Looking at design through the political lens

17th April 2020
This *snippet* stopped me from ranting on Twitter to my minimal followers.
BTW, follow me there: @fraeji




Design affects every waking moment of our day, from our coffee machines grinding in the morning to pushing open the door of your office, to the system of voting and paying taxes in your country. These designs unequivocally affect how people behave in a society, often embodying roles of power and authority in everyday life.

What then must be studied is the importance of whether design is inclusive for everybody and how exactly it can be used to alter and influence behaviour and solve problems. Langdon Winner describes this fact as obvious that the various technological, industrial and communication designs are made a certain way that changes the power and experience of citizenship. In his book Design as Politics, Tony Fry notes that changing the status quo can either be done by choice or by prefigured intent, which in its essence is design itself. Political activists and designers must work together to tackle political and sociological problems by ultimately changing the design of society itself. For example, we cannot tackle problems such as voter fraud without understanding the design of voting systems, computational data and the physical design of voting regulations for citizens.

Not only is design a way of showing and exercising social and political power over individuals invisibly, it manifests itself as an indicator of status and societal alignment in its material body. Design should be made in a way that everybody can understand and use as to be inclusive for every citizen. Going back to the subject of voting and design, as an example, it is clearly a design flaw that many States in the US require the proof of a passport or driver’s license in order to cast a vote. This system is not inclusive for many citizens, for example people of colour in poorer communities who are statistically overrepresented in these social groups. Not everybody can afford a passport or be physically able to acquire a driver’s license, therefore leaving out a significant portion of those who should constitutionally be free to exercise their democratic right.
In short, design should add to public value and is fundamentally about value creation. Political science considers and examines the processes of behaviour, structure of society and strategy, all of which cannot be understood without breaking apart and examining the design behind each. When one thinks of design, it is usually attributed to a physical thing or product and not enough about the invisible machine behind each human and political interaction.