Esther KangAssistant Professor of Design Studiesshe/her/hers

I am a writer, researcher, educator, and designer. As an assistant professor at the School of Human Ecology, my primary affiliation is with the Design Studies department, and my secondary affiliation is with the Civil Society & Community Studies department. I am also a member of the Wisconsin RISE Initiative. In this capacity, I focus on conducting research, advising graduate students, and teaching in the Design, Innovation & Society (DIS) program.

My research examines open, collaborative, and place-based innovation processes. Through an interdisciplinary and action-oriented approach, I focus on the politics and possibilities of co-design practices in nested systems that are intended to inform equitable and sustainable development of social, economic, and legal infrastructures. The three main objectives of this research are to: 1) develop historically-aware and contextually-sensitive design methods, 2) create analytical frameworks for practice-based work and teaching, and 3) make design research a critical dimension of cross-disciplinary research efforts.

My research builds upon 10 years as a design researcher in public innovation, social innovation, and civic technology, where I led multidisciplinary research and product development teams at the city, state, and federal levels in the U.S. Selected collaborators include the Office of Public Engagement under the Obama Administration, New Jersey (state) Office of Innovation under Governor Phil Murphy, Vera Institute of Justice, and Bloomberg Philanthropies’ What Works Cities.

Past scholarly research focused on looking at the role of standpoint analysis in nested systems by examining the social practices of a grassroots organization in Los Angeles in parallel with participatory design practices of professionals in the social innovation sector. Similarly, I led the participatory design research of an NSF-funded project that examined the impact of AI-powered technologies on the day-to-day work of essential workers at the height of COVID-19. This body of work informs the dimensions of practicing co-design practices in charged contexts.

My current research project looks at the development and implementation of design and technology policies in the U.S. to outline their impact on local agricultural economies in the Midwest. This work intends to continue to highlight the politics and possibilities of open, collaborative, and place-based innovation processes.

Selected Publications

Kang, E. Y. (2024). Legible for Whom? Decentering the Dichotomy of Center and Periphery. Diseña, (25), Essay 1. https://doi.org/10.7764/disena.25.Essay.1

Kang, E. Y., & Fox, S. E. (2022). Stories from the Frontline: Recuperating Essential Worker Accounts of AI Integration. DIS ’22: Proceedings of the 2022 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference, 58-70. https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3532106.3533564 (Best Paper Honorable Mention)

Kang, E. Y. (Forthcoming fall 2025). The Politics of Place-based Design: An Inquiry into a Worldbuilding Practice. In Urban Humanities 2: An (Un)Volume on Place, Pedagogy, and Practice.

For a full list of publications, see Kang’s CV.

See Also

• Teaching Resource
  • (Un)packing Innovation: Histories of Social Design and Civic Design in Practice. Developed through the Chicago Designs Workshop and Residency. Funded by the Terra Foundation. https://www.designchicago.org/chicago-designs-participants-1