To properly understand this word and how we can apply to other contexts, we will begin by defining justice and design. Design is the implementation of an activity which results in a product. Designs satisfy goals and consider constraints. Justice is the philosophical concept used to describe the principle in which people receive what they deserve. This usually entails categorising goods and evils. So, design justice must then mean the designing of a product or the process of designing a product in which the designer considers the effects of their product on society.
The internet is a product consisting of the creation and transfer of data often through algorithms (see my blog about URLs and Metadata for more). We have become so used to the internet that we don’t often stop to think about who is creating the things we see and how that might affect our perception of the world.
According to Birhane et al. (2019) “algorithmic tools embed and perpetuate societal and historical biases and injustice […because] any tool we create and deploy is intimately tied with the nature of being and morality.” In other words, the things we create will reflect the biases we have, even if we don’t realise it, and those biases could cause injustices to occur. For example, in products, we might forget to design for people with disabilities because we ourselves are not surrounded by it. This creates an exclusion of a group of people from using your product.
So where does the content we see on the internet come from? Evidence from Graham et al. (2016) would suggest that most of the content on the internet is made and shared by the global north. This predominantly consists of North America, Europe and Asia. When one group of people are able to control the knowledge system in a society, then their views and narratives are pushes onto everyone else.
In the age of information, being able to connect to the internet is a valuable even necessary resource to have. However, according to Tataki et al. (2020), 50% or about 830 million of students who needed access to these facilities to study, did not have access to a computer. This digital divide emphasises how disproportionately vulnerable people are affected.
Designing justly will mean that we have to start including more varieties of people when we are creating products! The more perspectives one has, the better it can be and the better it can serve society.