Black in Thesis
Documenting my journey during my masters thesis.
Overview
Completing your masters thesis during a global pandemic is not normal. Completing your masters thesis as a Black woman in a profession that is only 3% is even more more interesting. As a result, I decided to document my journey and the discoveries I make along the way as I figure out my research question and potential solutions.
Role & Duration
Researcher & Designer
Research, for now
Aug 2020 - Present
The (Potential) Problem
When developing a problem statement for a thesis exploration it is important to find a subject that you’re passionate. For me, improving the lives and health of Black womxn has always been important to me. The introduction of my thesis started with harrowing facts around Black pregnancies. Black womxn are dying from childbirth at rates much higher than other groups in America. Black womxn in the United States are 3.5 times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes. Put another way, Black womxn are 243 percent more likely to die from pregnancy or childbirth.
In the journey to solidifying my problem statement, I discovered startups (many founded by Black womxn) that are working to solve this problem by using technological solutions. In the end the questions I set out to answer was the following:
Can technology be leveraged to help Black womxn’s health?
Black in Thesis functions as an Instagram account that I’ve connected to a website. By making it an Instagram account, I’ve created a way to update the site consistently without much effort on my end – the perfect solution for a busy graduate student. Most of the content details the books I’ve read this semester in relation to the project, discoveries I’ve found along the way, and my life as I try to work on my final academic project in my post-graduate career.
Discoveries So Far
Speculative Exploration
Speculative Design is the process of addressing big societal issues with design processes or frameworks to drigger debate and critical reflection. It thrives on the imagination of the designer and aims to create spaces to discuss wicked problems, or large cultural or societal problems that are usually very difficult to solve. Speculative Design can act as a catalyst to redefine our relationship with reality by looking to the future.
As part of the Black diaspora it is important that we speculate about Black futures. Our ancestors imagined some variation of the future we currently live in and it is our responsibility as tomorrow’s ancestors to do the same. As Black people, it is critical that we make space for ourselves and write our stories into the future.
For this project, I decided that I would create a speculative scenario based on a current signal I’ve seen in technological trends and startups I’ve seen in the market.
Introducing the Trend: Commodification of Personal Data
In April 2019, a new platform called Clture hit the market with the promise of democratizing data access for its consumers. The premise of the service is to allow their target market, Black people in America, to get paid for their digital data. Clture aims to change the data landscape. With their proprietary technologies, pricing algorithm, and data file format, they believe they can change the future of data and intellectual property for Black folx.
Black Feminist Framework
Very early in the project, I discovered many of the books and studies I was reading were not considering Black women when it comes to creating technological solutions. After reading “The New Jim Code” by Ruha Benjamin and “Algorithms of Oppression” by Safiya Noble and understanding technology through a Black Feminist perspective, it was clear to me that I needed to redefine and adjust my problem statement. The question was no longer how technology can be used to help Black womxn’s health, but rather, how affect social conditions for Black womxn?
Refining the Question
Right now, the goal of this project is to show how social and technological components of design are intertwined even when they don’t outwardly present themselves as such. As designers, it is important that we understand not only the implications of the co-mingling but how these forces may be reconfigured and reimagined when they are harmful.
Project Outline
I used Mural as a means to organize some of the frameworks and concepts I’ve come across in my understanding of the problem I’m trying to solve.