An introduction to Liberatory Design
How an equity-centered design framework can develop more inclusive designers.
Liberatory Design is a riff on Stanford d.school’s design thinking process to promote equity in design work. This framework was co-created by Tania Anaissie, Victor Cary, David Clifford, Tom Malarkey and Susie Wise during a collaboration in 2016/17 with the National Equity Project and d.school’s K12 Lab.The goal is to provide a design process that develops one’s self-awareness as an equity-centered designer. What makes Liberatory Design unique is the introduction of two new design modes, Notice and Reflect, within the design thinking process; they are not linear in the design stages, but I would advocate that they should be practiced within and in-between each stage of the traditional design thinking model. Although the content of Liberatory Design focuses on equity-centered work in the education space, I’ve found that the process can be applied to product, UX/UI, CX, and Service Design fields as a better way to implement and practice more inclusive and accessible design for people engaging with your products.
Think of the Noticing and Reflecting stages as a chrysalis for the designers themselves to practice and reimagine themselves as equity-centered in their self awareness, identity, beliefs, biases and values. The end results allow designers to make authentic connections between who they are, who they’re designing with, and who they are designing for. When executed with stakeholders, Liberatory Design is a co-created paradigm of design that is diverse, inclusive, and equitable.
The following summary of Liberatory Design is inspired from the Liberatory Design Card Deck by the National Equity Group and Stanford’s d.school.
Stages
Notice
The automated process of kicking off a design sprint by empathizing with users becomes more intentional with Liberatory Design’s NOTICE stage. Practicing the skill of noticing helps designers develop the self- and social-emotional awareness needed to truly enter any context where they need to practice empathy. The focus is on the designer. Each one unpacks and shares out their own identity, values, emotions, biases, assumptions, and situatedness that they bring to a design challenge. By revealing and accepting one’s authentic-self, designers can then empathize and build with humility, curiosity and courage. The ultimate goal is for the team to align on showing up to the design challenge as authentic human-centered designers, rather than showing up as the “you”-centered designer.
Key Questions to Ask
Identity:
- Who am I/we? Who are our users?
Power:
- How are we respectively situated (relative to opportunity, institutional power)?
Context:
- What is our situation, our equity challenge?
Partnership:
- Given the above, how can we create a partnership that is liberating for all in the process?
Empathize
The EMPATHIZE stage is focused on understanding the experiences, emotions, needs, wants, and motivations of your target users. Designers use specific empathy practices like user interviews, contextual inquiries, or ethnographic studies to learn more about the needs of the users they are designing for.
Key Questions to Ask
- How does my identity and role in this project affect how and what people share with me?
- How do I maintain awareness of my biases and challenge them in order to see this community more authentically?
- What do people in this community identify as their needs?
- How do systemic oppression and/or privilege affect this community, and how does that relate to this project?
Define
The DEFINE stage is focused on developing a point of view about the needs of the user based on evidence gathered during the empathize stage. In Liberatory Design, it is especially important to work alongside community members in this stage in crafting problem statements and design principles. This phase primarily focuses on interpreting and synthesizing your research to identify patterns or insights that reveal deeper needs of your target users and community. To narrow the focus, target users and their specific problem(s) are defined. When creating “How might we…” problem statements, it is essential to notice and reflect on the “we” that designers and stakeholder bring to the table to remove bias of our personal blindspots and to become more intentional in our approach to designing for equity.
Key Questions to Ask
- How can we ensure we are reaching a point of view that is authentic and not distorted by biases?
- What is the larger ecosystem in which our project focus lives? What influences it?
Ideate
The IDEATE phase follows Stanford d.school’s design thinking process and is focused on generating as many inclusive solutions to a problem as possible. Once several solutions have been generated by the design team, the group evaluates and selects the top ideas and to move forward on prototyping.
Key Questions to Ask
- How can we ensure we have designed for optimal collaboration and have invited multiple perspectives?
- How can we create an environment that encourages people to share ideas without fear of judgment and also maintains an awareness of biases?
Prototype
The PROTOTYPE phase involves the crafting of physical artifacts or experiences, ranging from paper mobile applications, storyboards, roleplays, or hi-fidelity desktop screens made on Figma. The prototypes are intended to elicit valuable feedback from users and answer specific questions about the concept. The Liberatory Design creators label this phase “Building to Think”. By building our ideas into a tangible form, new questions can be proposed and the team is pushed to iterate and refine their ideas before presenting their prototypes to users.
Key Questions to Ask
- What assumptions are we making that we want tested in this prototype?
- How can we quickly build a representation of our idea that does not require a lot of explanation?
TEST
The TEST phase focuses on gathering specific feedback on the prototype, testing stakeholder assumptions, and learning new ways to how to iterate our product.
Key Questions to Ask
- How are we creating the right environment so that it is truly safe to fail?
- Have we included all the voices and identities necessary into the room to receive feedback?
REFLECT
The REFLECT phase of the process is not the end stage of a design, but is actually an ongoing and visible process throughout the design thinking process. It allows the designer and the team time to reflect and unpack actions, motivations, emotions, privileges, insights, and the impact designers have within the user’s context.
Key Questions to Ask
- What evidence do I have that I am becoming more self aware and self correcting as an equity leader using Liberatory Design?
- How is my emotional state affecting how I show up with my team?
- How can I share or release those emotions with my team?
Tools
Below are some tools to help facilitate Liberatory Design in your practice:
- A Liberatory Design card deck that includes practices to build liberatory mindsets
- A Liberatory Design slide deck that unpack the problem space
- National Equity Project’s Liberatory Design Approach
- Stanford d. School Liberatory Design Resource Collection
In closing, I’m curious to know what tools your team will implement to practice reflecting and noticing in your future design sprints. What key questions would you add to each of the design stages? I’ll be sure to share any of these the City of Wind design team creates in the coming months.
I hope these thoughts and practices can be used in designing for accessibility and inclusivity for your next design sprints. Let me know how it goes!
David is a Product Designer at City of Wind Design, a design studio that specializes in serving startups through UX design & software development with a bias toward accessibility & sustainability. To learn more about David Pinedo visit: https://www.davidpinedo.com or follow @davidpinedo24 on Twitter.
