In the past few years, I realised that I have no idea why I studied design. Not only that, but I’m pretty sure I did not know what design was when I first embraced the choice to study it. Anyhow, what I can tell today with more than 10 years in the field is that I do believe in change and I know design can help us achieve it. Such belief is reinforced when reading ideas just like the one presented in this new book by Sasha Costanza-Chock.
I won't pretend to agree on every single argument or position presented in the pages of “Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need”, but I do consider the book is an incredible invitation for a reflective and political positioning of designers and their practices. This makes the book not just interesting to read, but powerful.
Understanding the book as a call for the massification of such ideas. I would like to take the positive impulse, and encourage everyone to see design justice as “a framework [that] can provide tools to support existing and emergent critique of design.” In such a constellation, Costanza-Chock points out the importance of intersectional feminist networked movements and how these are “increasingly engaged in debates about the relationships between technology, design, and social justice.”
Continue reading at GenderIT.org.