Human rights and UX: how modern design promotes equality
Investing in user research and co-design is a practical way for charities to defend human rights and challenge economic inequality
Liberal principles are built on a simple idea. If we all have the ability to think and exist, we should all expect a certain level of equality and basic rights.
In the charity sector, we often look for practical ways to show up and defend these rights. A modern way to do this is through the way we design our digital services.
William Joseph is known for accessibility, inclusion, and high-quality design within charity budgets. We believe that investing in user experience, user research and modern design is a direct expression of these human rights principles.
Showing you care about people
When your organisation spends time and money on user research, you are making a clear statement. You are showing that you care about the needs of people you serve
It is an acknowledgement that you do not know everything about the problems you are trying to solve. Instead, you actively spend time building understanding and empathy for the people who use your services.
Our work is about helping leaders, practitioners, and partners solve real problems.
Good design starts by listening to the people facing those problems every day.
Moving from extraction to empowerment
Trauma-informed research and design take this commitment further. This approach builds understanding with people who have the most difficult stories, but it does so carefully and intentionally.
When we worked on strengthening our trauma-informed research approaches with Jenny Winfield (previously at Chayn), we saw how important it is to keep people safe.
Using a trauma-informed approach means you can:
build understanding safely
empower participants rather than just extract information from them
give people genuine control over their own stories
Creating equity through co-design
Effective co-design takes trauma-informed principles and aims to create more equity – by putting the solutions directly in the hands of the people affected by the situation.
Traditional design often keeps power hidden within the organisation. Co-design changes this dynamic by treating people as equal partners rather than subjects to be studied. It asks communities what they need, rather than telling them what they should do.
To make this work, we have to recognise that not everyone starts from the same place. Designing for equity means actively removing barriers so that everyone has a fair chance to participate.
This often involves:
paying people fairly for their time and lived experience
offering multiple, accessible ways to contribute
working at a pace that suits the community
When you share decision-making power, you build services that actually work. They are grounded in reality rather than assumptions. This transforms digital design from a basic functional requirement into a meaningful tool for social justice.
Balancing an unequal system
Our broader economic system is largely based on inequality. Commercial profit often relies on someone else having less.
By supporting and building the public and third sectors, we can help to create a balance in this system. We can look after the people that commercial organisations often ignore.
Good design in the charity sector is a modern way to promote human rights and try to balance the difficulties of our system.
We must use it to empower rather than extract.
If you want to use research and design to shift power to your audiences, please get in touch. We’ve also still got a few spots left at our event, ‘Getting Started with user research’ to help you get going…
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/wj-getting-started-with-user-research-tickets-1983810717258