Intersectional Design Cards: Exploring intersecting social and environmental factors across four levels of design

Abstract

Tackling complex social justice and sustainability challenges through design calls for a more comprehensive understanding of a design context. This involves encouraging designers and non-designers alike to work together to recognise the implications of designing ‘beyond a product’. This article explores what this approach might entail, reflecting upon the development of a design tool called the ‘Intersectional Design Cards’. This card-based design activity has been created to address multiple, interacting social and environmental inequities and inequalities, largely in the designing of emerging technologies in Silicon Valley. The cards have been made primarily for professional design and technology teams and start-up companies – but could also be used in other educational or social innovation contexts. They have been produced by team researchers, educators and practitioners who teach together on the ‘Innovations in Inclusive Design’, spring quarterly, ten-week class, at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school), Stanford University, the United States. The article reflects upon how writing and mapping have played a part in integrating intersectionality research and design thinking, and shares examples of how the cards have been prototyped and tested with students, to develop intersectional design concepts across four levels of designing.