Digging in the field of Design Justice, thanks to Elena Silvestrini

What is Design Justice? How is Design Justice relevant to service design practice? Answering these questions is Elena Silvestrini, Steering Committee Member at Design Justice Network, who drives service-design students in an inner and critical journey on Design Justice.

The module explores the theories and practices connected to Design Justice, showing the experiences of the Design Justice global network. The lecture builds on political frameworks to lay the foundations for how design mediates our realities and confronts the power designers wield in their work. Design Justice proposes a set of principles and practices to address this reality, posing design as a highly political field rooted in accountability, rather than good intentions only.

Therefore, students are learning about Design Justice methodological and political backgrounds and frameworks; what’s more, they are questioning the neutrality of design and exploring issues connecting to power and design. Today, they have the chance to develop a set of tools to analyze their own practice and positionality.

Deepening the agenda, students go through political and design frameworks, familiarizing with the history of the Design Justice Network and its principles; then, they interrogate their practices through the lens of power and design applied to their experiences. Finally, last but not least they can “play” with the card of the “Oracle for Transfeminist Technologies”, a speculative design game. “Tech is currently designed in a way that helps to maintain the status quo of social inequality and the norms of consumerist, misogynist, racist, ableist, gender binary and hetero-patriarchal society. Therefore, What would the future look like if we could hack this trend?” This game helps in identifying patterns, understanding root causes, and formulating effective strategies for advocacy and activism.