Designing for the Black Experience

"...But I think so often just the culture of research requires us to lead with a problem. If you're gonna do a project, what is the problem that you're solving? And if you're looking within these communities, that then draws on defining us by the most deficit-based, most damage-centered narrative that we can possibly think of. And how much harm does that do ultimately when folks already don't see themselves in our field, in our praxis? How many people are we turning away because it's like, "Well, if I want to be a Black designer or a Black design researcher, I'm really only going to be talking about my own communities and my own folks by what they lack and where they don't meet white standards, and how their literacy is this, or their proficiency is that, or in what ways can we solve gun violence with tech." And yeah, those are things that may need to be addressed on some level, but also, like…" (Interactions, September/October 2021)

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