There’s a moment in every designer’s journey where you realise design isn’t just about making things usable or beautiful — it’s about shaping the conditions that allow people to thrive. For me, that realisation crystallised through my work with Rooted, where equity isn’t an add-on or a phase in the process; it’s the lens, the ethos, the responsibility.
Rooted exposed me to practices that sit far deeper than typical design thinking frameworks — practices grounded in history, community power, lived experience, and repair. It opened my eyes not only to what design can do, but what it must do if we’re serious about equity.
So here’s the journey: what equity actually means, why design plays a critical role in it, and how Equity-Centred Community Design reshapes everything from our mindset to our methods.
What Equity Is
Equity is what happens when your identity — whether race, class, gender, disability, sexuality, migration background, or anything else — stops being a reliable predictor of your life outcomes.
It’s not sameness.
It’s not “treat everyone the same and hope for the best.”
It’s designing environments, systems, and experiences where everyone has what they need to succeed — and where we actively address the historic and structural barriers that have made that impossible for so many.
Why Equity Matters
Inequity isn’t a random glitch in the system. It’s built into the architecture of many of our institutions, public spaces, and societal structures.
Across the UK, the impacts show up clearly:
- Black communities facing higher rates of pollution exposure
- Women and gender-expansive people encountering gaps in safety and healthcare
- Disabled individuals navigating environments that simply weren’t designed with them in mind
- Lower-income residents experiencing housing, transport, and education systems that limit opportunity
These disparities didn’t just appear — they persist because systems have been shaped by unequal histories and uneven distribution of power.
Through Rooted, I saw this up close. Working alongside communities, I encountered stories and insights that weren’t captured in datasets or policy papers: neighbourhood knowledge, intergenerational memory, daily navigation strategies, and deep-rooted resilience.
Equity isn’t abstract. It’s lived. And it’s urgent.
What Design and Creative Problem Solving Bring to the Table
Design comes in countless forms — UX, architecture, product, urban design — but the thread that connects them is intentionality. Someone, somewhere, decides how a space, interface, or service will function and for whom it will work best.
Human-Centred Design (or Design Thinking) tries to respond to this by encouraging designers to understand people deeply, test ideas quickly, and iterate in response to real needs.
At its best, it’s practical, creative, and collaborative.
But at its worst, it can skim the surface. It can focus on observations rather than relationships. It can prioritise solutions over context. And occasionally, it can position the designer as expert and the community as subject.
Creative problem solving gets us part of the way there — but not all the way.
What Equity-Centred Design Is
Equity-Centred Design (ECCD) is a design practice rooted in the following principles:
Equity as the goal
Not a deliverable. Not a KPI. A commitment.
History and healing
Because you can’t redesign the future without understanding how the past built the present.
Humility over empathy
Humility asks:
“What don’t I know? Where am I positioned in this system? How might I be reinforcing inequity without realising it?”
Power dynamics made visible
Instead of pretending design is neutral.
Communities as co-creators, not consultees
Because lived experience is expertise.
Because community members are designers in their own right — everyday problem solvers, caregivers, innovators, and navigators.
Long-term change over short-term fixes
ECCD isn’t just about generating a better app interface; it’s about reshaping systems so they stop producing harm.
My work at Rooted deepened this understanding. Whether we were co-developing frameworks, holding space for community storytelling, or mapping the systems shaping health and wellbeing, ECCD served as both compass and grounding. It encouraged me to slow down, acknowledge the complexity, and bring humility into the room — every time.
