The Design Justice Project at MIT, founded and led by Madhurima Das, Anastasia K. Ostrowski, and Aditi Verma, is built upon recent scholarship from Sasha Constanza-Chock’s work, Design Justice, and the Design Justice Network that describes design justice as a framework for analysis of how design distributes benefits and burdens between various groups of people.
There are 5 current active research areas in the project team including:
- a syllabus design justice audit of MIT design courses
- an instructor survey to understand the barriers, opportunities and necessary resources for incorporating design justice into higher education
- literature reviews of several design fields, including engineering design, human-robot interaction, and human-computer interaction, to understand the presence of equity, ethics, and justice in these fields
- a Design Justice Pedagogy Summit to support instructors in incorporating design justice into their courses, departments, institutions, and fields through a peer-based community
- a study implementing design justice principles into engineering capstone design courses
For more information on our active research areas, you can read our blog post reflecting on the project.
Publications from this work include:
Madhurima Das, Gillian Roeder, Anastasia K. Ostrowski, Maria C. Yang, Aditi Verma, “What Do We Mean When We Write About Ethics, Equity, And Justice In Engineering Design?” ASME Journal of Mechanical Design, June 2023; 145(6): 061402. https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4057056.
Madhurima Das, Anastasia K. Ostrowski, Shelly Ben-David, Gillian J. Roeder, Kimberley Kimura, Catherine D’Ignazio, Cynthia Breazeal, Aditi Verma, “Auditing Design Justice: The Impact of Social Movements on Design Pedagogy at a Technology Institution,” Design Studies, May 2023, Volume 86, 101183. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2023.101183
Anastasia K. Ostrowski, Kanokwan Tungkitkancharoen, Madhurima Das, Catherine D’Ignazio, Cynthia Breazeal, Maria C. Yang, Christina Harrington, & Aditi Verma, “Design Justice in HCI: A Literature Review of Equity and Justice,” in preparation for ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2024
Madhurima Das, Anastasia K. Ostrowski, Gillian Roeder, Jana I. Saadi, Aditi Verma, Cynthia Breazeal, Catherine D’Ignazio, Maria Yang, “Intersections of Design Justice and Sustainability in Design Courses,” in preparation for Design Thinking Research Symposium 2024
Anastasia K. Ostrowski, Madhurima Das, Gillian Roeder, Jana I. Saadi, Christina Harrington, Aditi Verma, Cynthia Breazeal, Catherine D’Ignazio, Maria Yang, “Supporting Reflexivity and Action on Equity and Justice in Design Education: Insights from the Design Justice Pedagogy Summit,” in preparation for Design Thinking Research Symposium 2024
Jana I. Saadi, Madhurima Das, Gillian Roeder, Anastasia K. Ostrowski, Stella Lee, Marina Santos, Cynthia Breazeal, Catherine D’Ignazio, Maria C. Yang, Aditi Verma, “Incorporating Social, Policy, and Ethical Considerations in Engineering and Design Education: An Examination of Barriers and Resources,” ASME IDETC-CIE Conference, Design Theory and Methodology (DTM) Division, August 2023
Anastasia K. Ostrowski, Jennifer Zhang, Madhurima Das, Cynthia Breazeal, Catherine D’Ignazio, Aditi Verma, Maria Yang, “Design justice strategies for design education,” ASME IDETC-CIE Conference, Design Theory and Methodology (DTM) Division, August 2023
Madhurima Das, Jana I. Saadi, Marina Santos, Gillian Roeder, Anastasia K. Ostrowski, Stella Lee, Cynthia Breazeal, Catherine D’Ignazio, Maria Yang, Aditi Verma, “How and Why Instructors Include and Exclude Social, Policy, and Ethical Considerations in Design Education,” International Conference on Engineering Design, July 2023.
Madhurima Das, Gillian Roeder, Anastasia K. Ostrowski, Maria C. Yang, Aditi Verma, “What Do We Mean When We Write About Ethics, Equity, And Justice In Engineering Design?” ASME IDETC-CIE Conference, Design Theory and Methodology (DTM) Division, August 2022
Madhurima Das, Anastasia K. Ostrowski, Shelly Ben-David, Gillian J. Roeder, Kimberley Kimura, Catherine D’Ignazio, Cynthia Breazeal, Aditi Verma, “Auditing Design Justice: The Impact of Social Movements on Design Pedagogy at a Technology Institution,” Design Thinking and Research Symposium 13, March 2022. Selected as one of the top 5 papers at the conference
Anastasia K. Ostrowski, Rachael Walker, Madhurima Das, Shelly Ben-David, Maria C. Yang, Cynthia Breazeal, Hae Won Park, Aditi Verma, “Ethics, Equity, & Justice in Human-Robot Interaction: A Review and Future Directions,” 31st IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, August 2022, Italy