22 June 2022
Liberatory Design: Mindsets and Modes to design for equity
We are living in challenging times that our past experiences and training has not sufficiently prepared us for. Too often, well intentioned equity and design efforts do not succeed—and even produce unintended consequences. This can create frustration, hopelessness and cynicism. Liberatory Design was built for these times.
Liberatory Design is a creative problem-solving approach and practice that centers equity and supports us to design for liberation. It is made up of mindsets and modes. Mindsets invoke stances and values to ground and focus our design practice, and modes provide process guidance for our design practice. Liberatory Design generates self-awareness to liberate designers from habits that perpetuate inequity, shifts the relationship between the people who hold power to design and those impacted, fosters learning and agency for those involved in and influenced by the design work, and creates conditions for collective liberation.
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