Confronting the power designers wield

As designers, we wield a lot of power in our work. But where do we exert this power? And how can we question it?

Cover of a book by Cyndi Suarez, The Power Manual: How to Master Complex Power Dynamics, 2018

Much has been said already about power in design. Borrowing the words of Pierce Gordon, PhD in “How Innovators Wield Power:”

“We have to get specific and discuss how the contemporary design culture wields power, and innovators have to recognize specifically how they wield power in their everyday lives.”

This post will concern itself with debating whether designers do or do not wield power. It assumes that we do. But where do we exert this power?

Research Nancy A. Naples three dimensions of power in research in Feminism and Method:

“(1) power difference stemming from different positionalities of the researcher and the researched; (2) power exerted during the research process, such as defining the research relationship, unequal exchange, and exploitation; and (3) power exerted during the postfieldwork period — writing and representing.”

And while these three dimensions were written in the context of social sciences research, I think it’s very much applicable to design. As such, designers typically creates and maintains asymmetrical power relations in three critical dimensions:

1. Relational positionality
2. Distribution of benefits and harms
3. Accountability for outcomes

Relational positionality

Positionality broadly means the social and political context that creates one’s identity. In reflecting on our own identities, how does our positionality give us access to opportunities that would be inaccessible to others? How do design research and design participants and communities perceive us in our interactions with them?

Consider this reflection exercise:

Source: John Horton, “Centering Reflexivity, Positionality and Autoethnographic Practices in Creative Research,” Creative Methods for Human Geographers, 2021 (modified)

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:

How do the two columns compare to one another? What does that tell you about the inequities that your work perpetuates?

In her Ethical Researcher’s Checklist, Alba N. Villamil speaks to six forms of harm (psychological, physical, social, economic, legal, environmental) that participants can be exposed to, which should be estimated in advance, and balancing those risks with potential benefits such as:

• Compensating participants for their time and insights;
• Giving participants an opportunity to voice their opinions and concerns;
• Providing participants resources and opportunities they otherwise couldn’t access.

Accountability for outcomes

Social scientists Karen Potts and Leslie Brown talk about framing conclusions as something with particular importance. In their essay, “Becoming an Anti-Oppressive Researcher” in Research as Resistance: Revisiting Critical, Indigenous, and Anti-Oppressive Approaches, they posit:

“Conclusions have a particular power in that they are the construction of knowledge that leads to recommendations and actions. […] How conclusions are constructed, therefore, has particular impact on how the audience will take up the research in their own lives.”

Translating that to design, this begs the question: Are the people most affected by the outcomes of your process able to influence said process? Do they get to:

• Make decisions on those outcomes?
• Get to assess the success and relevance of those outcomes?
• Get to hold accountable those who drive those outcomes?

Consider this reflection exercise:

What does that tell you about who drives the project’s outcomes? And what does that tell you about who is accountable for those outcomes?

In A Social Designer’s Field Guide to Power Literacy, Maya Goodwill offers some prompts to think about how power is distributed in the design process before the final decisions are made and the project ends:

• What decisions are being made on final outcomes, and who is assessing success and relevance?
• How will the design process be wrapped up?
• How will final decisions and evaluations be made, and what unspoken norms, beliefs, and assumptions are influencing this?

If this post feels like a list of questions and reflection prompts, it’s because it is. This is meant as an invitation for designers to build the critical discernment we need to name and confront the power we exert. I do not provide a roadmap for how to shift or cede the power that we hold. There doesn’t seem to be a checklist of that, as different engagements might find different ways to do so (though a case study based on a recent design research project exploring the experiences of foster youth in institutional placements could provide some inspiration).

So I leave you with this: If you have gone through the process of reflecting on the power you and your organization wields, what have you learned? What did that reflection lead to? What does shifting power looks like in your context?