This book reflects the labor of a great many people. First, there would be no design justice theory or practice as we know it without years of work from the many Design Justice Network organizers, especially Una Lee, Victoria Barnett, Wes Taylor, Carlos (L05) Garcia, Nontsikelelo Mutiti, Adrienne Gaither, Taylor Stewart, Ebony Dumas, Danielle Aubert, Victor Moore, and Gracen Brilmyer, as well as the hundreds of people who have organized and taken part in design justice workshops at the Allied Media Conference since 2016. The authors of the first version of the Design Justice Network Principles are Una Lee, Jenny Lee, Melissa Moore, Wesley Taylor, Shauen Pearce, Ginger Brooks Takahashi, Ebony Dumas, Heather Posten, Kristyn Sonnenberg, Sam Holleran, Ryan Hayes, Dan Herrle, Dawn Walker, Tina Hanaé Miller, Nikki Roach, Aylwin Lo, Noelle Barber, Kiwi Illafonte, Devon De Lená, Ash Arder, Brooke Toczylowski, Kristina Miller, Nancy Meza, Becca Budde, Marina Csomor, Paige Reitz, Leslie Stem, Walter Wilson, Gina Reichert, and Danny Spitzberg. Nor would this book be possible without everyone from the Tech for Social Justice Project (T4SJ), the #QTPower crew, and my Allied Media fam. Diana Nucera, especially, you’re a guiding light in the community technology movement: House of Cyborg forever! Thanks also to all the staff, research assistants, students, and community partners from the Collaborative Design Studio, too numerous to list here (explore https://codesign.mit.edu for more info).
Next, profound thanks to my editors at the MIT Press, Sandra Braman and Gita Devi Manaktala, as well as to Melinda Rankin, Michael Sims, and Kathy Caruso, who helped greatly improve the text. Mariel
García-Montes, Katie Louise Arthur, and Annis Rachel Sands each spent many hours working with me on the manuscript as research assistants and deserve special recognition. Maya Wagoner’s thesis project greatly informed my thinking about design pedagogy. Also, the #MoreThanCode report and the T4SJ project, the findings of which are woven throughout this book, would never have happened without the work of Maya and Berhan Taye to plan, facilitate, and conduct interviews with key practitioners across the country. That project was also built through the hard work of Georgia Bullen, then at the Open Technology Institute at the New America Foundation, and Caroline Rivas and Chris Schweidler at Research Action Design. Chris, thank you for all that you do to advance participatory action research. Sky House continues to be a sanctuary.
Special thanks to readers of early, often painfully dense draft chapters, especially Lilly Irani, Ruha Benjamin, Lisa Parks, Catherine D’Ignazio, Una Lee, and Alessandra Renzi. Justin Reich and Eric Klopfer provided invaluable comments on design pedagogy, and Cathy Hannabach and Summer McDonald at Ideas on Fire gave thoughtful early suggestions on the first chapter. Laura Forlano and all the organizers of the design feminisms track at Design Research Society 2018 created a space where I was able to openly discuss and further develop many of this book’s themes. Lisha Nadkarni responded to the earliest draft of the book proposal with key suggestions. Casey Thoreson created the index.
This book would also never have happened without support from many of the faculty and staff at Comparative Media Studies/Writing (CMS/W) and across MIT, especially Lisa Parks, Jim Paradis, T. L. Taylor, Lara Baladi, Vivek Bald, Kat Cizek, Ian Condry, Karilyn Crockett, Paloma Duong, Fox Harrell, Eric Klopfer, Lorrie LeJeune, Ken Manning, Nick Montfort, Justin Reich, Ed Schiappa, William Uricchio, Jing Wang, Andrew Whittaker, Sarah Wolozin, and Ethan Zuckerman. The MIT Program in Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS) has also been very kind to me, especially Helen Lee and Emily Hiestand, as has MIT CoLab, in particular Dayna Cunningham, Phil Thompson, and Ceasar McDowell. Others who provided great support and encouragement along the way include Arturo Escobar, Sadie Red Wing, Lina Dencik and the Data Justice project, and Joy Buolamwini.
Gracias a Shey Rivera, Dey Hernández, Luana Morales, Jasmine Gomez, Luis Cotto, y a todo el corillo de boricuas brillantes que da vida, amor y rabia en la lluvia con nieve de Boston.
Thank you to my mothers, Carol Chock (who provided a much-appreciated final round of review) and Barbara Zimbel, and my fathers, Peter Costanza and Paul Mazzarella. You’ve all been so wonderful and supportive over the years.
A Yara Liceaga Rojas: gracias en todas las dimensiones posibles e imposibles. También a Sol, Elías, e Inarú, semillas de un futuro mejor.