ABSTRACT

Long-term, sustainable transitions cannot occur without working at the political level to address the serious, global political challenges we are facing today. However, the capacity of design as a rigorous component of and complement to the political world is yet to be seen. In this paper, we discuss surveys we conducted, showing that there is a clear discrepancy between how designers engage in the political process as citizens and as professionals. We also discuss a subsequent workshop that allowed survey participants to explore these questions of roles and agency in greater depth and offered insights into barriers and opportunities. We found the workshop to be an effective method of helping designers identify leverage points and courses to intervene within both the designer’s sphere of influence and sphere of concern. In so doing, we might begin to draw more designers into the critical work of designing for a transition towards more inclusive and equitable socio-political futures.

RESEARCH

In order to understand how to shift design practice towards politics, we first needed to gauge how designers currently think about political participation in relation to design. With the United States 2018 midterm elections approaching at the time of writing and increased political consciousness, we felt it was an ideal time to research and inquire about designers’ stances: do they, either individually or through their work, participate in the political process? What are their motivations to be, or not be, involved?

Surveys

We started with a general survey to get a baseline understanding of how designers think about politics. We sent out two sets of surveys, and responses were collected up until November 5, 2018, the day before the United States midterm elections. Seeking to gain responses from a range of designers at different points in their careers, one survey was sent to all design faculty, staff, and students at Carnegie Mellon University in the city of Pittsburgh, United States, and another, similar call to respond was shared with professional designers in practice.

We received 29 responses from faculty and students and 43 responses from professionals. Although responses to the survey for professionals came in from all over the world, this research focuses on designers in the United States, regardless of their country of citizenship.

Questions focused on demographics (citizenship, age, political affiliation), knowledge about and interest in political and social issues, and the different ways in which respondents participate in the political process. Demographics on race or ethnicity were not collected, as we were specifically interested in discovering how the participants’ political agency (be that by means of their party, citizenship, or residency) influenced their approach to politics.

The vast majority of respondents from both surveys indicated that they identify mostly with the Democratic party:

The majority indicated they were extremely or very interested in social and political issues. In spite of the high level of interest in political issues (in red), and strong commitment to participating in the political process (in blue), very few respondents were interested in or are currently working in the public sector:

When asked, “in which area/industry do you hope to work when you graduate?” only three students checked the public sector as an option. 53.5% were interested in working for design consultancies or tech firms when they graduate, and 21% said that entrepreneurship or self-employment was an option. Similarly, of the 26 professional participants living in the United States, only four are working in the public sector, whereas 53.8% work either in tech or a design consultancy.

Professionals were asked to what extent their work intertwines with their political views, and only two individuals said that their politics greatly influence their work (here in the green). Fifty percent stated that their work and political views are completely or mostly separate.

Compared to their level of interest and level of knowledge, there was a clear discrepancy between how people engage in the political process as citizens and as professional designers (see below). Though the majority of participants indicated that politics plays an important role in their life, only a few number were inspired to carry that passion into their work.

Workshop

In order to understand why this was, we designed a workshop that allowed us to explore questions of roles and agency in greater depth. All survey respondents residing within Pittsburgh were invited to attend the workshop, including students, faculty, and working professionals. Later, In order to reach a larger audience that could participate remotely, we converted the in-person workshop experience to a series of digital questions and exercises using SurveyMonkey as a tool. We had 14 total participants, 7 in-person and 7 on SurveyMonkey.

First, participants were asked to do a card sort to rank and number different roles related to political participation in order from most to least important, with the option of adding their own roles or discarding whichever felt irrelevant.

We provided the below worksheet, with an example of one of the participants’ responses.

Next, they were asked to list potential points of intervention, ranging from where they felt they have the most influence and agency (innermost circle) to the least influence (outermost circle). We then asked participants to link the various roles they had ranked to the points of intervention. For example, in the below worksheet, the individual felt they could mobilize citizens most among workshop participants and students and faculty, but not in the outer rings.

Finally, participants were asked to choose a particular social or political issue that was important to them, and then design an intervention for that issue utilizing a particular role at a single intervention point. If, for example, the above individual indicated that gun control was an important issue for them, they might choose to devise an intervention that can change perceptions of gun control around the university.

CONCLUSIONS

By having participants design an intervention for an issue of personal interest, in a role where they have some sense of agency, and in a domain where they feel they have some degree of influence, they are able to identify a point of intervention at a greater scale of engagement that is meaningful to them and has minimum barriers to entry. Through this method, we are able to demonstrate to designers that, they have a much greater degree of power to influence politics than they may have imagined.

Some may resist designers entering the realm of politics, arguing that this shift may take designers beyond the scope of their present expertise. However, we contend that designers already possess many of the skills needed to design for systems-level political change. In our paper, we identify five such competencies that designers can leverage across the spectrum of civic engagement. Briefly, they are:

Storytelling and Communication
As politicians are well aware, storytelling is a powerful tool that can be used to educate and inform the public, change perceptions, advocate for the underrepresented, and mobilize the public to become more civically engaged and make their voices heard.

Facilitation
By establishing platforms for conversation and facilitating important discussions, designers can help break down barriers among groups in conflict. This is particularly needed in increasingly polarizing political environments.

Design legibility
Design can play a role in increasing legibility, that is, how policy is communicated and understood by the public that it impacts. This invites greater engagement and agency, which in turn prevents governmental abuse.

Creation
Designers have the tools and the skill set to identify gaps in systems and create interventions that fill those gaps. Thus, in creating interventions, designers are agents for change, acting as the catalyst that materializes the type of world that people envision yet are unable to create.

Innovation
At the highest level, designers are visionaries whose ability to envision novel ways of seeing and doing can help society break free of destructive and toxic cycles of behavior. Designers are especially proficient at reading a complex situation and identifying several different approaches to intervening in that situation. As such, they are particularly needed in the realm of policy-making. Though we do not propose that designers must necessarily themselves design policy, their unique ability to find innovative solutions to complex problems would be a breath of fresh air in what is often viewed as a stuffy and stagnant political atmosphere.

Our systems of government and politics are the foundations that nearly all other aspects of our lives rely on. Without a healthy, resilient, and robust political system that ensures the safety and wellbeing for all people, transitions to more sustainable and more equitable futures lie on precarious footing. Leveraging the expertise and competencies they already have, designers can play an important role in correcting course and working towards political systems that truly represent the voice of the people. Our research has shown that helping designers identify intervention points within both their sphere of influence and sphere of concern can help overcome initial barriers and inspire them to act on social and political issues of personal significance. Given the importance and urgency of this work, an active pedagogical push to prepare and equip designers to design for political change is called for.