Reimagining the role of a designer
The Design Justice Project emerged from a session at AMC 2015 called "Generating Shared Principles for Design Justice." In that session, we analyzed stories that presented design as a solution to issues like homelessness and unemployment in Detroit, and identified that the people whom these projects were supposedly helping had a minimal amount of power in these design processes. From this conversation, we drafted the Design Justice Principles.
The following year at AMC 2016, we convened the Design Justice Network Gathering, which allowed design practitioners and advocates to connect more deeply, to review and edit the principles, and to share stories and strategies.
Design Justice Principles
Our principles, which continue to evolve, are:
- We prioritize a design’s impact on a community over the intentions of the designer.
- The strongest solutions happen through the process, not in a moment at the end of the process. Thus it is important to us to open up the design process to those who will be most impacted by its outcomes.*
- We use design to dismantle structures that marginalize, dehumanize, subjugate, and oppress others while centralizing voices that are most marginalized by institutional racism, patriarchy, and colonization.
- We are reimagining the role of a designer as that of a creative facilitator rather than a creative expert.
- We believe in innate human brilliance. Everyone has the capacity to contribute in unique ways to design processes, and all people are experts in their own experiences.
- We undertake in processes that are transparent and accessible, that are led by the needs of the community, and that result in community ownership of the outcomes.
- We are not just creating new solutions — we are looking for ways to adapt what is already working in other contexts as well as reviving ancient approaches that have been erased by colonialism and capitalism.
- We use design processes not just to address problems linked to various forms of injustice, but to build community, to heal, to experience joy, and to bring our visions of the future to life.
- We share design knowledge and demystify technologies.
- We are finding low-resource, non-extractive solutions that enhance our connection to the earth.