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The Design of Protesting and Its Duality for the Christian
A moral introspection on peaceful protesting vs. rioting and a brief parallel to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “The Other America” speech
As political unrest and racial tension continue to agitate and pull at the Liberal, Conservative, Black, and White threads of the United States fabric, there is one common thread that stitches them all together: Protesting. At some point, you probably asked what’s the aim of organizing a large group of people and raising picket signs in the middle of a road. How can this make a systemic impact? Was it accomplished with the distant hope of lawmakers seeing hundreds or thousands of people on social media or local TV news and motivating them to initiate changes from their public office? What about when a peaceful protest turns into a riot? Does it dampen the cause or intensifies it?
For those wrestling with the strategy, design, and result of protesting, I hope this proves to be beneficial. I, too, have struggled (and sometimes still do) with the effectiveness of a peaceful demonstration. If activism were a product, would protesting be a core function that helps the user achieve the “job to be done,” or has it become a mere feature that gets in the way of real results? As a user experience designer…
