Anti-Oppressive Research Techniques: Using Human-Centered Design to Achieve Social Justice

Social work research pedagogy has been deeply rooted in training social workers in traditional scientific methods. While rigorous scientific inquiry is imperative to yield reliable results, there is also a need integrate innovative techniques that bring forward the importance of anti-oppressive research and address issues such as power and oppression throughout the process of data collection, analysis and the dissemination of results. The aim of this workshop is to introduce social workers to ‘Human-centered design' as an effective anti-oppressive research tool and provide examples as to how it can be combined with traditional qualitative and quantitative methods. Human-centered design is a technique that is being utilized by various social impact organizations, such as IDEO, and United Nations, to identify needs of clients, challenges and barriers in effective implementation of programs, and to develop services that are closely aligned with the desires of the community (Brown & Wyatt, 2010). This workshop will be led by three social work scholars that have integrated human-centered design into their research and practice on varied issues such as, low-income housing and community engagement, well-being of second generation immigrants, financial empowerment, food security and violence reduction in diverse communities. The workshop will be divided into three sections: (1) presentation of anti-oppressive social work practice and the role of human-centered design in addressing complex social issues; (2) interactive presentation using case examples to highlight the stages and techniques in human-centered design as they pertain to three stages of program evaluation (e.g. data collection, analysis and dissemination of results), and (3) hands-on activities for participants to practice the application of human-centered design tools to their area of social work practice. Workshop leaders will draw examples from on-going and completed projects to emphasize the benefits of this approach in social work practice. The workshop will provide participants with concrete techniques that demonstrate human-centered design approaches in a range of contexts. After completing this workshop, participants will be able to describe the three stages of human-centered design: Inspiration (problem identification), Ideation (recommendations) and Prototyping (program or service development), compare and contrast these stages to traditional program evaluation approaches, and highlight various human-centered tools that can be used to gather, analyze, and disseminate data to various stakeholders (E.g. journey mapping, stakeholder mapping, persons and storytelling).