💎 Friday Gems #19 (Procrastination, Design Justice Principles, Tour de France:Unchained)
Ideas to help you unleash your potential!
Hello curious people.
I hope your summer is off to a great start and you’re taking time to rest and recover. Lately, I have been out in nature and it has been quite rejuvenating.
In the previous Friday Gems issue, I shared the concept of Decolonializing Design, which aims to fundamentally change the way the industry is run by departing from design’s white, Eurocentric roots and instead focusing on amplifying diverse voices. It is also a long-term dedication to acknowledging, reflecting on, and challenging one’s own biases and values as a designer.
Decolonizing design is a process that can help us bring meaning and purpose to our work and to help us grow as designers so we can create products for a better world for all.
Continuing the thread today, I wanted to share the Design Justice Network principles, which I believe will help us be more thoughtful and intentional with the small choices we make that can have a big impact in people’s lives.
As always, please let me know in the comments or email me your thoughts, critiques, and comments on any of the gems. Thanks!
On to this week’s gems!
💎 Design Justice Network Principles

Design is a powerful force.
Design can be used for both good and evil.
Design has the power to both include and exclude.
Design helps build but can also turn around and destroy.
A product designed in Silicon Valley today has the power to destroy jobs in Detroit tomorrow.
This is why designers need constant reminders to practice what we preach. When we talk about empathy, inclusion, diversity, and social justice, we must ensure we are practicing it by listening and including the people and the communities we design for to prevent unintended and harmful consequences of our designs.
"Design mediates so much of our realities and has tremendous impact on our lives, yet very few of us participate in design processes. In particular, the people who are most adversely affected by design decisions — about visual culture, new technologies, the planning of our communities, or the structure of our political and economic systems — tend to have the least influence on those decisions and how they are made."
- Design Justice Network
The principles shared by the Design Justice Network are good reminders to use our designs to benefit, include, heal, empower, prioritize, facilitate, listen, share, sustain, reconnect, and uplift the people and communities we design for.
“Designers are very well trained to do several iterations before turning their prototype into a solid design proposal, but they might lack good training in the societal implementation of their proposals.”
Paul Hekkert - Professor at Industrial Design University in Delft
Design Justice Network Principles
Principle 1
We use design to sustain, heal, and empower our communities, as well as to seek liberation from exploitative and oppressive systems.
Principle 2
We center the voices of those who are directly impacted by the outcomes of the design process.
Principle 3
We prioritize design’s impact on the community over the intentions of the designer.
Principle 4
We view change as emergent from an accountable, accessible, and collaborative process, rather than as a point at the end of a process.
Principle 5
We see the role of the designer as a facilitator rather than an expert.
Principle 6
We believe that everyone is an expert based on their own lived experience, and that we all have unique and brilliant contributions to bring to a design process.
Principle 7
We share design knowledge and tools with our communities.
Principle 8
We work towards sustainable, community-led and controlled outcomes.
Principle 9
We work towards non-exploitative solutions that reconnect us to the earth and to each other.
Principle 10
Before seeking new design solutions, we look for what is already working at the community level. We honor and uplift traditional, indigenous, and local knowledge and practices.
These are powerful and purposeful principles that we can start to apply in our work and our lives right away so we can begin to undo the consequences of our designs. ✊🏽
Source: Design Justice Network
💎 Tour de France: Unchained
“The road to success is like ups and downs all the time. Maybe in the end you arrive on the top, but there is a long way towards success. You have to pick yourself up after a disappointment and just find the motivation again.”
- Jasper Philipsen
How do you keep going when your body and mind scream and beg you to stop? How do you get back up after a fall and push yourself to reach new heights?
As I started watching this new series on Netflix, I am reminded of how important our mindset is when we approach anything we do. Seeing the Tour de France cyclists go day after day to perform their best and work through pain and fear. How do they recover from a crash to keep their focus?
How we do one thing is how we do everything. Whether we are playing sports, working on a project, or living our life, our mindset holds the key to showing up how we want, working through obstacles, and making progress towards our goals.
Check out the series to be inspired and to see how it all begins with the mind.
Source: Netflix
💎 The Time Traveling Mistake We Make When We Procrastinate
I know procrastination all too well. Choosing between a task that takes time and effort vs. email, social media, cleaning the house, or anything other than what I need to be doing becomes an all too easy choice and one of the inner challenges I am constantly dealing with. It's easy to put off something I know I need to do until tomorrow to ease the pain of dealing with it. Although most of the time, if I do deal with the task right away, it's not as bad as my mind makes it out to be.
When we put off a task to a later time, we assume that our future selves will want to do the task we are avoiding. At the moment, it sounds rational and logical, but as we examine it from a distance, we can see the hole in our logic. Why would I want to do something in the future if I don't want to do it right now?
So the next time you tell yourself you will do the thing that you just don't want to do right now, pause for a moment and realize that your future self will still not want to do the task and just get it done right then and there.
Source: Behavioral Scientist
Let me know in the comments if any of the gems resonate with you. I always love hearing from you.
Thanks for reading, and have a fantastic weekend!
Rizwan