Privilege, Empathy, and Diversity in Design
We are privileged, Western people designing for ourselves and feeding back into the loop of Western Aesthetics, setting a standard for hiring.
In a world where technology reaches borders beyond our own, companies have been pressured to hire for more diversity in the workplace. Not only does this satisfy the social norm of hiring more minorities, but it’s also kind of necessary. Sometimes, we are not building for people like you and I — who have adequate financial resources, access to higher education and live a bountiful life. No. Sometimes we are building for a much larger group, who live different lives.
We need to be empathetic to our users. That’s our job as designers.
em·pa·thy
the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
As a privileged, Western person, I am not sure how much I ‘share the feelings of another’ who does not live a life like mine. Maybe this is why we should be hiring for diversity — not only to break the gap for minorities, but also to gain multiple points of views on a problem faced by our fellow humans. We have a wonderful amount of talent overseas, all of whom are qualified for the job and would add a new perspective to any company — so why aren’t they contributing to solving major problems in the world?
Problem #1: Hiring for diversity is kind of a joke
I learned about this interesting case study from Andy Mangold, who spoke about Design and Privilege at last year’s DesignThinker’s conference. If we gave a hiring manager the portfolio work of 10 junior designers all coming from different parts of the world and concealed their identity, they would probably end up hiring someone brought up in a Western environment.
Why?
Because of their work. It’s the Western aesthetic that seems to please people, and it has become synonymous with ‘good design’. We are all trained to admire the same old gradients, layouts and experiences. So when a person is brought up to learn these patterns in a Western society, they have the upper hand in hiring. And when a person is brought up in an environment where they do not have the same resources as us, their design work is ‘not as good as ours’ due to the different aesthetic.
Have we ever considered that the same aesthetic would not work for the people of Southeastern Asia, or China? We need to consider the user before we begin to apply the same palette that we all know so well, because design trends vary from user to user.
This article goes through why Chinese websites tend to look so busy. These reasons include the structure of the language, the lack of design-minded users, and the tendency to need a ‘one-stop-shop’. Clearly, we would need a local designer who could empathize with the users.
Yes, your company may have been hiring a lot of minorities in the past. We can see the diverse colour palette, people coming from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. But what about their education? There are a handful of Indians working in big Silicon Valley companies. But as I looked into their backgrounds I noticed that they come from extremely wealthy families, who could afford to send their kids to Western private schools in India, and then to the US to complete their postgraduate studies.
So yes, technically they are diverse, but they were still educated in an extremely Western society, regardless of their skin-tone.
We are all solving the same problems with the same approach due to our polished education and trained eyes.
Problem #2: #FirstWorldProblems
Soooo we have all of these privileged people in one area, carefully selected by Hiring Managers. What problems are we going to solve now?
http://www.firstworldproblems.biz/
“Remember when my music sucked at the huge party that I was throwing?!”
If design is all about empathy, we are definitely doing it right by solving problems that are faced by us, the privileged people, the people of the first world. I understand that some companies are actually tackling some pretty big problems, but there are some flaws in the system.
Remember when Facebook allowed it’s users to empathize with the people of France during the 2015 November attacks? What about the rest of the world?
Read more here.
Problem #3: Isolation in the workplace
I have spoken to a few people in tech who sometimes feel left out in the field. Sometimes I feel left out as well. Especially now with the rise of racism and violence in the US- which I’ve come to understand through reading articles on Medium and elsewhere. I’ll let these articles speak for themselves, and I encourage you all to take a look.
Silicon Valley doesn’t care about black people.
Being Black in Silicon Valley.
These articles tell me that we aren’t empathizing with the minorities. Is this a result of hiring? Not sure. All I know is that the unbearable homogeneity of design is causing us to lack empathy. What if we had more marginalized minorities in the workplace? Would we be able to empathize with these people? Would we be able to forget about the first world problems that we are all trying to create and solve and actually make an impact?
Hiring people that came from the same background makes empathizing with others a lot harder. Justin Edmund also brings up a good point about Silicon Valley’s lack of empathy toward the minorities of America — those who experience a world with much greater disparity than ours. If they can continue to solve the first world problems that we are all so familiar with, why not hire people who can empathize with minorities to help solve problems that are greater than our own? Those who can actually empathize with people who are facing greater issues?
I would like to end this article with a bit of a reflection. I am victim to a completely egotistical and career driven motive — I knew what I wanted and I knew how to get there. But after a few weeks of research and working in a user driven workplace, I have come to realize how important it is to avoid this ‘design assimilation’, and allow our work to speak to something that we care about. We could begin to empathize with user groups, look beyond our own problems, and abolish this ‘Western aesthetic’ to open doors for the marginalized communities that don’t have the same experiences us.
Thanks for reading, and have a lovely week! ❤
