Unlearning to learn design
Sitting in my first ever class about human-centered design, the professor introduced me to the very first concept that I’d learn: design thinking. His fluid explanations locked my attention in, while I scribbled down heavy notes on how design prioritized empathy and valued innovative problem-solving. It was all new, but all so exciting — so here I was, ready to dive in headfirst to understand a user’s problem and design a solution.
As I gradually learned about case studies that applied this process, this idealistic image shifted into a rising seed of discomfort, even when I couldn’t pinpoint exactly why. Reading up examples of designing app interfaces to support low-income youth, I questioned more on how the design process unfolded. I wondered if empathy was enough in truly understanding how to design for communities that designers may not be a part of. I concerned myself about the problematic, uneven power dynamic of designers positioned as privileged experts in creating a solution for another. How are we really learning and applying our knowledge as a designer?
I grew to further realize that the ways we learn about digital product design, such as traditional design thinking, are not exempt from the systems that marginalize and exploit communities who we may intend to uplift. If I neglect to challenge the design process, I risk being complicit with all the problematic issues deeply embedded into it. Darin Buzon argues, in his case on how Design Thinking is a Rebrand for White Supremacy, that white supremacy manifests by emboldening the designer with self-righteous authority or expertise above anyone else. In doing so, it continues to perpetuate class and racial separation, exacerbating inequities contributing to harm and erasure of the experiences of marginalized groups.
As designers currently living in a revolution towards racial justice amidst a pandemic, I question: where do our conversations about diversity and inclusion transfer in our design practices? Most of us have acknowledged the lack of diversity within this field, given how white designers made up 71% of the industry in 2019 (AIGA Design Census). However, I have yet to see the majority of designers questioning the ways we have developed our design learning. I have yet to see more work that we, as designers, should hold ourselves accountable for the ways we are complicit in harm when centering white male design knowledge. I have yet to see a priority to deconstruct methods that gatekeep a privileged industry while excluding others. To make this next step forward and bring accountability in our work, we must begin to unlearn how we’ve learned.
The Need to Unlearn
Vanessa Newman, the founder of Design to Divest, clearly elaborates in their panel on “Where are the Black Designers?” that the goal is to undo internalized systems of oppression to achieve liberation for communities currently harmed by design:
“Don’t even think about being inclusive in your design process. How can I undo everything I’ve learned in the past four years of my design education — ten years, twenty years of my career — and start from zero?”
Inclusion is impossible in a system founded on exclusion. The roles of leadership, ownership, and knowledge predominantly center around patriarchal whiteness; under this gaze, there are ways of speaking, clothing choices, or hairstyles that might not be deemed “professional.” Now consider how this system of knowledge extends to the ways we determine standards and values of good design. For example, only learning a Westernized design perspective that leans towards modernist, clean aesthetics may erase equally skilled designs from diverse cultures. Embodying these structures of exclusion signify which perspectives are valued while devaluing others.
When we want to take the next step to counter these exclusionary means, it isn’t about rushing to fix everything to build a surface-level layer of diversity in the design environment. The goal isn’t to bandage an inherently broken system. The goal is to abolish these systems of harm, recognizing how they’ve been internalized within ourselves.
To accomplish this goal, we need to apply critical analysis in our design and education work. Who are the designers that you mainly learned about? How can you decenter any Eurocentric design learning to shift towards a variety of perspectives? By unlearning our oppressive knowledge — such as identifying how traditional design thinking can perpetuate forms of white/creative savior complex and what it means to decolonize design — we can restart our journey in design towards transformative liberation, rather than obscure intents of inclusion.
We cannot share our knowledge about design until we unlearn our current understanding first. By doing so, we open up our lens to a space that truly centers people who have been systemically marginalized in traditional design processes. In turn, we unlearn our definition of who is a designer, and shift to learn who our future designers can really be.
What are the Next Steps Towards Unlearning?
Open your mind to many forms and implications of design
Restart towards a path of listening that acknowledges voices of all contexts. Analyze how design occurs around the world in ways you might not have considered before. When someone on a budget analyzes their constraints and opportunities to repurpose a cardboard box into an organizational office supply tray, it’s a form of design. When activists organize community and social justice work, starting from prioritizing the problem, to generating innovative ideas, all the way to implementing the work, it embodies the design process.
In your day-to-day design work, bring in perspectives and conversations that account for race, gender, sexual orientation, ability, and more. During design phases such as identifying problem areas, brainstorming, and whiteboarding, or selecting users for user testing, ask questions to yourself and your team that consider various experiences: How will the current experience differ and impact users who identify as Black, Indigenous, and people of color? For women, non-binary, and gender minorities? If it’s a digital product, will a person’s income level and access to certain technology affect how they can use the product? Examine these critical perspectives to decenter away from limited forms of design.
Consider people in relation to the environment and context
Dori Tunstall, design anthropologist and Dean of Design at Ontario College of Art and Design University, delves deep into the importance of respect in design. Tunstall distinguishes this approach from normative models such as human-centered design through a relational, community-based level.
“The biggest difference between what we are articulating [in decolonial and respectful design] and what is now a hegemonic point of view with respect to “human-centered design” is de-centering the human to introduce a relational model where the human is just part of the wider ecosystem.”
The concept of relationality, grounded within Indigenous ways of knowing, is the understanding that all life, including people, are related and interconnected to each other from a physical to a spiritual sense. When we perceive design through the lens of respect and relationships, we move beyond the individualistic level into the community level. In practice, recognize how individual approaches — such as how society spotlights singular design icons more than communities of design — limit the relationships built when you value work, ideas, and knowledge collectively. Unlearning systems of oppression do not solely exist in a solitary vacuum, but on a larger societal and relational level.
Within your own role as a designer, prioritize daily relationship-building in your team by taking the chance to collaborate at every moment and sharing your knowledge for others to learn. When analyzing root problems that users feel, reflect on how the users encounter problems in relation to their surroundings by asking questions on who is missing, what physical forms impact them, or how their living style interacts with the people and environment around them.
Surrender opportunities of power
If you benefit from a position of privilege, sometimes the goal is to not always step up, but to step back. In opportunities to take ownership of a design project, to accept a new leadership role, or to hire an incoming designer, whose voices are you uplifting? Consider your positionality in the spaces you occupy — and how you can surrender them to open up space that better fits Black, Indigenous, trans, disabled, and folks of intersecting identities instead. By power, this also includes your monetary resources. Value the labor of people whose essential work often goes unpaid, and reshift your wealth such as supporting equity organizations like Access_&Design or Design School X.
Invest in future designers’ learning
Examine how you’ll invest in the potential of future designers. How might we equip youth or anyone new to design, ranging from people transitioning careers to people reentering society from incarceration with accessible tools? This could mean using your lunch breaks to mentor people who might not normally get access to you. Again, funding and monetary support go a long way. Similar to a Netflix or Spotify subscription service, commit a monthly or quarterly investment towards causes around design education, equity, and justice. Uplifting organizations such as Creative Reaction Lab’s Community Design Apprenticeship Program and the Inneract Project, which both support Black and Latinx youth in design initiatives, can be your first step of support.
As I reflect back from my very first class, I realize that what I was missing in my learning was a critical eye on design’s social impacts, a crucial addition over a formulaic approach that may occur in traditional design thinking processes. Even so, I trust that we as designers can change how we shape the future of design. When we make our main goal to unlearn design, we reframe ourselves to learn with an equitable and inclusive lens right at the start. It is only then that we can truly understand how to open our eyes to more liberating and transformative possibilities of design.
