Best practices are not enough when designing for change
Best practices and guidelines around accessibility, inclusion and equity exist to guide decision-making in design— for instance, ensuring colors for text and iconography meet minimum color contrast ratios to enhance the accessibility of our designs.
But what if you're in a situation where the best practice doesn't apply to your situation? Where the best practice needs nuance and context for you to know how to apply it? Or where the best practice doesn't even exist?
Relying on generalized best practices and guidelines can only take us so far. As Jess Mons and Lindsey Brinkworth explain in this dscout article on gender inclusive design, moving away from binary gender options of "male" and "female" in forms isn't as simple as adding a third "Other" option.
Where reflexivity comes into the picture
That's where reflexivity comes into the picture. You may be asking yourself, reflexi-what? I define reflexivity as bringing in a layer of critical reflection and systems thinking to your design and research work.
In the simplest of terms, think of it as a set of keys. These keys will help you open doors to more nuanced understanding of repeated patterns in our beliefs, behaviors and decisions that lead us to inequitable outcomes. And they'll help reveal interconnected passageways that exist between you, your organization and systems around you, such as systems of power and privilege.
Reflexivity can help lead us to more equitable outcomes because it challenges us to analyze, question and course-correct our way there.
Discernment: one practice of reflexivity
Discernment is a practice that can take us from simply "applying" social change practices to actually embodying them and integrating them into our work.
According to Merriam-Webster, being discerning means "to detect with our senses" or "to come to know or recognize mentally."
In design, I define discernment as a practice that allows us to view and evaluate our design work through a spectrum of oppression and liberation. I've illustrated an example of this spectrum below (which you'll unpack in detail in The Grove: Foundations of Design Changemaking).
For instance, simply applying a best practice around color contrast isn't going to get us very far in breaking down access barriers if we're not discerning about the different ways that ableism (bias or discrimination against disabled people) shows up in our design process.
Discernment will help you better detect bias, harm and other patterns of oppression in many aspects within and outside of the design process — as well as identify what's leading to positive outcomes (so you can keep doing it!).
Discernment in practice
Let's took at one example — say you're looking to design for more diverse users. You decide to use Cards of Humanity, built by Frog Design.
The cards are well-intentioned — they're built to help you imagine needs and pain points of a wider variety of users with "person" and "trait" cards.
But they are presented without sociocultural context or any guidance or critical reflection on their use. They lead us to "guess" what marginalized and underserved folks needs based on limited information. They simplify complex people and lived experiences down into 2-3 generalized sentences.
While they can serve as an entry point to thinking about exclusion, we can't simply "brainstorm" our way to equitable outcomes. We have to make sense of the interconnected patterns and systems that give rise to inequitable outcomes. And we must engage in meaningful ways with the communities most impacted by inequity.
What's next
Want to see how you can bring discernment into your design practice? Check out The Grove: Foundations of Design Changemaking, a deep learning experience that helps you build the groundwork for designing for social and environmental change.
