DESIGN & POLITICS

A brief introduction to a conference paper entitled “The Disconnect Between Design Practice and Political Interests: The Need for a Long-Term Political Engagement as Design Practice.” This research investigated designers’ attitudes towards politics and how they perceive politics in relation to their design practice. The paper was co-written with Sofía Bosch Gómez and presented at the Power and Politics in Design for Transition track at the 2019 Academy for Design Innovation Management Conference in London, UK. The link to the paper, which provides additional details on our methodology, research, and conclusions, can be found here.

ABSTRACT

Long-term, sustainable transitions cannot occur without working at the political level to address the serious, global political challenges we are facing today. However, the capacity of design as a rigorous component of and complement to the political world is yet to be seen. In this paper, we discuss surveys we conducted, showing that there is a clear discrepancy between how designers engage in the political process as citizens and as professionals. We also discuss a subsequent workshop that allowed survey participants to explore these questions of roles and agency in greater depth and offered insights into barriers and opportunities. We found the workshop to be an effective method of helping designers identify leverage points and courses to intervene within both the designer’s sphere of influence and sphere of concern. In so doing, we might begin to draw more designers into the critical work of designing for a transition towards more inclusive and equitable socio-political futures.

RESEARCH

In order to understand how to shift design practice towards politics, we first needed to gauge how designers currently think about political participation in relation to design. With the United States 2018 midterm elections approaching at the time of writing and increased political consciousness, we felt it was an ideal time to research and inquire about designers’ stances: do they, either individually or through their work, participate in the political process? What are their motivations to be, or not be, involved?

Our research consisted of surveys, a workshop, and a literature review.

Compared to their level of interest and level of knowledge, there was a clear discrepancy between how people engage in the political process as citizens and as professional designers (see below). Though the majority of participants indicated that politics plays an important role in their life, only a few number were inspired to carry that passion into their work.

In order to understand why this was, we designed a workshop that allowed us to explore questions of roles and agency in greater depth. Details on the workshop activities are available in the paper.

CONCLUSIONS

The workshop activities demonstrated to designer-participants that they have a much greater degree of power to influence politics than they may have imagined. Some may resist designers entering the realm of politics, arguing that this shift may take designers beyond the scope of their present expertise. However, we contend that designers already possess many of the skills needed to design for systems-level political change. In our paper, we identify five such competencies that designers can leverage across the spectrum of civic engagement. Briefly, they are:

• Storytelling and Communication

• Facilitation

• Design legibility

• Creation

• Innovation

Our systems of government and politics are the foundations that nearly all other aspects of our lives rely on. Without a healthy, resilient, and robust political system that ensures the safety and wellbeing for all people, transitions to more sustainable and more equitable futures lie on precarious footing. Leveraging the expertise and competencies they already have, designers can play an important role in correcting course and working towards political systems that truly represent the voice of the people. Our research has shown that helping designers identify intervention points within both their sphere of influence and sphere of concern can help overcome initial barriers and inspire them to act on social and political issues of personal significance. Given the importance and urgency of this work, an active pedagogical push to prepare and equip designers to design for political change is called for.