Many
examples of "social awareness" in design fail to challenge the "status
quo" -- they seek to merelymake
the current system work more smoothly, rather than address structural problems
of the system itself.
Examples
of extremely difficult structural problems:
1) The percentage of National Income (the value generated by taking raw materials and labor worth X dollars and selling the resulting product for X+value dollars) that goes to the salary of workers has been dropping rapidly since the 1970s. The economy is booming, but that means little to Joe Sixpack.
2) When we look at income by gender and ethnicity, we see great disparity: white males make the most money, women of all ethnic groups make less, black women make less than white women, etc.
3) Looking at race, class and gender, we can see a direct correlation between socio-economic disparity and education
(there are hundreds of others--including disability
design and green design!)