can integrate user feedback into your design so that you are making changes that are truly valuable?
- How have the biases you uncovered at the beginning of this process been addressed-have they? Why or why not?
- Have you provided an opportunity for your users to reflect on the changes made to the model(s) based on their feedback? If not, how can you do that?