A Justice-Led Design Toolbox for Promoting Fair Electronics

Fair electronics have become increasingly important in the sustainability agenda. Nevertheless, academia and industry tend to engage the topic of fairness in limited scope, focusing on minimizing the ethical and environmental impact of products, while ignoring the violence of ecological domination from centuries-old practices of colonialism and capitalism. How can we, as designers, engineers, academics (and consumers), resist and revolt against the violence of “design as usual”, overconsumption, and market profit orientation? Drawing from design methodologies from the Global South, feminist theories, social justice, and decolonizing practices, we describe a justice-led framework and its application as a toolbox for design of consumer electronics. We report the results of two co-design workshops with design students and design practitioners to show how to envision fair products and fair product-human-planet relationships that promote social and planetary justice. By applying the framework into their process, participants were guided towards a more fair, sustainable and regenerative approach to product design through four caring models: stewardship, restoration, enhancement, and healing-regeneration. We discuss the key features and benefits of the framework, moving beyond a static concept of “fair electronics” towards framing it as relational practices of engaging justice. Furthermore, the design toolbox serves as a practical guide for designers to become effective weavers of systemic resilience against environmental colonialism.