Design Changemakers Digest

The smallest of actions in design can lead to meaningful social change November 27, 2024 | Read in your browserForwarded this newsletter? Subscribe here. Progress toward equitable and liberatory futures doesn’t always mean taking big leaps, especially when we feel overwhelmed, powerless or burned out. Small actions we take to root out bias, inequity and oppression from our designs can add up to meaningful change over time. Think, for instance, of how a single seed grows into an entire forest....

Keeping hope for liberatory futures alive with design, care and play November 7, 2024 | Read in your browserForwarded this newsletter? Subscribe here. This has been a tough week, especially for those of you in the United States or with connections to the country. A convicted felon, sexual abuser and authoritarian has been voted into the highest position of power. The damaging ripple effects will extend widely across time, borders and human lives — there's no downplaying it. This week's digest...

Looking at the current state of the world and the latest headlines may paint a grim picture of our future. It can feel easier to give in to the oppressive status quo to lift the weight off our shoulders. But the world needs your changemaking spirit. This week's digest is focused on how to keep on fighting the anti-oppression fight in "third places." No time to read the whole digest? I'll leave you with one takeaway — join me in the first Design Changemakers 'unconventional' gathering,...

After a 7-month personal hiatus, I am back with the latest Design Changemakers Digest! Where have I been? As I've mentioned in previous digests, I was dealing with some health issues at the start of the year. Healing is a journey that takes time and space. Stepping away from this digest and the learning platform I built last year was a way to honor my healing. I've spent that time... Serving as convener of a co-design experiment that has now turned now into a co-Design collective (more on...

I often hear that it's difficult to move from good intentions to concrete actions when it comes to designing for positive change. And that there's no room for inclusion, accessibility or equity when you don't have resources or budget. After last week's digest, a spark of inspiration came unexpectedly to solve for these challenges ⚡️ I thought to myself... What if we could build a free community-powered library to help people move from good intentions to concrete actions? What if we could...

It's been a few months since you've heard from me as I've unfortunately been caught in an avalanche of health issues (as I wrote about here on LinkedIn). As a result, all plans for Design Changemakers had to unfortunately come to a screeching halt, including this newsletter. I'm finally back (but still healing). In this edition, I bring you 3 lessons learned on weaving self-care into a more equity-centered design practice (i.e. don't do what I did). And I will close with a few equitable asks...

In our last digest of the year, I'll explore how discernment can help us integrate and embody social change practices. And I'll share an exciting learning event for you to put discernment into practice! Are best practices actually helpful? Best practices and guidelines around accessibility, inclusion and equity exist to guide design decision-making — for instance, ensuring colors for text and iconography meet minimum color contrast ratios to enhance the accessibility of our designs. But what...

In this week's digest, we're explore the topic of reflexivity, building upon what we covered in last week's digest. You may be asking yourself, reflexi-what? I define reflexivity as bringing in a layer of critical reflection and systems thinking to your design and research work. In the simplest of terms, think of it as a set of keys. These keys will help you open doors to more nuanced understanding of repeated patterns in our beliefs, behaviors and decisions that lead us to inequitable...

Time and time again, I'll hear, "Can you give us a practical checklist or tool?" I tell teams to be mindful about how they use tools in design work around equity, inclusion and justice. While tools can absolutely transform what can feel like abstract concepts into concrete steps we can actually take, they come with many pitfalls when poorly designed or misused. They can unintentionally reinforce biases and assumptions. They're often removed from the realities of the context in which we do...