When I found design, I saw a process that invites us to slow down to engage more people in naming their needs and bringing their creativity to life.
Much of my work in design research is sitting with people and having conversations about their lives. I am a professional listener. And a damn good one. I actively practice non-judgement, empathy, and gratitude for what people share. I promise to hold their stories with care and reflect them in what we ultimately create. No matter how much I listen, I have not lived the depths of their experiences.
Just sharing your life experience and giving feedback to researchers is not itself a creative act. Instead, it can easily be re-traumatizing to share personal details about your life over and over again with strangers. Qualitative researchers run the risk of extracting lived experience from the people who lived them.
The next phase of design, ideation, is a highly creative, non-technical space to use our collective imagination to dream new ideas into being.
While designers do their best to non-judgmentally represent the people we spoke to in qualitative research, there are many ways bias continues to cloud our understanding and our creations. People tend to imagine ideas informed by how and where they grew up and what they are frequently exposed to. Designers with lived experience in the subject matter can bring a fuller context to create more relevant and impactful solutions.
Equitable design means ensuring people whose lives are directly affected by the challenge, participate directly in creative ideation, and not only research.
Every person is creative, whether it is recognized or not, visible or invisible; Creativity is a part of everyday existence. For everybody.
If we are all creative,
We can all be designers.
What design skills are the most helpful during ideation and how might we encourage everyone to tap into those skills?
Design Skill 1: Holding the Both/And
The role of designers in ideation is to step outside of one’s own experience and center the experience of the stakeholders. When stakeholders are designers, what role do they take on? I think it is the ability to hold the both/and. To share your own experiences and to see how other people might be interpreting the same situation in a different way. People with lived experience, perhaps viewing ideation as an extension of focus groups, may be inclined to continue sharing their experiences rather than create based on the experiences of the 100 or so other people interviewed. While, people without lived experience in the subject area may not fully take in the situation and offer ideas that miss crucial details.
Equitable Design Practice 1: discover systems together
Design facilitators and participants practice and hold each other accountable to use a both/and mindset. Discuss personas and research thoroughly. Be sure to explain the form and functions of these tools clearly. Use a causal loop diagram to find the right altitude of conversation and help everyone see the interrelated systems dynamics.
design Skill 2: share your ideas - big or small
Designers are tasked with brainstorming ideas — lots of them. It can be incredibly vulnerable to share your ideas with strangers. Especially if you fear that they could be judged or discarded. Design spaces unfortunately bring with them the same power imbalances, biases, and microaggressions as the rest of the world. People may assume that whoever holds the most power is “in charge”, we might make assumptions about who is “good” at design, or simply be intimidated based on who has designed before and who hasn’t.
Equitable design Practice 2: Facilitate to build power
Design facilitators can acknowledge the courage and vulnerability it takes to share ideas in front of a group. Don’t assume that because people don’t do this, they are incapable. Design facilitators should be acutely aware of power imbalances in the room and how to build and share power. Facilitators should choose examples and stories that everyone can engage with and that doesn’t set up just one way of knowing or designing. It comes down to the mindset that facilitators and participants come from; Do you believe design is a highly specialized activity or do you believe that anyone is capable of participating given the opportunity?
Design Skill 3: Move from “what is” to “what if?’
At a certain point, designers move from “what is” to “what if?” We go from immersing in research, stories, and context to asking what can we do now. What will we create and test? It is easy for anyone to stay in the phase of grievance, complaint, and dissatisfaction. The design process asks us to be with these realities while also moving to create an intervention that can hopefully address some of those challenges.
Equitable design Practice 3: Ask What do we need to understand to begin creating?
Designers can acknowledge that it is a privilege to move quickly to what could be, instead of what is wrong. People might be focusing on what is wrong because those realities are pressing, urgent, and hurtful. Do these need to be resolved before someone can experience enough relief to turn their mind to possibilities of what is next? Have we taken enough time to truly understand the situation? Are we making comments or offering ideas that suggest we don’t fully understand people’s lived reality? If so, return to the experience and ask “what do we need to understand to begin creating?”
I wholeheartedly believe that everyone has these skills. Almost everyone balances their own experiences with other people’s perceptions of the world on a daily basis. We all come up with new ideas and in many cases share those ideas with at least one person. We make decisions with the information we have, not knowing the end result. Why then is participating in design ideation something that happens in specialized places and operates under its own rules?
We must first acknowledge the necessity of designing WITH people with lived experience. If we don’t think it is important, we won’t turn our attention to it. We will continue to use the dominant logic of the world to create solutions. As Audre Lorde, and Einstein, and many others have warned we will not create anything revolutionary with the same thinking that got us into this mess.