Provocations towards an Inclusive Design Thinking Process — 1
The dynamics of inequality are intricately woven within the discipline of design. It both creates and enforces them; it both influences and produces these mechanisms. Tools for critical thinking can show us how the system of privilege/oppression, social division, and inclusion/exclusion is replicated in and manifested through created artefacts, locations, sites, and technology. There is a lot of effort to be made in order to overcome the fact that Design as a subject lags significantly behind other fields in the Humanities in this topic. This is due to our presumption that Design (and, consequently, the designer) cannot possibly be anything other than genuinely well-intentioned. This high un self-reflective notion of a well-intentioned designer gives us gentrified and privatised public spaces that drive lower-class citizens outside of cities, as well as gendered items (and advertising) that support the depiction of hegemonic masculinity and performativity of the feminine/masculine and female/male oppositions.
As we strive to design a more inclusive and sustainable world, we need to remember Design’s direct involvement in the neoliberal capitalist economy and role as the foundation of the mechanisms of production and consumption must be considered whenever discussing design and its relationship to politics and power. Since the current idea of the design process is deeply entrenched in the ‘traditional’ methods of user mapping, ‘generating empathy’ and thereby deducing/identifying of problem. For this post, I focus on the critical thinking gaps common in this process, focusing on its blindspot to inclusivity.
The (alleged) premise is that the needs of the person you are designing for should be at the heart of your design process, directing your solution and serving as the primary motivator for decision-making. One cursory look at User personas tends to overstate demographic information. What makes this problematic is that it encourages a superficial comprehension of human behaviour, which can result in prejudiced preconceptions based on gender, race, age, and economic status. As Design is being increasingly taken over by data-led design research, what is being ignored is that designers do not have training in psychology, anthropology, and semiotics and are thus unable to engage with the data they are confronted with critically. The arbitrary distinctions between qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis have become central to the design research process, but this data analysis is happening in a critical vacuum.
The notion that anyone can design for anyone else gives designers permission to think they are uniquely qualified to understand another person from a distance. A growing number of businesses use the (IDEO) approach of design thinking as a rationale to overlook the diversity of their staff. After all, (the assumption is) by ‘empathising’ with someone, even predominantly white/upper class/ upper caste/ heteronormative design teams may create products for anyone on the earth. One cannot separate the researcher’s perspectives and experiences from the analysis process when categorising narrative data into themes. A whole generation of designers has been born out of this, believing that all it takes to comprehend another person’s life is a few well-phrased structured interviews and some post-it notes. This has led to an alienated mass production of user profiles generated by privileged mainstream biases and commonsense, resulting in the propagation of stereotypes.
Stereotypes tend to be formed naturally. We as humans employ this technique to make the social environment simpler and lighten the cognitive load on the brain, particularly when meeting new people. Tragically, there is nothing in the professional or pedagogical ecosystem of design that enables us to expand our notions of empathy, embed auto criticism in our commonsense, have an engagement with ethics and push for more inclusive institutions.
If we let go of the dead ‘icon’ and attempt more creative modes of user visualisation we might be able to feel more empathy for our users. Design Thinking is understood to be a key creative problem-solving tool. For creativity to occur, the images generated in the mind must have been intentionally motivated and express a solution to a problematic situation that is judged to be novel, of high value, and significant. Moreover, unusual thoughts, activities, and outcomes — which can be attained in a variety of ways — are indications of creativity. It is not constrained by earlier presumptions, desires, resources, or behaviours. The current modes of persona mapping and user visualsation do not allow for that.
While tech experts were busy commenting on the qualities of the iPad, what struck me was the level of excitement that the event created. On Tuesday, the day before the product was unveiled, a Web search for “Apple tablet” produced more than 17 million links! On Wednesday, hordes of people attended the news conference remotely.
Everyone was anxiously waiting for Apple’s interpretation of what a tablet is. This was validation of Apple’s peculiar innovation process: Insights do not move from users to Apple but the other way around. More than Apple listening to us, it’s us who listen to Apple. This contradicts the conventional management wisdom about innovation.
From https://designsojourn.com/user-centered-innovation-is-dead/
When creativity always has to seek validity, it runs scared. One of the social uses of creativity has been to constantly challenge the glass ceiling of validity. As design schools and workspaces further erode design’s relationship with humanities and visual arts and as the neo-liberal socio-economic structure makes it harder to create inclusive workspaces it is harder for designers to unweave the dynamics of inequality that keep us away from designing sustainable, inclusive futures.
