Over the course of 2023, we have been working collaboratively with our members to better understand the impact of our community and the field of Distributed Design. One of the outcomes of this (ongoing) process was the desire to update our values to reflect the changes in our ever evolving community and the context(s) in which we live and design. We wanted to go beyond revisiting terminology. Instead, we hoped to create a relevant resource that expresses what links our community, highlights the impact we hope to have, and inspires and challenges us all in our design and creative processes.

As you explore this resource, you will see that our values are not standalone. Rather, they complement and build on one another.

We are continuously working on understanding these values in our local and global contexts. As a living document, this resource will continue to change to not only reflect our ever evolving work, but to also reflect the realities of our present and the hopes we have for our future(s), as well as our learning process. We are bound to make mistakes along the way, and we hope that you will help us see when we do and support us to always be better.

We hope this manifesto inspires you to imagine a design reality based on values, challenges you to see where your creative and design processes can go, and encourages you to question how we do and could do design.

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