UX Methods as Transformative Institutional Change: Stacey Abrams’ Georgia Campaign as a Formative Example

Abstract

The article contends with the idea that User Experience Design (UXD and UX) approaches can be used to create institutional and organizational change, not just within the digital realm to develop products and services for individuals. Incorporating the rhetorical methodology of institutional critique and adding intersectional complexity as a critical framework to drive our analysis, the authors examine Stacey Abrams’ 2016 gubernatorial campaign in Georgia and continued voting rights work as a formative example to showcase how creating civic change against Eurocentric tendencies happens at the interpersonal, structural, and institutional levels. The article’s purpose is to signify that UXD can create institutional change when informed by direct participation of people most impacted by the laws, policies, and legislation (products and services developed by particular bodies) and historic and embodied knowledge of systemic oppression, which happens most effectively when also providing accessible and tangible support to those who do not have access to resources people need to participate. The key hope of the authors in writing this piece is that it will help professional communicators and those outside communication fields consider ways UX methods can engage in transformative institutional change.