Jahan Mantin

Are you energized by the possibility of creating equitable products, services and content? Are you interested in being a more intentional designer? Are you committed to racial equity? As designers, you are trained to solve problems, but the pull of quickly doing/solving/redesigning can actually cause more harm. There are countless examples of racially biased practices that have resulted in biased algorithms in tech, so how might we interrogate existing design practices while revisioning what’s possible around technology and what equitable tech could look like?

In this multimedia and interactive Intro to Design for Diversity (D4D), students will be provided with critical thinking skills to begin to explore the complexities of designing for equity. This foundational course will support you in reframing how you are approaching these complex equity dilemmas by examining “who we are” as designers, interrogating root causes of inequity and shifting how we are relating to – and centering – the communities most impacted by structural racism. Through a combo of lectures, storytelling, exercises, group work, case studies and weekly assignments, you’ll engage with tools and practices to interrogate your thinking and design practices and processes at the personal, team, institutional and systemic levels, and explore possibilities to design for equity using key relational and strategic tools from our equity framework, D4D.