The discriminatory design may occur when racial hierarchies are normalized (Benjamin, 2016). Specifically, discriminatory design can be defined as the result of a design process that amplifies hierarchies, explicitly ignores and replicates social divisions, or even if thought to correct biases, does the opposite (Benjamin, 2019). Additionally, standardizations – often key resources for the design process (e.g. in product design) – have the potential to create discriminatory processes and outputs due to their tendency to create averages, and universal ways to address a design solution without a comprehensive evaluation of the diversities (Costanza-Chock, 2020). Wittkower (2016) suggests adopting an anti-discriminatory design perspective to minimize the discriminatory design effects since it is impossible to design for all relevant users. Therefore, the author suggests (by generalizing Wittkower’s anti-discriminatory design principles) (i) seeking out diversity in teams and giving weight and respect to marginalized perspectives; (ii) engaging in systematic phenomenological variation to identify problem areas in the design; (iii) conducting population-wide and longitudinal diversity impact assessments of the potentially marginalised group; (iv) testing with diverse users by seeking out feedback related to their particular experiences from their particular social and physical embodiments; (v) keeping in mind that all this will not catch every problem, and when something goes wrong, prioritise the user perspective and suggestions and try to fix it.
Discriminatory design is an evolving, multidimensional concept that needs to be addressed from several points of view. In the Design Justice book, Sasha Costanza-Chock (2020) provides the paragraph “Discriminatory design” where it is possible to find multiple perspectives for understanding the complexity of this concept.
References
Benjamin, R. (2016). Catching our breath: Critical race STS and the carceral imagination. Engaging Science, Technology, and Society, 2, 145-156.
Benjamin, R. (2019). Race after technology: Abolitionist tools for the new Jim code. Polity Press.
Costanza-Chock, S. (2020). Design justice: community-led practices to build the worlds we need. MIT Press.
Wittkower, D. E. (2016). Principles of anti-discriminatory design. In 2016 IEEE International Symposium on Ethics in Engineering, Science and Technology (ETHICS) (pp. 1-7). IEEE.
