Design has always been one of my passions—my mother is a former interior designer—but it has not always been my profession. I found my way to design work via a winding path, one that included an undergraduate degree in English and careers in marketing and IT consulting. It wasn’t uncommon to find myself in rooms where very few others looked like me. Not ideal, but not shocking.
When I went back to school to study design, though, the homogeneity of the environment, from classrooms to showrooms, astounded me. A question struck me: If designers are expected to design for everyone, how can there be so little diversity in the profession?
Design is many things—a creative venture, a blend of art and science, an iterative exercise—but above all, design is an act of service.
The built environment should serve everybody who moves through it, and to ensure that, the design industry has to include practitioners who represent and take into account all segments of society. That’s why equity, diversity, and inclusion in design are crucial; they’re not just buzzwords, they actually help designers fulfill their professional imperative.
A quick aside on diversity: It’s not just about race and gender. That’s the default thinking, and while those are important (and highly visible) aspects of identity, there are many others—ethnicity, religion, age, ability, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, body size, national origin, and more. Embracing diversity means acknowledging and respecting the vast spectrum of individual traits and cultural differences that make us who we are.
When it comes to EDI (equity, diversity, and inclusion) in design, our profession, and frankly, our world, faces a choice. After a period of openly grappling with historical harms and ongoing inequity and exclusion—followed by organizational pledges, corporate statements of support, and temporary actions—many EDI efforts have stalled. And cultural and political headwinds have picked up.
The question now is whether our prior diversity messaging was lip service, or if we’re ready to meaningfully act to bring about a more inclusive future, one that fulfills design’s mandate. Personally, I choose action. And I believe our profession can and will do the same. Why? Because design, at its core, is about betterment—using imagination, creation, and connection to shape better spaces and better realities. Recently, I participated in a virtual EDI roundtable hosted by the International Interior Design Association (IIDA), where several other design professionals echoed these sentiments and identified actionable strategies to bring about real and lasting change.
At my firm, DLR Group, I delivered our first formal equity strategy not long ago, and one of my main messages was that the future of equity is outcomes-based. How we arrive at those equitable outcomes is through individual and collective action. I wrote a book on how to design authentically for our diverse, evolving world, outlining six habits of culturally competent designers—which include asking questions, seeking knowledge, and believing people—actions that sound simple but require attention, awareness, and repetition to really impact the practice of design.
For individual design professionals (designers, architects, manufacturers; we all play a role) I suggest learning about and adopting such habits and having honest conversations with yourself about what actions you’re willing to take to create equitable outcomes through your direct work and the larger design world. Ask yourself: What stance am I prepared to take, and to back up with concrete steps? What example am I prepared to set?
As for collective action, I’m heartened by the fact that the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Large Firm Roundtable launched a DEI committee; this fall, I joined DEI leaders from more than 20 architecture firms in L.A. to share knowledge and strategies to move our industry forward. But remember: EDI is everybody’s business, not just the purview of those who have “equity” or “diversity” in their job title.
If we neglect to turn years of talk about diversity and equity into action and change, we risk turning the design profession, which has so much power to do good, into a space that contributes to societal harm. For historically underrepresented groups, a false promise of change is arguably more hurtful than never acknowledging inequity at all. Talking and not acting is a choice, one that sends a clear message.
Just as physicians take the Hippocratic Oath, I believe designers take a pledge (less formal, but not less binding) to ensure the built environment serves everyone. Let’s commit, together, to honoring that pledge, fulfilling the optimism at the heart of design, and making our industry and the spaces it creates reflect the beauty, richness, and complexity of our shared humanity.
Editor’s Note: Jessica Bantom is a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging (DEIB) practitioner, interior design consultant, and speaker whose mission is to help designers increase their cultural competence so they can create in ways that honor humanity. As Global Leader of Equity, Diversity, and Belonging for DLR Group, Bantom is an engaged advocate committed to promoting DEIB in the industry and in practice.