Design Justice Network
Initially a membership growth initiative, the project evolved into an opportunity for honest organizational self-reflection, revealing structural challenges and uncovering uncharted opportunities for growth, alignment, and deeper engagement.
Partner: Design Justice Network
Year: 2020
Team: Alyson Fraser-Diaz, Dasha Zlochevsky, Leah Brown
Background
The Design Justice Network (DJN) is an international community of individuals and organizations committed to reimagining design processes so that they center people who are often marginalized by traditional approaches to design. The Network operates according to a collaboratively developed set of principles and envisions a future in which design fosters care, healing, liberation, joy, and deep sustainability.
The Steering Committee (SC)—DJN’s primary decision-making body, composed largely of founding members—approached us with an initial objective: to increase membership. This initiative was time-sensitive, as they hoped to leverage an upcoming major conference as a catalyst for growth.
Tools & Methods
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Deep Research
We employed a variety of research methods throughout the project, including interviews, surveys, communications audits, stakeholder mapping, persona development, future backcasting, market research, and competitive landscape analysis.
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Analysis, Synthesis & Insights
We used synthesis walls and clustering to distill key insights from the data. Some pointed to clear, actionable paths forward, while others required reconsideration of the project’s original goals.
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Pivoting & Reframing
A major challenge was the lack of internal alignment around goals, which led to multiple changes in direction. The COVID-19 pandemic further disrupted the project, necessitating a complete reframing of its scope and deliverables.
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Strategic Planning
Ultimately, we delivered a package of strategic engagement recommendations, reframing many of the project's challenges as opportunities for organizational reflection. This included a roadmap for sustainable growth.
Process
Our work began with extensive primary and secondary research. This included developing a stakeholder map, conducting in-depth interviews with members of the SC and broader DJN community, and distributing a survey to gather data on organizational structure and member engagement.
We also conducted a communications audit to evaluate DJN’s internal and external channels, and analyzed peer organizations in the design and justice space to better understand how similar networks manage engagement and membership.
Insights & Proposals
By making sense of all the information from the research phase, we concluded that many people, current and potential members, found DJN and The Principles to be inspiring. However, there was a lot of confusion as to how the network is structured and how/where to get involved and be active.
People also identified the website to be the main communication point to the network but found it hard to navigate.
We proposed design interventions that addressed these insights. They went from a communications strategy to activate and more efficiently use their digital platforms and channels (social media, slack), to improving the information architecture and language of the website, to investing in a membership portal, to an in-situ installation, to using some of the research methods we employed as tools to engage their members.
Challenges
When we presented the intervention ideas, it became clear that the lack of clarity that many members expressed feeling was also something that permeated the SC too. The goal of membership growth was not a realistic one for them since they didn't have the capacity to propel and sustain that growth at the moment. Improving the experience of membership and engagement felt more feasible for them, and they favored the in-situ installation idea.
But then, the pandemic hit, and life as we knew it changed. All the in-person events were canceled, including the conference they were looking to use as an amplifier and catalyst to (re)engage people.
All these circumstances forced us to reframe and rescope the project, from the problem statement to the goals to the final deliverables.
How might we grow a deeper connection between DJN's members to support their needs, while also building systems to make membership sustainable for the organization?
Outputs & Outcomes
Our final deliverables included proposals for engaging members in the context of the pandemic, as well as strategic recommendations for the longer term. These ranged from low-effort, immediately actionable steps to more ambitious initiatives requiring significant investments of time and resources.
The final package was organized into three key opportunity areas:
Storytelling Installation
DJN Zine
Strategic Recommendations Document
The recommendations document addressed the misalignments and communication challenges we encountered during the process. Rather than presenting them as roadblocks, we framed these issues as opportunities to ask critical questions about DJN’s internal capacity and organizational intentions. We offered a detailed roadmap for implementing, maintaining, and scaling the proposed interventions—should DJN choose to move forward with them.
“Feedback
Steering Member Committee
"We have deep gratitude for the work you have been doing in reflecting back to us what the shape of our network looks like from the perspective of people who aren't on the steering committee and that is really valuable to understand"
Steering Member Committee
"The strategic recommendations were extremely helpful, especially the questions you posed about intentions- we had kind of backed into membership as a way to earn money to sustain us. So the research and analysis have been extremely helpful in thinking about if membership is our priority."
Steering Member Committee