equityXdesign: Leveraging Identity Development in the Creation of an Anti-Racist Equitable Design Thinking Process

Abstract

Educational Equity has been situated as the civil rights issue of our time. While arguably the focus on education reform efforts has increased over the last 50 years, progress has been slow if present at all. This capstone describes my journey in creating equityXdesign, a set of technical tools that come from the merging of equity consciousness with design thinking methodologies. With a premise that racism and equity are products of design and can be redesigned, we believe that if we equip individuals, in particular street-level bureaucrats, with design tools that are centered in equity, they will be able to disrupt and redesign systems of oppression.

This capstone documents the philosophical underpinnings of and process used to create and test aspects of the equityXdesign framework, as well as the personal identity development process I engaged in as co-creator of the process. I argue that it is the interaction of my identity development journey with my entrepreneurial creative path that served to push each aspect forward, making identity work a necessary component of any innovation or entrepreneurial project that seeks equity.