In this blog post, I will demonstrate ways that I have integrated design justice principles to alter a research and design plan in order to shift power dynamics and encourage co-design, ultimately creating a better outcome for the community.

In the design process, the equalizer cards created by Lauren Weinstein are a helpful tool to think deeply about the problem space and who holds power. The cards display 8 equalizing examples that can be used in social innovation work with co-design. The goal of the cards is to help practitioners understand where the power lies and who are the people involved, think of potential outcomes of a project when we consider power and when we do not, think of different equalizing techniques and consider common pitfalls. Check out the equalizer cards at the bottom of this article for further information.

By using co-design principles, we can generate better ideas, come up with solutions that the community wants, create trust and respect between the designers and the community, and waste less resources and more. The big question is, how do we co-design? This is where the equalizer cards serve as a helpful reference during the process.

I recently took part in creating and executing a research plan looking at the barriers that children and families are facing when it comes to physical activity in elementary aged children. Our research focused on interviewing parents/guardians of children, interviewing school administrators and teachers and having kids fill out a worksheet where they drew pictures of their favorite activities. While reviewing the equalizer cards in reference to this plan, I was able to see where we could have used methods of co-design to improve our process.

The first method I used from the equalizer cards was Mapping Power Influences.

• Here you visualize the relationships between people and systems. It helps you understand who has power in the situation. We can determine how we might be able to shift these power dynamics in the design process.

When I first created my power map, I realized that the kids had very limited power in our current research plan when ultimately, we were designing for them. However, it was also true that the kids interact with almost all of the people who hold power. I redrew the power map, placing the children at the center and drawing lines to everyone that they interact with to display their impact. This exercise made me recognize how the kids need to be co-designers and at the center of what we are designing. In our updated research plan we will be interviewing kids and finding some to be on a co-design team.

Furthermore, when considering the financial power of parents/guardians of the children, it becomes clear that this is very different depending on the financial means of the family and what school district they are in. A family with the financial means to put their child in a private school or after school activities has increased power compared to those who do not have the same privileges. I recognized the lack of acknowledgement of this while finding our interviewees. In our revised research plan, there is increased emphasis on working with families and schools in low income neighborhoods and school districts, as they are voices that should be amplified since they have limited resources to begin with.

This led into another equalizer card that felt relevant, Paid Community Co-designers.

• The goal is to train community members to be co-designers throughout the entire design process. The benefit is having their lived experience to help make decisions throughout the process.

In our original research plan, we occasionally consulted community members, but without compensation or consistency. It is important to appropriately compensate people for their efforts in this process and to avoid being extractive. This informed our revised design plan to find a team of co-designers, which would consist of kids, parents/guardians, school administrators and teachers who would be present for the entire research and design process.

Accessibility in Space and Language was another equalizer card that felt particularly important to consider throughout the process of our research and design.

• This emphasizes the importance of creating safe, inclusive and accessible spaces. This indicates what type of experience we are ultimately creating. The words that we choose throughout our research influence people's experience and comfort levels.

The importance here is to make sure that we are creating a non judgmental, safe space for the people participating in the co-design process. Physical activity of children can be a sensitive topic for parents/guardians and kids, especially when there are varying levels of privilege associated with it. Creating a safe, inclusive and non-judgmental space for participants can be done in the way that we intentionally ask questions and how/where we perform research.

Furthermore, this is an important topic as we consider the design process. We want to make sure that we are creating a safe and accessible space for all children to be active and express themselves, free of judgment.

A few more equalizer cards to consider as we continue into the design process, Community-led design is something we will want to consider.

• This is done by increasing the capability of community members to carry out social innovation processes so that they can design solutions with all of the experience and knowledge they already have. The goal is to increase the ability of people to solve problems in effective, community first way.

If we are able to work with motivated PE teachers and school administrators who are already understanding of the barriers kids are facing. We can provide skills and education so they are able to devise and implement ways to increase physical activity in kids without the need of “designers.” To me, this creates a sustainable solution that is focused on the future.

Peer Professionals is another equalizer card that could be particularly interesting as we work towards solutions.

• In this process, the community experiencing a problem is paired with others who have lived that experience. This allows people with personal and professional insight to offer support to the community.

While talking about our research problem, we have heard so many stories of adults who did not relate to physical activity in the way that PE was presented to them as a kid, but have found ways that they love being active separate from school (yoga, gardening, hula hooping, hiking, skateboarding, etc.) I think it would be interesting to consider peer to peer conversations for kids who feel less comfortable with what we consider typical PE activities, this could be helpful for conducting more research or when thinking of possible solutions.

The process of using the equalizer cards to observe who currently holds power, where it can be shifted and other ways to improve co-design are important tools as we understand how we can build a better future. I hope the examples were helpful in your understanding of methods to look at problems from a different perspective and how design can be done alongside the community.

A few methods for the equalizer cards that I did not talk about in this post are democratizing design, open sourcing, building capacity and reconciliation, acknowledgement and invitation of which I encourage you to take a deeper look to understand how these could be beneficial to consider in the design process. While I focused on the use of equalizer cards in this blog post, there are many other resources that can help with encouraging design justice. You can check out this link for more information.

References:

Lauren Weinstein, Shifting the Powerplay in Co-design (the equalizer cards are linked at the bottom of this article)

Design Justice Principles