Design Social Change: Take Action, Work Toward Equity, and Challenge the Status Quo

Discover design strategies for using your own unique social identities and experiences as inspiration to challenge the status quo and create the kind of lasting change that leads to greater equity and social justice, from Stanford University's d.school.

Who are you? What motivates you as a changemaker? What forces are preventing you (and others) from thriving? These questions are essential to the work of creating social change, and they are exactly what Design Social Change asks you to explore.

Designer and design educator Lesley-Ann Noel shares the essential design strategies for making a lasting impact. This work starts with knowing yourself and builds outward into making change in your community and the larger world. Design Social Change gives you tools to tailor your approach to design, taking into account your history, personality, ethics, and goals for a better future.

The strategies for change are based on equity and fairness, understanding your own role in these systems of both justice and inequity. These strategies demonstrate how to use anger, joy, and empathy as inspiration for understanding what people need to thrive. Using the tools of design, these new approaches will help you craft projects that are relevant to you and create more just, equitable futures. The time is always right to work toward a fair and just society.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel focuses on equity, social justice, and the experiences of people who are often excluded from design education, research, and practice. She teaches at North Carolina State University. Formerly, Lesley-Ann was associate director of Design Thinking for Social Impact at Tulane University and a lecturer at Stanford University and the University of the West Indies. 
The Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, known as the d.school, was founded at Stanford University in 2005. Each year, nearly a thousand students from all disciplines attend classes, workshops, and programs to learn how the thinking behind design can enrich their own work and unlock their creative potential.