Welcome to Belonging By Design
A Blog Series by Joyn x Design
Amid the new wave of immigration laws in the U.S., how do we ensure international design talent (and human-centered, inclusive design) stays afloat–that, regardless of national origin, people know that they belong? How can we help companies navigate increasingly complex challenges?
Our new series, Belonging by Design, is our invitation to sit with these questions and more.
Design’s at the core of everything (including the design of the very systems we’re about to discuss). What’s truly at stake when who can design is limited by increasingly restrictive, inequitable immigration policies? The answer is everything. Literally.
Design is everywhere, and it’s never actually neutral. Everything is designed. Not just the products we use or the interfaces we click through, but the systems, policies, and environments that shape our daily lives, too. Design is the hidden infrastructure of human experience.
Invariably, the so-called “neutral” design of everyday things, from vehicle airbags and seatbelts to urban planning, reflects the biases of those who built them. The impacts are anything but neutral: when the default designer is a homogenous group, the world that results works well for some and poorly for many:
Crash test dummies were historically modeled on the size and weight of an average man (5'9" and 170 lbs), meaning seat belts, airbags, and other safety features were optimized for male anatomy. As a result, women are 47% more likely to be seriously injured and 17% more likely to die in a car accident.
Early voice recognition systems (like Google’s and Apple’s) were trained largely on male voices, making them less accurate for women’s. Similarly, smartphones are often too large for many women’s hands or pockets. As a result, a supposedly universal technology literally doesn’t fit or understand half the population.
Standard office temperatures were calibrated in the 1960s based on the metabolic rate of a 40-year-old, 155-pound man in a suit. As a result, women, who generally have lower resting metabolic rates, are often uncomfortably cold at work.
Medical research has long used male bodies as the default test subjects. Heart attack symptoms, for example, are defined around male presentation (like chest pain), while women more often experience nausea, fatigue, or back pain. As a result, women are more likely to be misdiagnosed or dismissed in emergency rooms.
Municipal snow removal plans historically prioritized major commuter routes, (like roads primarily used by men driving to work) over sidewalks and public transit routes (which women used more often for errands or childcare trips). When the city finally analyzed travel data by gender, they found women were disproportionately slipping and getting injured on uncleared sidewalks. Reversing the order of snow clearing (sidewalks first) both improved safety and saved money on healthcare costs.
What’s designed and by whom and for whom it’s designed then, are inseparable questions. When we consider what’s at stake for human-centered design as a whole, the true cost of increasingly restrictive immigration laws in the U.S. is far higher than $100K per H1-B visa.
So, amid this new wave of immigration laws in the U.S., how do we ensure international design talent (and human-centered, inclusive design) stays afloat–that, regardless of national origin, people know that they belong? As talent leaders who leverage people-first design thinking to help organizations attract, hire, grow, and retain talent across the globe, this question’s top of mind for us at Joyn x Design.
Our new series, Belonging by Design, is our invitation to sit with that question. Immigration rules aren’t abstract—they shape who gets to study here, who gets to work here, and ultimately, who gets to contribute to the design field. When that circle shrinks, so does our collective imagination. What will these shifts mean for the future of human-centered design and the very world we’re co-designing itself?
Together, we’ll explore how recent changes to U.S. immigration policy shape who gets to design, who gets to belong, and how talent leaders and inclusive designers across disciplines might resist.
Over the next few posts, we’ll dig into the ripple effects. Among other things, we’re curious about how companies are adapting their talent strategies to tighter visa rules, how design schools are navigating reduced international enrollment, and what immigrant designers themselves have to say about designing in—and for—a country whose immigration policies don’t always make them feel like they belong.
Stay tuned for our first interview with New York City-based immigration attorney and founder of Barre Law, Abadir Barre.
