Confronting the power designers wield
By: Sarah Fathallah
Tags: Power, Design, UX, Ethics, Design Research

What does this tell you about your positionality? And are you aware of it when you approach your work?

This is where critical reflexivity comes in. Susan Strega and Leslie Brown offer the following definition in their essay “From Resistance to Resurgence” in Research as Resistance: Revisiting Critical, Indigenous, and Anti-Oppressive Approaches:

“[Scholars] have proposed reflexivity as an essential methodological strategy because it enables us to examine the ways in which our own values, identities, and positionality affect our research, and particularly our relationships with participants [and to think] through the power differentials that operate at various stages of the research process.”

In other words, critical reflexivity is a recognition that the designer or designer researcher does not exist in a vacuum but exists in relationship with what they’re trying to understand, work on, and create. Without practicing self-reflexivity, we don’t challenge the myth that designers are neutral, objective agents. As designers, we need to examine the ways in which their values, identities, and positionality affect our work and relationship with communities. And building that critical reflexivity muscle — whether through autoethnography, journaling, or other means — should be an ongoing, continuous, and ever-evolving practice, rather than a single event like a pre- or post-mortem.

Hajira Qazi, in Power & Participation: A Guidebook To Shift Unequal Power Dynamics In Participatory Design Practice, provides some prompts to think about how our positionality can translate into differences in power dynamics and potential conflicts:

What aspects of your identity have the strongest effect on how participants might perceive you?

What are the dynamics between your background, history, and identity and theirs?

How does your expertise as a designer contend with lived experience of the participants?

Does a third party dictate the terms of the engagement? If so, how might inequities be addressed?

How do the participants’ values, goals, intentions, objectives, or expectations conflict with your own? How will your address situations where your views conflict?

Additionally, Calvin Liang in “Reflexivity, positionality, and disclosure in HCI” also compiled an impressive list of resources around reflexivity and positionality, and provides a series of prompts around when and why to disclose parts of your identity:

Why do you wish to disclose? Is it only to satisfy someone’s curiosity? Is it to promote social justice or act as a role model for other researchers? Is it to help share what you as the strengths and limitations of your work? Is it to provide legitimacy to your work?

Are there mechanisms in place that would allow you to reverse your decision?

What are the potential outcomes of disclosing your identity?

Distribution of benefits and harm

Design is inequitable and extractive. No one expresses this critique more articulately than Sasha Costanza-Chock in Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need:

“In most design 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.”

Now let’s think about the “cost” of participating in a design research or design engagement from the point of view of a community member. For example:

In terms of material resources, they can incur expenses and not get reimbursed for them, they can incur significant opportunity cost, like time not spent caring for children or working, and on top of that, they may not be provided any compensation or incentives for their time and wisdom.

In terms of knowledge, they give a lot of their stories, their experiences, their ideas, and may not get anything in return. They may share a lot, and not be told what happened with the information they shared. They may interact with designers and professionals who are highly educated, and never learn any of their skills.

In terms of potential harm, their identity may be revealed, which may have negative repercussions. They may experience fatigue, especially if they’re being asked again and again to re-tell their story. It may be emotionally taxing for them, or even triggering, especially when dealing with sensitive topics. And they may be working with a design team that doesn’t have trauma-informed approaches embedded in their process, such that their can feel safe and cared for.

Consider this reflection exercise: