Clayton Dewey
Product Owner, DevCollaborative
clayton@devcollaborative.com
We build websites for nonprofits with care and attention to accessibility and sustainability of content, design, and code.
What is Design Justice?
Design Justice Network Gathering
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Photo credit: Design Justice Network, designjusticenetwork.org/about
We use design to sustain, heal, and empower our communities, as well as to seek liberation from exploitative and oppressive systems.
We center the voices of those who are directly impacted by the outcomes of the design process.
We prioritize design’s impact on the community over the intentions of the designer.
We view change as emergent from an accountable, accessible, and collaborative process, rather than as a point at the end of a process.*
* This principle was inspired by and adapted from https://www.alliedmedia.org/about/network-principles.
We see the role of the designer as a facilitator rather than an expert.
We believe that everyone is an expert based on their own lived experience, and that we all have unique and brilliant contributions to bring to a design process.
We share design knowledge and tools with our communities.
We work towards sustainable, community-led and -controlled outcomes.
We work towards non-exploitative solutions that reconnect us to the earth and to each other.
Before seeking new design solutions, we look for what is already working at the community level. We honor and uplift traditional, indigenous, and local knowledge and practices.
Design Justice Network
Research as Relationship Building
Who is in the room?
We center the voices of those who are directly impacted by the outcomes of the design process.
Intersectionality
The complex, cumulative way in which the effects of multiple forms of discrimination (such as racism, sexism, and classism) combine, overlap, or intersect especially in the experiences of marginalized individuals or groups.
-- Theory developed by Black feminist scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw
Bay Area Legal Services
Personas
- The further away from someone's experience, the more research to do
- Include real people in the design of the personas
- Be wary of stereotypes and assumptions
🎁 Resource: Persona Builder Workshop by Okthanks
User Interviews
- Understand someone's situation, relationship to technology, needs
- One person at a time, rather than focus groups (most opinionated people can skew group)
- Record to share with other stakeholders
Photo by Christina Morillo from Pexels
User Journey Mapping
- Start with what prompts someone to seek help.
- Map both emotions and tactics they take
- Make space for non-linear stories
🎁 Resource: User Journey Map Intro & Templates by Stephanie Walter
User Journey Map
How to Co-Design
We see the role of the designer as a facilitator rather than an expert.
We believe that everyone is an expert based on their own lived experience, and that we all have unique and brilliant contributions to bring to a design process.
Co-Design, Not Design by Committee
- Direction is decided by most impacted
- Element Collage
- Design Persona
- Core Model Workshop
- Specialized skills serve the direction
Design Persona
🎁 Resource: Design Persona Intro & Template by Aaron Walter
Core Model Workshop
🎁 Resource: Core Model Intro & Template by Are Gjertin Urkegjerde Halland
Core Model
Gathering Feedback
- Users are experts on their problems, not necessarily the web
- Balance dreaming with real world constraints
- Teach what helpful feedback looks like
🎁 Resource: Giving Great Feedback by Roxy Koranda
Image credit: Aspiration Tech from AMC 2015, CC BY-SA 2.0
Bay Area Legal Services Redesign
Iteration
We view change as emergent from an accountable, accessible, and collaborative process, rather than as a point at the end of a process.*
* This principle was inspired by and adapted from https://www.alliedmedia.org/about/network-principles.
Governance
- Who can give feedback? on what? to whom?
- Open Design
- Goals
- Personas
- Branding Guidelines
- Design System
Open Design System
🎁 Resource: Pajamas Design System by GitLab
CommunityRule
🎁 Resource: CommunityRule
Testing
- Remember, who's in the room?
- Usability Testing
Remember, who's in the room?
Usability Tests
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User goal
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Clients can find answers to their legal questions in their native language.
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Clients can find answers to their legal questions in their native language.
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Scenario
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Landlord threatening eviction after your complain about broken sprinkler system.
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Landlord threatening eviction after your complain about broken sprinkler system.
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Task
- Learn your rights as a tenant.
Photo by Aspiration Tech (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Usability Tests
- Emphasize there are no wrong answers
- We won't be offended by critical feedback, in fact we encourage it!
- Get participants to think aloud, might even be worth modeling it first.
- Be aware of social dynamics of those giving feedback, adjust accordingly.
Photo by Aspiration Tech (CC BY-SA 2.0)
👏 Pay 👏 participants 👏 for 👏 their 👏 time 👏 and 👏 expertise👏
Further Learning
Thank you!
- slides.com
- pexels.com
- Photographers
- UX Designers
- Bay Area Legal Services
- DevCollaborative
- Design Justice Network
- DrupalCamp Costa Rica
- You! 🙂
Using Design Justice Practices to Co-Design With Your Users
By claybolto
Using Design Justice Practices to Co-Design With Your Users
Popular wisdom says that involving our users in design decisions leads to a "design by committee" approach that waters down the end result and balloons the design budget. However, content strategy and user experience design disciplines show that incorporating users' input leads to web products that are effective and easy to use. Additionally, in these times of unprecedented crises, we as designers and developers are seeking out ways we can use our skills to better the world. Design Justice offers a framework to design with our users and root our practice in principles that ensure what we build is ethical, heals the planet and promotes our well-being. Participants will leave the session knowing the history of design justice, its principles and practical ways to apply design justice in the discovery and design process, including: user interviews, persona workshops, and user journey mapping.
