Advocacy in Technology and Society/Design Justice + Creative Media

Topic Summary
For the topic of "Design Justice & Creative Media" students engaged with a presentation provided by Renata Gaui and Francesca Rodruiguez Sawaya on their experiences as women in the digital/design world. To prepare for this week's conversation, students read Design Justice, A.I., an Escape from the Matrix of Domination by Sasha Costanza-Chock.

CLICK HERE to watch Design Justice 101 with Sasha Costanza-Chock

Principles of Design Justice
1.    “We use design to sustain, heal, and empower our communities, as well as to seek liberation from exploitative and oppressive systems.”

2.    “We center the voices of those who are directly impacted by the outcomes of the design process.”

3.    “We prioritize design’s impact on the community over the intentions of the designer.”

4.    “We view change as emergent from an accountable, accessible, and collaborative process, rather than as a point at the end of a process.”

5.    “We see the role of the designer as a facilitator rather than an expert.”

6.    “We believe that everyone is an expert based on their own lived experience, and that we all have unique and brilliant contributions to bring to a design process.”

7.   “We share design knowledge and tools with our communities.”

8.    “We work towards sustainable, community-led and -controlled outcomes.”

9.    “We work towards non-exploitative solutions that reconnect us to the earth and to each other”

10.    “Before seeking new design solutions, we look for what is already working at the community level. We honor and uplift traditional, indigenous, and local knowledge and practices.”

(Costanza-Chock, 2018)

Lecture:"How craft led to the digital world we know"
Renata Gaui and Francesca Rodriguez Sawaya explored the connection between weaving, craft, and computational technologies in their presentation, "How Craft led to the Digital World we Know". Parallels between these two histories, namely the extreme perishability and/or the intentional erasure present in both, served as primary topics of the discussion. Further, "Warping the Future", an interactive exhibit co-curated by Gaui and Sawaya was summarized. The exhibit, inspired by the co-curators research around craft and technology, placed emphasis on recognizing women's distinct role throughout the histories of both domains of design and technology.

Artifacts Have Politics
Notes on: Design Justice, A.I., an Escape from the Matrix of Domination by Sasha Costanza-Chock.

In design justice there is acknowledgment for how our larger society's norms, values and assumptions become encoded and reproduced through the design of socio-technical data driven systems. This complex idea can be shown in concrete examples of individuals lived experiences. Imagine, for example, you are heading to the airport. Maybe you are taking a needed vacation or out on a business trip. The stress of making it through security and getting to your terminal on time are enough to make anyone sweat a little. However if you identify as cisgender and white the experiences afforded to you through TSA may be completely different to individuals of color, transgender, or non binary experience.

"TSA says it does not discriminate on the basis of gender identity, and that travelers will be treated with respect as members of whatever gender they present themselves as. But in fact, the "Automated Target Recognition" software used by body scanners is set up to police both binary sex and cisgender bodily expectations. Bodies that vary from these expectations set off alarms and are treated as potential terrorist threats."

Here, an individual further details their experience as a non binary person (assigned female at birth) going through the TSA scanner:

''"Since my gender presentation is nonbinary femme, usually the operator selects ‘female.’ However, the three dimensional contours of my body, at millimeter resolution, differ from the statistical norm of ‘female bodies’ as understood by the dataset and risk algorithm designed by the manufacturer of the millimeter wave scanner (and its subcontractors), and as trained by a small army of click workers tasked with labelling and classification (as scholars Lilly Irani and Nick Dyer-Witheford, among others, remind undefined). If the agent selects ‘male,’ my breasts are large enough, statistically speaking, in comparison to the normative ‘male’ body-shape construct in the database, to trigger an anomalous warning and a highlight around my chest area. If they select ‘female,’ my groin area deviates enough from the statistical ‘female’ norm to trigger the risk alert, and bright yellow pixels highlight my groin, as visible on the flat panel display. In other words, I can’t win."''

Individuals of color face similar discrimination and barriers going through TSA from things such as hair deviating from the societal "norm", therefore being flagged for additional security. These are few examples in one specific area of our life that culture values, norms, and assumptions get encoded into data sets to marginalize minority groups. However these values and assumptions are encoded into data sets way beyond TSA and effect the lives of many marginalized communities.

Community Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need
This article seeks to explore the complex and ever changing relationship between design, power, and social justice. By encouraging people of marginalized communities to have involvement in community-based social justice organizations on the global scale, to spearhead the movement of creating equity in the products and services created and distributed in the technology fields. This is a communal effort that will ultimately strengthen the relationship between technology and social justice, effectively making the argument that in order to create a world of ethical and sound technology, communities must unite in their advocacy to diversify fields and build a better world that works towards liberation and sustainability.

By centering the voices of marginalized individuals in the conception and maintenance of ethical and emerging technology, the hope is to continuously challenge structural and institutional inequalities that permeate into the world of technology and design professions. Having marginalized voices at the forefront of community efforts can ensure the collective liberation of all peoples living under the matrix of domination, which includes white supremacist hetero-patriarchy, ableism, capitalism, and settler colonialism". With the goal to improve the material conditions of all modern peoples under the existing systems of oppression, collective action steps must be taken to combat the existing inequity within the technology and design fields.

Advocacy in Design Justice & Creative Media
This presentation, and topic in general, prompts one to consider the exciting potential that rests among the crossover between the humanities and technology. While generally understood as separate domains, efforts such as those put forth by Renata Gaui and Francesca Rodriguez Sawaya prove there is amble possibilities for effective advocacy to manifest through efforts that emphasize both social and technological experiences and it's impact on culture(s). Moreover, this discussion illuminates the fruitful outcomes of technological efforts informed by human experience. This weeks readings illustrate the need for a social work lens to be present in the innovation and execution of socio-technical data driven systems. Ultimately, socio-technical data driven systems, such as TSA scanners, must be understood as technology informed by social schemas, as they are created by individuals living in an organized society. Thus, social workers, who can be understood as investigators of bias and stigma, could be effective resources in the effort to ensure such systems are widely accessible and maintain as minimal bias as possible.

Current and emerging technologies present challenges in society that reflect the current sociopolitical state of society. Issues of power, race, oppression, and privilege are reflected in the product design of the technologies available and accessible to the population. To combat a more ethical connection to technology, it is crucial to have individuals on the design team that are proportional to the users they aim to serve. Consulting with users, receiving and incorporating feedback, and employing a diverse advocacy team will call for a consistently improving relationship with technology.

Resources for Design Justice:
Podcast: Data & Society: https://datasociety.net/library/design-justice/

General resources: https://designjustice.org/resources-overview

Book: Designs for the Pluriverse, Arturo Escobar

Book: Design Justice, Sasha Costanza-Chock

Book: Emergent Strategy, Adrienne Maree Brown

Book: Race after technology: Abolitionist tools for the New Jim code, Benjamin Ruha

Book: Artificial unintelligence: how computers misunderstand the world, Meredith Broussard

Book: Design justice: community-led practices to build the worlds we need, Sasha Costanza-Chock

Book: Automating inequality: How high-tech tools profile, police, and punish the poor, Virginia Eubanks

Book: Value sensitive design: Shaping technology with moral imagination, Batya Friedman

Book: Mismatch: How Inclusion Shapes Design, Kat Holmes

Book: Algorithms of oppression: How search engines reinforce racism, Safiya Umoja Noble

Book: Participatory Design: Principles and Practices, Douglas Schuler

Annotated References
1. Costanza-Chock, S. (2018,July 16). ''Design Justice, A.I., and escape from the Matrix of Domination. Journal of Design and Science''. Journal of Design and Science. Retrieved April 25, 2022, from https://jods.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/costanza-chock/release/4 2. Costanza-Chock, S. (2020). Design Justice : Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need. MIT Press. 3.Costello, C. G. (1970, January 1). Traveling while trans: The false promise of better treatment. TransFusion. Retrieved April 25, 2022, from https://trans-fusion.blogspot.com/2016/01/traveling-while-trans-false-promise-of.html. 4. The Gottesman Libraries at Teachers College. (n.d.). Warping the future. Warping The Future.Retrieved April 25, 2022, from   http://www.warpingthefuture.online/