The third event in this year's Service Futures Lab Public Event series is a roundtable discussion chaired by Dr. Silvia Grimaldi, focussing on how we design for social justice. Speakers from industry and academia will present short case studies of their work and explain how they adjusted their design approaches, practices and methods to focus on social justice. Case study presentations will be followed by a roundtable discussion about design approaches, practices and methods.
The premise of the event is that design is not neutral, and traditional western approaches, design tools and practices can reinforce existing power structures and social injustices. So the question is: Is it possible to start addressing this imbalance through the ways in which we practice design? Are there any design approaches, practices and methods that help to focus on social justice during the design process? How do these approaches, practices and methods work in different contexts? and how responsive do the designers need to be when applying these?
Being an academic I am obviously interested in how we can train designers that don’t feel powerless, and understand what change they can make from their particular perspective. I am also interested in how to research and practice for social justice with my positionality as a white European academic in a major institution, traditionally educated, neurodiverse, professional woman.
The brief I gave the speakers was asking them to reflect on how they adjusted their design approaches, practices and methods to focus on social justice. What and who is excluded and not represented in typical western design practice, and what inequalities are perpetuated through this? How did they shift their practice to account for this? Why was this necessary or beneficial in this particular project? How did this play out? What was the impact of working in this particular way?
Our panellists are:
Jenny Winfield, Head of Research, Chayn, who will be talking about Chayn’s trauma informed design principles and how to research with those.
Hannah Jump, Senior Service Designer at HM Courts and Tribunals Service, who will be talking about how she’s trying to design for social justice in internal and external facing ways at HM Court and Tribunal Service.
Alison Prendiville, Professor of Service Design at LCC UAL, who will be talking about Tools she developed to acknowledge multiple knowledge forms while working on the field on antimicrobial resistance in India.
Ivor Williams, Lead Product Designer at Accurx, who will be talking about designing hospices for children with a focus on play and connection with nature.
Megha Wadhawan, Design Lead TPXimpact, who will be talking about how design shapes the social, and how the social shapes design, through service patterns and citizen assemblies.
Becca Dove, Head of Family Early Help, London Borough of Camden, who is the only non-designer on the panel, will be reflecting on a collaborative design project we ran together a few years ago from her perspective as a public servant, and the impact this has had on the services within Camden.
Recorded at: London College of Communication, University of the Arts London, 18 April 2024