Dreams of justice through discursive design

How might we envision a more just educational system? This lofty design prompt has been the focal point of Khan Academy’s mission of “providing a free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere” since inception. Some might even say that the mission is, in and of itself, a speculative design project with utopian dreams.

Discursive design, including critical design, speculative design and design fiction, has become a vital step in constructing Khan Academy’s product design process. Imagining educational futures for the classroom and the system writ large provides the creative space to dream and worry, to plan and help avoid unnecessary and unwelcome surprises. It has become an integral part of our process. In this talk I plan to share 3 case studies that have guided not only our long-term strategies but also our more immediate approaches to product design: a dystopian design fiction artifact that illustrates a highly polarized educational system, a speculative design project showing a failed state of Khan Academy that equates learning to an ATM transaction and a discursive prototype that deflects social media traffic to actual course material. In the process, I’ll highlight how discursive design projects are key components to an organization’s success, especially those with future-oriented, ambitious missions. Infusing this work in our day-to-day has helped our organization cultivate internal alignment and understanding, spark creative ideas for shorter-term tactical work and also encourage us to pause and consider the larger systemic problems we could begin to solve through design. In sharing these case studies, this talk will ultimately leave designers, product and brand leaders with a discursive design playbook that can be easily customized and followed in their own organizations.