Resources

Ann Light and Rosemary Luckin

The full version of this report is available to download in pdf format – see box below. On this page you'll find the report's introduction.

Introduction

This review provides an introduction to the concept of social justice and the practices of user-centred design (UCD), looking at how theories for changing the world marry up with methods to implement these changes. It then explores the potential role of technology-enhanced learning (TEL) within this framework.

Social justice and user-centred design, however, do not constitute a single coherent area of research to be neatly corralled into a literature review. Indeed, several broad and fascinating literatures abut one other within this theme and the act of choosing salient matters to describe or exclude is a difficult one. We acknowledge omission of hundreds of interesting projects and approaches in choosing an overview of the related fields and presenting how they relate to each other. Where necessary, we have pointed the reader to resources that we hope will make up for this limitation.

As such, we have focused on design as a political activity – that is, involving the organisation of relationships between different groups of people – so that we can consider how these relationships affect the design of political tools, particularly those involving technology such as those intended to help change behaviour or redistribute resources. We have chosen this focus as we believe that how you design will have an impact on what you design, though not necessarily in a straightforward or simply determined fashion. Bijker (2006) points out that no technology is without some politics of its own in how it might configure certain activities and how it is actually used.

The core of this review is divided into sections on social justice, the act of designing and the nature of user-centred design, wrapping up with a discussion of how this applies in the field of technology-enhanced learning. Throughout, we make the argument that user-centred design can be a particularly apt form of designing to apply to social justice projects, and also that the more participative forms of UCD offer the most educative potential and are often also the best fit for social change projects.

Overview

The first section introduces the concept of social justice, examining the contested nature of ‘justice’ and the multiple views of what constitutes social justice. It notes that the scale of changes needed to create social justice is too great a challenge for any single set of tools and techniques. Instead, tools and techniques might better be viewed as supporting the more tangible and immediate goals of human rights, dignity and wellbeing.

Social justice is the formal expression of the feeling that the world does not treat all people fairly and that society should be made fairer. As French philosopher Paul Ricoeur tells it, we are all “aiming at the good life with and for others in just institutions” (1992).

In the 20th century concepts of social justice became dominant and recent activities in Britain and Europe, such as the launch of a Commission on Social Justice (1994), suggest that it will continue to guide policy through the next generation. Social justice is an interventionist standpoint, in that it seeks to reorganise society’s resources and structures to create a fairer social order. Thus, a social justice standpoint entails some form of design activity, since it requires ideas of a better society to be turned into actual structures and systems.

We review John Rawls’ contribution to the philosophy of social justice, and contrast this with Utilitarian philosophy. We discuss the tension created, for philosophers and designers alike, by the fact that all members of society do not need or desire the same things and show how changing society to be fairer can be seen as a design challenge. In exploring ways to meet this challenge, we advocate an approach to design that potentially includes all members of society, including the most vulnerable. This position arises from a belief that the act of participating in social change itself is likely to address social justice issues and lead to systems that do not simply reproduce the status quo.

Turning to look at the process of designing, we show how there are multiple views of what constitutes ‘design’ and the act of designing. There are also varying opinions as to who can participate in the process of designing, from a ‘Romantic’ view that sees design as the preserve of individuals with special gifts, to an ‘engineering’ view that sees design as facilitated by particular professional processes and systems, to a more ‘situated’ view that suggests certain contexts support design best. We discuss the role of the design’s ‘users’, examining the key arguments about whether, at what stage and in what role, users should be involved in the design process. We argue that a design approach that allows for the possibility for everyone to be involved is more egalitarian than one which believes only in exclusive talents or professional systems. However, in two examples of how social projects were designed, we show that different types of design problem require different processes and that no one design process fits all projects.

The concept of user-centred design[1] (UCD) is considered in the following chapter. It can, for example, simply mean that some attention has been paid to gathering users’ requirements; or it can mean treating all participants as contributing their particular knowledge and skills, moving away from the traditional differentiation between the status of those who use and those who build the design. There are two motivations for employing a UCD approach: the business case for a better-designed end-product and the social case for a more equitable approach to designing. The former may not produce outcomes that enhance wellbeing.

Social and equitable motives drive more inclusive styles of working, including ‘participative design’ approaches in which users and professional designers have a more equal say in taking design decisions. Effective participative design can lead to a greater understanding of the design process by all, with participants becoming more skilled in design processes, and, through their participation, learning more about their own potential agency. However, participative design processes are more difficult to handle than designer-driven procedures and usually take longer. Despite these challenges, the value of a participative design process is clear and its potential for benefits beyond the design of outcomes or products should not be underestimated.

In our consideration of technology-enhanced learning (TEL) we focus upon two aspects of TEL with particular relevance to a social justice agenda. First, the way that technology can be used to recognise and address everyone’s differences, including the needs and desires of minority groups. Second, the way in which it can be used to enable more people to communicate, socialise, join in debates and play a greater role in society. Towards the end of the review we turn our attention to the growth of participatory technologies, often termed ‘Web 2.0’, that can enable learners to take more control of their learning. However we also note the tension between individual and social needs. So, whilst technologies may enable more people to participate in debates about social reform, if they only focus on their own needs and desires, their contributions to the debate may not reflect the needs of society as a whole.

The synthesis suggests that this tension between the individual and the social is just one of many challenges that we need to address as we move towards an increasingly networked society where more people can be part of the design process, but in which the outcomes being designed are increasingly complex.

This publication is partnered by a practical handbook; Designing Educational Technologies for Social Justice.

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