Piloting a New Design Justice Course at Ethics Lab

How do products and systems we often consider “value-neutral” perpetuate inequities?

Who gets to participate in the design process? How can design challenge interlocking systems of oppression? These are some of the questions students are exploring in Design Justice, Ethics Lab’s seven-week 1-credit pilot for the College’s Just Communities curriculum.

The course is organized around a set of principles published by the Design Justice Network (a community of practitioners in a wide range of fields—from artists and technologists to researchers and community organizers—“committed to rethinking design processes so that they center people who are too often marginalized by design”), as well as by Sasha Costanza-Chock’s book of the same name. 

“At Ethics Lab we’re often working within frameworks of justice as a way of understanding the ethical underpinnings of complicated problems in the world,” says Prof. Jonathan Healey, Assistant Director of Ethics Lab, who co-teaches the course. “And we also use creative methods from Design for exploring that. This focus on Design Justice is a fresh examination of the work we’ve had underway for some time.”

“When design is taught in an interdisciplinary context, it’s often through the lens of Design Thinking, which, despite its guidance to empathize with and interview stakeholders, does not take a stance on whose voices to prioritize (among other limitations),” adds Prof. Sydney Luken, a Designer at Ethics Lab who teaches the course alongside Healey. “By openly addressing oppression, liberation, and community control, Design Justice helps us pay attention to latent factors that might unintentionally perpetuate harms.”

Over the course of seven weeks, creative exercises will emphasize drawing and photography as tools for interrogating and reimagining social relations (including power, accountability, and respect) within community decision-making and the design of everyday objects and interfaces. Students will utilize the Design Justice framework to identify exclusive practices and unintentional discrimination, then imagine alternatives to empower those who are burdened by the status quo. 

Following the pilot’s conclusion, the work will be translated into a public syllabus for people who are interested in the intersection of justice, ethics, and designerly ways of teaching and learning.