Equity-centered design: Going beyond “HCD”

Apr 1

Written By MCV

Most of us who work in the design field, whether as researchers, designers, or strategists, are familiar with what’s called human-centered design, or HCD. We center our work on humans and human needs, typically the needs of individuals.

Like others in my field, my day-to-day work is rooted in HCD, but my personal motivator is to remove structural barriers, often for students, teachers, and employees. For that work, I lean on equity design or equity-centered design.

First, what is human-centered design?

The idea behind human-centered design is that organizations create better products and services when they focus on the wants and needs of people who will be using those products and services.

The premise is that companies are more successful, overall, when they focus on bottom-up or outside-in learning rather than top-down solutioning. When for-profit companies do this kind of work, they typically focus on individual humans, or more specifically, individual consumers.

How is equity design (or equity-centered design) different?

Equity design is human-centered design that aims not just to create sellable products to individual consumers but to create equitable outcomes for communities that have been historically disenfranchised or oppressed. It focuses on changing full systems.

Equity-centered approaches typically rely on participatory research and design methods. These methods honor the worldviews, lived experiences, and needs of the people that are most impacted by what is being designed. Equity-centered research and design place these people at the center of the process.

Additionally, equity-centered design often includes moments of historical education and truth-sharing, where communities can openly acknowledge ways in which mainstream policies and practices have caused harm and injustices.

Finally, equity-centered design typically gives knowledge that’s been gathered back to the communities who have shared their voices, ideas, and knowledge. In contrast to for-profit practices that use research for competitive advantage, equity-centered research practitioners typically share reports, documentation, or synthesized ideas directly with the communities who contributed to the research. It’s their knowledge; it belongs to them.

When to advocate for an equity-centered approach

Many companies want to “do good,” have a “triple bottom line,” or build in anti-racist policies. If they’re using market-centered rather than equity-centered approaches to do this work, they may miss the mark: trying to expand market share by targeting BIPOC customers (a common strategy among many brands that claim to prioritize inclusion) isn’t quite the same as aiming to change social structures.

Equity-centered design, in contrast to market-based approaches, aims to help organizations and individual changemakers more effectively remove structural barriers and innovate for meaningful social change.

If you’re working in the fields of “social innovation” (whether for- or non-profit), education, workforce development, employee systems, sustainability/climate, or healthcare—or at any company that looks considers demographics when creating a strategy—consider orienting toward an equity-centered approach to unlock value and healing for the people and communities you’re serving.