Making the Case for Actionable Prosocial Design Research

Prosocial Design Network

The Prosocial Design Network advocates for prosocial design: evidence-based design practices that bring out the best in human nature online.

Quality Scores – Prosocial Design Network

Increase engagement with high quality content

People, Not Feeds - transmissions from the atmosphere

How to move from addictive design to connective design

Platform Design: Interfaces, Incentives, Emergence & Second-Order Thinking

Platform design isn't just product design at scale. Learn the four concepts that set it apart—with a detailed Lego case study showing how great platforms enable creativity.

By Humans, For Humans – Mindful Design

Now, more than ever, we need to consider the real, human impact of the work we do. This is a fundamental principle of Mindful Design.

Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need

An exploration of how design might be led by marginalized communities, dismantle structural inequality, and advance collective liberation and ecological su

Read the Principles — Design Justice Network

Design mediates so much of our realities and has tremendous impact on our lives, yet very few of us participate in design processes. In particular, the people who are most adversely affected by design decisions — about visual culture, new technologies, the planning of our communities, or the structure of our political and economic systems — tend to have the least influence on those decisions and how they are made.

Design Justice

An exploration of how design might be led by marginalized communities, dismantle structural inequality, and advance collective liberation and ecological survival.

Design Justice

An exploration of how design might be led by marginalized communities, dismantle structural inequality, and advance collective liberation and ecological survival.

An introduction to radical participatory design: decolonising participatory design processes

Outside of community-led design projects, most participatory design processes initiated by a company or organisation maintain or even strengthen power imbalances between the design organisation and the community on whose purported behalf they are designing, further increasing the absencing experience. Radical participatory design (RPD) is a radically relational answer to the coloniality inherent in participatory design where the community members’ disappointment is greater due to the greater expectations and presencing potential of a ‘participatory design’ process. We introduce the term RPD to show how research and design processes can be truly participatory to the root or core. Instead of treating participatory design as a method, a way of conducting a method, or a methodology, we introduce RPD as a meta-methodology, a way of doing any methodology. We explicitly describe what participation means and compare and contrast design processes based on the amount of participation, creating a typology of participation. We introduce ‘designer as community member’, ‘community member as designer,’ and ‘community member as facilitator’ models and provide characteristics for the meta-methodology of RPD.

An introduction to radical participatory design: decolonising participatory design processes

Outside of community-led design projects, most participatory design processes initiated by a company or organisation maintain or even strengthen power imbalances between the design organisation and the community on whose purported behalf they are designing, further increasing the absencing experience. Radical participatory design (RPD) is a radically relational answer to the coloniality inherent in participatory design where the community members’ disappointment is greater due to the greater expectations and presencing potential of a ‘participatory design’ process. We introduce the term RPD to show how research and design processes can be truly participatory to the root or core. Instead of treating participatory design as a method, a way of conducting a method, or a methodology, we introduce RPD as a meta-methodology, a way of doing any methodology. We explicitly describe what participation means and compare and contrast design processes based on the amount of participation, creating a typology of participation. We introduce ‘designer as community member’, ‘community member as designer,’ and ‘community member as facilitator’ models and provide characteristics for the meta-methodology of RPD.

Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need

Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need

Holding Platforms Accountable Is Not Enough. We Need A ‘Compass’ For Social Technologies

This is the first series in the 21-22 Perspectives on Public Purpose blog.

Building Epistemically Healthier Platforms

When thinking about designing social media platforms, we often focus on factors such as usability, functionality, aesthetics, ethics, and so forth. Epistemic considerations have rarely been given the same level of attention in design discussions. This paper aims to rectify this neglect. We begin by arguing that there are epistemic norms that govern environments, including social media environments. Next, we provide a framework for applying these norms to the question of platform design. We then apply this framework to the real-world case of long-form informational content platforms. We argue that many current long-form informational content platforms are epistemically unhealthy. The good news? We provide concrete advice on how to take steps toward improving their health! Specifically, we argue that they should change how they verify and authenticate content creators and how this information is displayed to content consumers. We conclude by connecting this guidance to broader issues about the epistemic health of platforms.