Presentation given at the DotGov 2021 conference, on the topic of "Ceding Power in Design." Designers yield a lot of power in their role as they hold the key to methodology and solutions, which allows them to influence research and design outcomes—through ownership of the process, access to people and information, the ability to assign validity and value to findings and ideas, as well as authorship and praise. This talk introduces three critical moments that designers typically create and maintain asymmetrical power relations: (1) the relationship between designer and community; (2) the exchange and distribution of benefits of the design process; and (3) the framing of conclusions and outcomes. Drawing from critical feminist, Indigenous, anti-oppressive, and resistance-oriented research texts and using a case study that translated lessons from those texts into the design process, this talk will support attendees in building their capacity to recognize power differentials and, ultimately, cede power.

1. Ceding Power in Design
Sarah Fathallah
DotGov Design Conference, May 2021

2. I sit on the territory of Huichin, part of the traditional,
ancestral, unceded territory of the Lisjan Ohlone, who are
still here, and continue to live on this land, despite a history
of erasure, forced removal, and genocide of Indigenous
peoples. I recognize that I have benefited and continue to
benefit from the seizure and occupation of this land.
2 of 46

3. “We have to get specific and discuss
how the contemporary design culture
wields power, and innovators have to
recognize specifically how they wield
power in their everyday lives.”
— Pierce Gordon, How Innovators Wield Power, 2021
3 of 46

4. 1. Naming power
2. Exerting power
3. Ceding power
4 of 46

5. 1. Naming power
2. Exerting power
3. Ceding power
5 of 46

6. Do designers really hold power?
Yes, they do.
6 of 46

7. Do designers really hold power?
Designers hold the key to methodology and solutions through:
● Ownership of the process
● Access to people
● Access to information
● Ability to assign validity/value to findings/ideas
● Ability to determine outcomes
● Authorship, credit, awards, and recognition
● Lack of accountability
● Many more!
7 of 46
Chicago Beyond, Why Am I Always Being Researched?, 2019 (modified)

8. If design is participatory, then
power is distributed, right?
No, not really.
8 of 46

9. If design is participatory, then
power is distributed, right?
Being participatory = engaging more people in the process.
≠ ceding power to them.
9 of 46

10. Ways you can interact with others
while upholding dominant
interaction patterns:
● Tolerance
● Objectification
● Assimilation
● Authority
● Objectivity
● Accumulation
● Certainty
10 of 46
Cyndi Suarez, The Power Manual: How to Master Complex Power Dynamics, 2018

11. 2. Exerting power
11 of 46

12. “[There are three dimensions of power in research:]
"(1) power difference stemming from different
positionalities of the researcher and the researched;
(2) power exerted during the research process, such
as defining the research relationship, unequal
exchange, and exploitation; and (3) power exerted
during the postfieldwork period—writing and
representing."
— Nancy A. Naples, Feminism and Method:
Ethnography, Discourse Analysis, and Activist
Research, 2013
12 of 46

13. Where is power exerted?
Designers typically create and maintain asymmetrical power
relations in three critical dimensions:
1. Relational positionality
2. Distribution of benefits
3. Influence on outcomes
13 of 46

14. 2. Exerting power
2.1. Relational positionality
14 of 46

15. Reflection prompt
15 of 46
John Horton, “Centering Reflexivity, Positionality and Autoethnographic Practices
in Creative Research,” Creative Methods for Human Geographers, 2021 (modified)
Look at the following list of people, one by one. Imagine you’re going to do
an interview with this person today. How would you feel about it, on a scale
from ‘very relaxed’ to ‘massively anxious’? Why is this?
The CEO of a
multinational
corporation
A 5-year old girl
An undergraduate
student
The survivor of
violent harm
A houseless person
A neurodivergent
young person with
learning disabilities
An internationally
renowned DJ
A recently arrived
Syrian refugee
An LGBTQIA+ activist
A terminally ill
hospital patient

16. Reflection prompt
16 of 46
Now consider the following list of spaces, one by one. How easy (practically
and emotionally) would it be for you to access this space, on a scale from
‘pretty easy’ to ‘super difficult’? Why is this?
A local high school
A playground for
young people with
sensory impairments
A refuge for families
experiencing
domestic violence
A juvenile detention
center
A busy nightclub
during pride festival
A hospital ward
A care home for
people later in life
A Muslim cemetary
A death metal
concert
An Ivy league college
John Horton, “Centering Reflexivity, Positionality and Autoethnographic Practices
in Creative Research,” Creative Methods for Human Geographers, 2021 (modified)

17. “[Scholars] have proposed reflexivity as an essential
methodological strategy because it enables us to
examine the ways in which our own values, identities,
and positionality affect our research, and particularly
our relationships with participants [and to think]
through the power differentials that operate at
various stages of the research process.”
— Susan Strega and Leslie Brown, “From Resistance
to Resurgence”, Research as Resistance: Revisiting
Critical, Indigenous, and Anti-Oppressive
Approaches, 2005
17 of 46

18. Some questions to ask oneself...
● What aspects of my identity have the strongest effect on how
participants might perceive me?
● What are the dynamics between my background, history, and
identity and theirs?
● How does my expertise as a designer contend with lived experience
of the participants?
● Does a third-party dictate the terms of the engagement? If so,
how might inequities be addressed?
● How do the participants’ values, goals, intentions, objectives,
or expectations conflict with my own? How will I address
situations where our views conflict?
18 of 46
Hajira Qazi, Power & Participation: A Guidebook To Shift Unequal Power
Dynamics In Participatory Design Practice, 2018 (modified)

19. 2. Exerting power
2.2. Distribution of benefits
19 of 46

20. “Many design approaches that are supposedly more
inclusive, participatory, and democratic actually serve
an extractive function. [...] In most design processes,
the bulk of the benefits end up going to the
professional designers and their institutions.
Products, patents, processes, credit, visibility, fame:
the lion’s share goes to the professional design firms
and designers.”
— Sasha Costanza-Chock, Design Justice:
Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We
Need, 2020
20 of 46

21. Inequitable
distribution of
material
resources
● Non-reimbursed
incurred expenses
● Opportunity cost
● Non-existent or
insufficient
compensation and/or
incentives
21 of 46
● Extracted knowledge
● No communications
on outcomes
● Non-existent or
insufficient
capacity building
and/or skills
sharing
● Fatigue
● Emotional toll
● Non-existent or
insufficient
trauma-informed
approaches to
research and design
Inequitable
exchange of
knowledge
Inequitable
exposure to
potential harm

22. Reflection prompt
Thinking about a recent design project interaction...
Yourself
(or your team)
A design participant
(or their community)
How much was each party paid?
How much did each party share or disclose?
What did each party have to give up to be able to show up to this interaction?
What did each party risk by showing up to this interaction?
How much support did each party have if something went wrong leading up
to, during, or after this interaction?
22 of 46

23. 2. Exerting power
2.3. Influence on outcomes
23 of 46

24. “Conclusions have a particular power in that they are
the construction of knowledge that leads to
recommendations and actions. [...] How conclusions
are constructed, therefore, has particular impact on
how the audience will take up the research in their
own lives.”
— Karen L. Potts and Leslie Brown, “Becoming an
Anti-Oppressive Researcher,” Research as
Resistance: Revisiting Critical, Indigenous, and
Anti-Oppressive Approaches, 2005
24 of 46

25. Some questions to ask oneself...
● What decisions are being made on final outcomes, and who is
assessing success and relevance?
● How will the design process be wrapped up?
● How will final decisions and evaluations be made, and what
unspoken norms, beliefs, and assumptions are influencing this?
25 of 46
Maya Goodwill, A Social Designer’s Field Guide to Power Literacy, 2020

26. Reflection prompt
26 of 46
Thinking about a recent
design project that wrapped
up, where would you place…?
● Yourself
● The person you report to
● The institution funding
this work
● Design participants
● The communities your
design is meant to serve
Most influential in your
project outcomes
Least influential in your
project outcomes
In opposition of your
project outcomes
In support of your
project outcomes

27. 3. Ceding power
27 of 46

28. Where should power be ceded?
If we are intentional about ceding power, we need to do it
in a way that challenges where communities have been
traditionally kept out of power in research and design:
1. Relational positionality
2. Distribution of benefits
3. Influence on outcomes
28 of 46

29. “There are both supremacist and liberatory ways to
act out power. [...] Power is relational; it plays out in
internations. Therefore, useful liberation practices
focus on effective interactions—in which we seek
mutuality and egalitarian interactions.”
— Cyndi Suarez, The Power Manual: How to Master
Complex Power Dynamics, 2018
29 of 46

30. 30 of 46
Dominance Mutuality

31. “With a few exceptions, participants should be
compensated. Not only does compensation make
research fairer, it also makes it easier to recruit
participants and facilitate trust, especially in
vulnerable communities.”
— Alba N. Villamil, The Ethical Researcher’s
Checklist, 2021
31 of 46

32. 32 of 46
Extraction Resource
sharing

33. “Community-engaged practice displaces the power of
the institution by strengthening the agency of
communities.”
— Esther Anatolitis, “The Role of the Institution,”
The Relationship is the Project: Working with
Communities, 2020
33 of 46

34. 34 of 46
Unjust
control Agency

35. 3. Ceding power
A case study.
35 of 46

36. Away From Home: Youth’s Experiences of
Institutional Placements in Foster Care
36 of 46
● Design research project with Think Of Us to understand the experiences,
mental models, and opinions of young people with recent experience living
in institutional placements in foster care in the U.S.
● The study relied on a combination of individual, semi-structured, in-depth
interviews with current and former foster youth, as well as digital
cultural probes with current and former foster youth with open ended
prompts and participatory activities given to participants to respond to
asynchronously, using a variety of formats.
● Ultimately, this was to center lived experience in the design of a
campaign, policy, or other action to reduce and/or eliminate the use of
institutional placements in foster care.

37. 3. Ceding power
3.1. Non-hierarchical ways
of working
37 of 46

38. Ways to counter dominance behaviors
when interacting with young people...
38 of 46
● We centered lived experience in the project team. Of the project team of 7
people, 6 teammates had experience in child welfare, 3 had experience being
in foster care, and 2 had experienced living in institutional placements
specifically.
● We involved members of the research team in recruiting and scheduling to
build a relationship with young people as early as possible.
● Team members with affinity to the young people we engaged with were holding
relationships, leading interviews, and tracking participants’ affects,
others were taking notes, manning tech, and managing compensation and other
logistics.

39. 3. Ceding power
3.2. Compensation and
resource sharing
39 of 46

40. ● We compensated young people on par with team members (~$130 per hour),
both for participating in the research as well as providing a lived
expert peer review (more on that later).
● We had a dedicated person checking in with participants before, on the
day of, during, and after the research to ensure young people felt
comfortable and had the support they needed to share their story if they
chose to do so.
● We provided referral paths to life affirming services and additional
resources, including for food and housing, through a resident clinical
supervisor (MA, LCMHC, CRC).
Ways to improve the material conditions
of young people...
40 of 46

41. ● When relying on specific tech platforms (e.g., Miro) for participants to
use during design research and/or the lived expert peer review, we
offered to skill young people up on how to use them (both live and during
optional “office hours”).
● After writing the first draft of the research report, we went back to
each young person who contributed a digital cultural probe artifact
(e.g., poem, drawing, photograph, etc.) to check in on whether or not
they wanted to credit their work publicly, and offered them language to
reference their contributions in their resumes or portfolios.
Ways to improve the material conditions
of young people...
41 of 46

42. 3. Ceding power
3.3. Agency, transparency,
and choice
42 of 46

43. ● We organized an open call for participation through youth advisory boards
and community partners.
● We were clear in the recruitment language about expectations for how many
young people would participate and on which basis they would be selected.
● We created and published a transparency memo video around the participant
recruiting process once participants were selected, to explain why some
were selected and others were not.
● We framed the informed consent process using the language of a “Bill of
Rights” that youth in foster care are familiar with and know they can
enforce.
Ways to give young people opportunities
to make choices for themselves...
43 of 46

44. ● We offered multiple ways for young people to connect, whichever felt more
comfortable, private, and safe. If video conferencing was being used,
allowing people to choose whether they want to have video on/off, both
for them and for the research team.
● We provided young people with opportunities for refusal throughout
interviews, including by stating upfront which topics were to be
discussed, and prefacing each transition to check in whether they wanted
to talk about each topic or not.
● We gave young people the option to choose between the different digital
cultural probes (which we called “exercises”) and do as little or as many
as they wanted.
Ways to give young people opportunities
to make choices for themselves...
44 of 46

45. ● We facilitated a lived expert peer review process after synthesizing the
data and writing the first draft of the report to invite research
participants to (1) correct, nuance, and react to what we heard, as well
as (2) offer options for what we should do with that data next.
● We also invited a board of people with lived experience in institutional
placements to read and review the report, support in the framing of
conclusions and recommendations from the study, provide guidance on how
to incorporate comments from research participants, and decide on how to
package and disseminate the study’s findings in a way that would support
their own advocacy or other objectives.
Ways to give young people opportunities
to make choices for themselves...
45 of 46

46. This is not a checklist of things to do.
This is an invitation to build the critical
discernment you need to name the
power you exert as a designer, and find
ways to cede it to those who will be most
affected by your work.
46 of 46

47. Thank you!
Feel free to connect:
@sft7la