Looking Within: Exploring the Effects of Social Identity-Based Reflection on Designers’ Problem Framing Behavior

Human-centered design often involves designers producing solutions for users who may have social identities that are dissimilar from their own. These differences could impact designers’ ability to understand their users’ needs and integrate considerations of the users’ social identity in the design process. Reflective interventions could encourage designers to actively incorporate social identity-based considerations in the design process and our aim in this research is to explore this hypothesis through an experimental study. Specifically, we tested the effects of completing a social identity-based reflection exercise on novice designers’ problem-framing behavior. We find that designers who completed the intervention generated more social identity-focused problem requirements, and this result did not depend on the persona provided to the designers. Moreover, we find that novice designers may tend to overestimate their empathic response in human-centered design. These findings suggest that reflective interventions could be an effective mechanism for promoting inclusive design.