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Radical Futures: Supporting Community-Led Design Engagements through an Afrofuturist Speculative Design Toolkit

When considering the democratic intentions of co-design, designers and design researchers must evaluate the impact of power imbalances embedded in common design and research dynamics. This holds particularly true in work with and for marginalized communities, who are frequently excluded in design processes. To address this issue, we examine how existing design tools and methods are used to support communities in processes of community building or reimagining, considering the influence of race and identity. This paper describes our findings from 27 interviews with community design practitioners conducted to evaluate the Building Utopia toolkit, which employs an Afrofuturist lens for speculative design processes. Our research findings support the importance of design tools that prompt conversations on race in design, and tensions between the desire for imaginative design practice and the immediacy of social issues, particularly when designing with Black and brown communities.