NOTE: This week I will be posting a series of follow-ups to Designing the Revolution, my initial response to Alix Rule’s The Revolution Will Not be Designed. At the end of the week, I’ll publish the essay in its entirety, complete with feedback to any comments made. Below is the third part of the series. You can the first part here, the second here, third here, and yesterday’s here.

So far, we’ve seen that we can ditch commercial clients and work for the betterment of livelihoods around the globe, and that if we work on multiple fronts at once, we’ll see that the issues we are concerned with are connected in complex ways. What, then, is the next step for concerned designers?

Always a problem, always a solution

Activist design can change not only the social role that designers play, but if we involve the community in our work, we’ll have a strong and direct impact. Our job is not to repair unjust systems, but to disrupt them and hand out the tools with which to skirt or dismantle them.

Socially conscious design is an phenomenon for activists to consider. Decentralized, organic, and social justice oriented, it has all the markings of a successful grassroots movement. One facet of design thinking that deserves particular attention is the small (but growing) area of participatory design. Particularly in the field of architecture, firms and design/build programs, have been joining hands with community design centers and service-based organizations to directly meet the needs of the communities they serve.

Architects achieve this level of direct input through town-hall style meetings, but other artists demonstrate that the approach doesn’t have to be nearly as pastoral, or even as orchestrated. The alternative reality game WorldWithoutOil.org imagined “the actual events of an oil shortage,” and challenged players to “document them and innovate solutions.” Of The World TV offers indie film and video promoting progressive activism, eco-consciousness, and humanitarianism through a personal and participatory framework. The upcoming and much talked about Pangea Day offers a similar platform.

These examples demonstrate that story telling and problem solving are almost always done best when whole communities are engaged, and this should appeal to the pragmatist designer and the idealist dreamer in all of us.

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