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the world has come to be. For example,
in developing a framework for social-
justice-oriented design work,
Dombrowski et al. argue against a
charity-based orientation. A focus on
providing aid can ultimately misdirect
resources, as it “ignore[s] the structural
inequalities that produce the need for
charity” in the first place [ 3]. This
commitment also foregrounds the
importance of how we frame our
research and design problems; the
questions we ask up front constrain the
kinds of solutions and interventions we
can later envision.
If we believe in the power of design to
have an impact on issues at a global
scale, then we must scale up our
understandings of the problems in
which we aim to intervene. This shift
requires an active resistance to what we
might think of as an “engineering” way
of thinking—an assessment of the
current state of the world, and
modularized design of a “solution” that
might make that current state of the
world more manageable. Instead, we
must ask why the state of the world is as
it is and keep asking why until we begin
to grasp the root causes of that problem.
Designing against the status quo means
setting our goals beyond the level of
ameliorating symptoms, and moving
more ambitiously toward design that
challenges underlying problems.
Commitment to history. Moving to
frame our design inquiries in terms of
underlying causes requires a renewed
commitment to engaging with history.
Understanding the whys of a particular
situation requires understanding the
histories that have sedimented into the
present moment. Historical inquiry is
an ally in seeking out strategic points of
intervention, weaknesses in the
structures of the status quo, and
opportune sites for alternative supports,
practices, and infrastructures.
Dislodging the sediment of the
present is a significant challenge but
also presents an opportunity for
reconfiguring our tools. The past is
multiply concretized in the present
day, in forms of speech, habits of
interaction, technical artifacts, and
expectations of other people and
technologies—a situation ripe for
methodological innovation, where we
might re-deploy familiar techniques
like ethnography and design thinking
in novel tandem arrangements with
historical inquiry [ 4]. Engaging with
history will go hand in hand with
continued work to reach out to new
disciplinary and methodological
spaces—in particular, to zones of
research and praxis in which scholars
and activists have been formulating
modes of resistance and tactics for
challenging the status quo.
Commitment to new disciplinary
engagements. HCI scholars have long
reached out to allied disciplines as the
field explores new ways of interacting
with or against technology. Most
recently, HCI scholars have begun
drawing inspiration from a discipline
The questions we ask
up front constrain
the kinds of solutions
and interventions we
can later envision.