Projects for Peace Fellowship
Human-Centered Design For Human Rights
Role
Human-Centered Independent Consultant
Timeline
May - September 2024
Tools
Illustrator, Photoshop, Figma
Skills
Human-Centered Design, Visual Design, Facilitation, Systems Thinking,
Location
Project Overview
As a solo designer, I applied human-centered design to develop a strategic campaign guide for Students for a Free Tibet (SFT) chapters globally. This guide empowers grassroots organizers to create effective, nonviolent campaigns by providing intuitive frameworks, actionable tools, and user-friendly resources. This project was funded by Middlbury College's Projects for Peace.
The Problem Space
Grassroots activists often face limited resources and time when planning campaigns, resulting in reactive approaches that lack cohesive strategy. Additionally, often young activists can get excited and often jump straight to tactics without thinking about the strategy and objectives. The challenge was to create a scalable, adaptable guide that streamlined campaign planning for diverse global users while aligning with SFT’s mission of fostering nonviolent advocacy for the Tibetan community.
How might we help Tibetan youth activists of all experience levels feel confident and empowered to create strategic nonviolent campaigns?
A solution: an educational, clear, functional guide that allows young activists to connect tactics to strategies, and understand the leverage points of the larger system at play.
The Process
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Research & Proposal Writing
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Research: This whole project stemmed from my curiosity on how human-centered design be used to advance non-profits/NGOs/grassroot organizations.
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Literature that guided this project:
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A Design Thinking Perspective on Human Rights by E.M. van Zeeland-van der Holst
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Supporting Human Dignity and Human Rights: A Call to Adopt the First Principle of Human-Centered Design by Rebecca Walton
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Design thinking: a working strategy for the third sector by Tulsi Jayakumar, Krishnakoli Das, and Neelesh Srivastava
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Personal Reflections
This project emphasized the importance of designing with and for users in high-stakes contexts. It taught me about:
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Adapting HCD Methodologies: Tailor traditional design processes to fit resource-constrained, grassroots environments and to employ other tools that fall outside of traditional HCD processes.
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The realities of working in Human Rights: Transitioning from studying human rights and nonviolent movements in an academic setting to actually engaging in this work in the field. While I had explored topics like design activism, social change, and power during college, those discussions remained largely theoretical, taking place in a safe, intellectual bubble. This project, however, brought those concepts to life in a much more tangible and intense way. Working directly on human rights issues, I found myself in conversations with remarkable activists—people who not only speak about these struggles but live them every day as refugees and freedom fighters. Being in dialogue and in these spaces with them was humbling and inspiring. It shed light on the harsh realities and emotional intensity of this work, revealing just how much resilience, courage, and unwavering commitment it takes to stand up for freedom in today’s world. This experience also deepened my empathy and self-awareness. While I have always considered myself to be empathetic, this project helped me unlock a deeper level of understanding. It reminded me that the true essence of human rights work is not just about strategy or theory, but about truly seeing and supporting the lived experiences of those who are fighting for justice.