Speculative Futures, U.S. Education

Visualizing Educational Inequality Through Design Research

Design artifacts to understand disparities in US education funding

Project Overview

What if we could make invisible systemic barriers in education visible and tangible? This question drove our team of four Parsons Transdisciplinary Design students to create a physical model that revealed how educational resources inevitably flow toward privileged communities. By transforming abstract systemic dynamics into interactive experiences, we demonstrated how institutional influences consistently direct resources away from underprivileged areas, regardless of intervention attempts. Our physical model and speculative digital currency app visualized current inequities and proposed an alternative merit-based system for distributing educational resources, challenging the zip code-determined funding paradigm that perpetuates educational inequality.

My Role

I contributed to ethnographic design research and systems mapping, documenting privilege in educational experiences. I participated in artifact analysis and selection, co-designed the physical model for resource flow, and collaborated on the speculative digital currency concept for our intervention proposal.

Project Duration: August 2019 - December 2019

Key Partners: Parsons School of Design

Team: Fas Lebbie, Mohamad Sial, Theo Walcot, Hannah Devries

Problem Context

The American education system faces an equity crisis that is largely invisible. Around 53 million students navigate a system where educational quality depends on zip code, not merit. The funding structure, reliant on local property taxes, perpetuates a cycle where affluent communities funnel more resources to their schools while under-resourced areas struggle with inadequate funding and support. This inequality is evident: wealthy districts spend up to $10,000 more per student annually than low-income districts. Students in underprivileged areas face challenges like fewer experienced teachers (with 31% higher turnover), outdated materials, limited technology access, and fewer extracurriculars. Disparities extend beyond the classroom—children in low-income households may receive less homework help, face food insecurity, or need to contribute financially, impacting their education. Traditional reforms focus on programs or policy tweaks rather than questioning the resource distribution structure. Accepting the current funding mechanism limits imagining equitable alternatives. Systemic barriers are embedded in policies and practices, making them hard to address. Our research found a gap in communicating educational inequality: the abstract nature makes it hard for stakeholders to grasp, limiting public understanding to statistics rather than structural comprehension.

Design Interventions

Our design intervention focused on making educational inequality tangible through two complementary components: a physical model demonstrating current resource flow patterns and a speculative digital application proposing an alternative system for resource distribution.

Based on research insights about privilege patterns across educational experiences, we strategically selected “shoes” as our entry point for understanding and representing systemic inequality. Shoes serve as universal yet personal objects that silently signal socioeconomic status across educational environments—from kindergarten through college. This metaphor helped bridge abstract systems thinking with concrete, relatable experiences.

The centerpiece of our intervention was a custom wooden box model representing the education system. This interactive installation allowed users to insert coins (representing resources) at the top and observe how, regardless of entry point, hidden internal structures (institutional influences) consistently directed these resources toward the “privileged” exit. The model made invisible systemic forces visible and experiential, revealing how factors like:

Funding mechanisms tied to local property taxes
Teacher salary disparities across districts
Unequal distribution of educational resources
Policy decisions favoring already-advantaged communities

Together, they create a predetermined path for resources that reinforces existing inequalities.

Interactive box demonstrating hidden institutional barriers directing educational resources toward advantaged areas.

Students testing the model, discovering how systemic forces override individual intentions.

Speculative app design replacing zip code-based funding with merit-based educational currency.

Resource matching system democratizing access to educational opportunities across socioeconomic boundaries.

Designer revealing the internal mechanisms representing systemic barriers in education.

Prototype development showing how design research makes invisible educational inequalities tangible.

Team members collaborating during design research phase, exploring systemic educational inequality through "research through design" methodological approach.

Researcher presenting the wooden model revealing hidden institutional barriers that direct educational resources, demonstrating systemic constraints during public showcase.

Participant inserting a coin (resource) into the model, experiencing how systemic structures inevitably direct funding toward privileged educational paths.

howcase participants attempting to influence resource outcomes, only to discover how institutional barriers override individual intentions in education funding.

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My Approach

Leveraging “research through design” articulated by Christopher Frayling, where we used design practice as our investigative method, systematically documenting how the creation of artifacts generated new knowledge and insights about educational inequality. The physical model and speculative app weren’t merely illustrations of pre-existing knowledge but tools through which we discovered and articulated new understandings of the system.
Unlike traditional research methods that maintain separation between researcher and subject, our approach positioned design activity as the primary mode of inquiry. Constructing the wooden model was itself a research process—each decision about internal barriers and coin pathways required us to investigate, understand, and represent actual institutional forces affecting resource distribution in education.

Design Process

Baseline Information

We began by developing a shared understanding of educational inequality through a literature review and personal experience mapping. Our diverse team brought perspectives from both American and international educational systems, allowing us to question assumptions and identify patterns across contexts. We gathered existing research on educational funding mechanisms, resource distribution patterns, and the relationship between zip code and educational outcomes. Rather than immediately seeking solutions, we deliberately immersed ourselves in “systems play”—a methodical yet creative exploration that allowed us to develop familiarity with educational systems before attempting intervention. This approach emerged from recognizing that premature solution-seeking often addresses symptoms rather than structural causes. This was done by using everyday items as entry points for understanding complex systems.

Design Research & Strategy

Our primary research employed multiple complementary qualitative methods to understand educational inequality. Through brainstorming and ideation circles, we explored potential metaphorical artifacts that could represent this inequality, ultimately selecting shoes as our central metaphor. Team members conducted ethnographic observations across educational environments with varying socioeconomic contexts, documenting visible markers of privilege in learning spaces. Our comparative analysis revealed how seemingly identical artifacts like school uniforms could signal opposite meanings regarding privilege in different cultural systems. To visualize these dynamics, we created systems maps showing resource flows within educational structures, identifying key intervention points and barriers. This methodical approach led us to a critical insight: regardless of individual efforts to redirect resources, educational systems contain institutional structures that consistently channel resources toward areas of existing privilege.

Summary of Findings

Our research revealed several key patterns:

Educational quality correlates strongly with zip code and local property values, creating self-reinforcing cycles of advantage or disadvantage.
Institutional influences (funding mechanisms, teacher allocation, resource distribution) function as hidden “bumpers” that direct resources toward already-privileged communities.
These systemic forces remain largely invisible to most stakeholders, making intervention difficult.
Physical objects (particularly shoes) serve as visible markers of socioeconomic status within educational environments, offering a tangible entry point for understanding systemic inequality.
Merit-based resource distribution could potentially provide an alternative to zip code-determined educational quality.

These insights directly informed our design decisions, from creating the physical model’s internal structure to developing the speculative digital currency concept as an intervention.

Prototyping & Implementation Strategy

Our prototyping process unfolded across three interconnected phases, beginning with conceptual model development, where we translated our systems research into physical design specifications, determining how institutional influences would appear as barriers within our wooden model. In the physical construction phase, we iteratively built and refined the wooden box design, carefully testing coin trajectories to ensure they accurately represented actual resource flows in education systems. These insights then informed our final phase: designing a speculative digital currency app that would reward student achievement with tokens exchangeable for educational resources. We validated our approach by testing the physical model with faculty, department heads, and the public during a showcase event, where users attempted to influence outcomes by changing coin entry points—efforts that inevitably failed due to internal barriers, creating powerful moments of realization about systemic constraints. After revealing the hidden mechanisms and explaining our digital intervention concept, we collected feedback that confirmed our hypothesis: making invisible systemic forces tangible dramatically increased understanding and engagement with educational inequality issues. Approximately 75% of users reported new insights about resource flow dynamics, and several institutional representatives expressed interest in further developing our concepts.

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Reflections & Impact

During the showcase, as participants interacted with the prototypes, many expressed surprise at their inability to direct resources toward the “underprivileged” exit despite repeated attempts—a visceral demonstration of how systemic forces override individual intentions.
The physical nature of the interaction created an emotional connection to the issue. This speculative concept generated discussion about alternative funding mechanisms for education. While some questioned its feasibility, many recognized its value in challenging fundamental assumptions about how educational resources must be distributed. The physical model didn’t just illustrate existing knowledge—it generated new understanding through interaction, embodying Frayling’s concept of “research through design” as a unique knowledge-generating activity. The physical model didn’t just illustrate existing knowledge—it generated new understanding through interaction, embodying Frayling’s concept of “research through design” as a unique knowledge-generating activity.

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