This post originally appeared on And Also Too's blog.

On June 21, 2015, 30 people gathered in a session called “Generating Shared Principles for Design Justice” at the Allied Media Conference in Detroit. The participants identified as designers, artists, technologists, and community organizers.

The hope was to start shaping a shared definition of “design justice” — as distinguished from “design for social impact” or “design for good”, which are well intentioned but because they are not driven by principles of justice can be harmful, exclusionary, and can perpetuate the systems and structures that give rise to the need for design interventions in the first place. How could we redesign design so that those who are normally marginalized by it, those who are characterized as passive beneficiaries of design thinking, become co-creators of solutions, of futures?

We began by breaking out into groups, with each group examining one of three design for social impact stories that had recently come out of Detroit: the EMPWR Coat, a winter coat that converts into a sleeping bag for the city’s homeless; Shinola, a luxury watch company that proudly employs Detroiters, and Detroit Future City, a non-profit economic development organization. These stories had received a great deal of positive attention in design and business press as socially engaged projects.

Plotting out the people in social impact design stories

From these discussions, participants were asked to respond to two prompts: “Design justice is…” and “We do this by…”Using a venn diagram, we plotted out the characters in these stories — who was involved in the design process? Who was harmed by the product or in the process? And who benefited?

When the groups reported back, we found that some people who benefited and were also harmed; in the case of the EMPWR coat, homeless Detroiters received a warm garment in the short term, but in creating a “solution” that kept homeless people on the street, it created a business opportunity for the designer while doing little to end the social dynamics that give rise to homelessness.

We also found that those who were harmed were not involved, or only minimally involved in the design processes. Designing “for” and not “with” meant that community resources, knowledge and creativity were not activated, that the designers might benefit more than the community the solution was meant to serve, and that problems weren’t actually solved.

The participants then discussed how the design process might be re-imagined so that design could support communities and social justice. Each group looked at a different stage of the design process (problem definition, research, conceptual exploration, development, delivery, and evaluation) and discussed how to re-shape it so that the work was driven by the community.

Design justice process compiled responses

Here are the compiled and edited responses:

Design Justice is:

Working with frontline communities intergenerationally to ensure we are the creators and implementors of our futures
The effort to turn a practice that is traditionally tied up in power hierarchies into one that is inclusive, collaborative, and transformative
Participatory, internally determined and acknowledges the full humanity of everyone involved
Designing with instead of for
Becoming part of the community
Creating systems that build on the brilliance of those most affected
Complicated and requires humility
The possibility for all people to design their own solutions and lives
Fluid understanding
The collapse of power relationships in conventional design processes
Planning done by the community, for the community
Bringing together healing justice, transformative justice, and economic justice to frame design justice
Considering those directly and indirectly impacted
Non-extractive
Connecting with the earth
Drawing on old wisdom while innovating new solutions that fit the needs of those most impacted

We do this by and through:

Intergenerational storytelling
Humility and personal transformation
Representing our own stories with dignity and power in our own voices
Facilitating and enabling change rather than dictating or directing
Engaging our full selves
Becoming/engaging ourselves as part of the community before problem solving
Throwing giant dance parties
Learning/teaching studios
Seeking existing resources and strategies at the margins
Participation
Transparency
Sustained engagement
Creating community ownership of design products & processes

This session was just the beginning of what will hopefully be a long and rich conversation on how design can better support communities facing injustice. In a future post we will explore how we have tried to apply these principles.

This session was inspired by the Allied Media Projects (AMP) Network Principles, the Detroit Digital Justice Principles, and Detroit Future Youth’s story-building activities. It was developed by Una Lee, Jenny Lee, and Melissa Moore and presented by Una Lee and Wesley Taylor.

The principles were drafted by: Melissa Moore, Shauen Pearce, Ginger Brooks Takahashi, Ebony Dumas, Heather Posten, Kristyn Sonnenberg, Sam Holleran, Ryan Hayes, Dan Herrle, Dawn Walker, Tina Hanaé Miller, Nikki Roach, Aylwin Lo, Noelle Barber, Kiwi Illafonte, Devon De Lená, Ash Arder, Brooke Toczylowski, Kristina Miller, Nancy Meza, Becca Budde, Marina Csomor, Paige Reitz, Leslie Stem, Walter Wilson, Gina Reichert, and Danny Spitzberg.