Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need (Information Policy)

certain groups of users—in particular, those who are too few to ensure that the manufacturer will benefit from economies of scale—will be more likely than others to have unmet needs.

http://designjusticenetwork.org/network-principles).

and doesn’t require an impact analysis of the distribution

processes, the bulk of the benefits end up going to the professional designers and their institutions. Products, patents, processes, credit, visibility, fame: the lion’s share goes to the professional design firms and designers.

Design justice practitioners choose to work in solidarity with and amplify the power of community-based organizations.

Design generates attention, and attention is an increasingly scarce resource that is not equitably allocated.

we can also understand them as small-scale, pervasive, daily, and constant performance of power.

described a typology of citizen participation arranged as a ladder with increasing degrees of decision-making clout ranging from low to high. The Arnstein rungs ascend from forms of ‘window-dressing participation,’ through cursory information exchange, to the highest levels of partnership in or control of decision-making.”

Analysis of political power in the design process—who sits at the table, who holds power over the project, what decision-making process is used—will be fundamental to the successful future articulation of design justice in theory and practice.