Presenter: George Aye, Co-founder and Director of Innovation, Greater Good Studio

Brainstorm Design 2022 - Design Talk: that Quiet Little Voice - When Design & Ethics Collide

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Brainstorm Design 2022 - When Design & Ethics Collide


Brainstorm Design 2022 - Design Talk: that Quiet Little Voice - When Design & Ethics Collide


while human centered design works well in commercial context things can go wrong when designers failed to adapt it before employing it in the social sector, irrespective of good intentions. It can even exacerbate the underlying problem the designer was seeking to address when helping clients. Designers should ask different questions because the ultimate goal is to improve someone's life in our next design talk, Georgia lays out the perils of designing without moral guardrails and share some questions designers should ask themselves when design and ethics collide. Please welcome to the brainstorm design stage George. I co founder and director of innovator, Greater good studio. Good afternoon. Can you hear me? Um it's such a pleasure to be here in person and to not be on zoom. So I would encourage everyone to remember that you don't have to take yourself off mute in order to have some auditory feedback. If you want to order big last gasp at any moment, please do. It will be really appreciated. Also I was remembering that this conference is called embracing radical transformation. So one of the tiny ways that could be a little radical in this moment is to ask for permission to go beyond the 30 minutes I've been given um well you see there was a gospel And I'm going to ask the powers that be if I can do so and that means not asking fortune although I appreciate being a bad guest like this but ask the room do I have your permission to go over just a tiny bit than the allotted 13 now. Under 12 minutes. Yes, thank goodness. So um I want to just check to see how many people here are familiar with the term human centered design. Imagine a bunch, can you raise your hands, how this is gonna go? Great, good, thank you. Um if you're not familiar with human centered design, I'm gonna hopefully go to the next slide. This diagram shows a number of cute color graphics that described the process of humans in the design that starts with like framing problems, understanding humans and then designing responses towards them and that kind of makes sense. And I want to share this amazing story of how human centered design changed the lives of millions of people around the world, particularly young people and I want to do so because it starts with two designers from stanford Montes and Bowen approached focus on campus and asked them what they loved and hated about their habits about smoking. The complaints were consistent fear of being seen with a cigarette and paranoia about smelling of smoke on the first date. Isn't that a good insight? The first prototypes were adult assemblies of bespoke components and items found on drug store shelves. If you follow along the widow's beats, they've really nailed it. They handled human centered design exactly as taught to them and exactly as we promote and tell the world we do, we understand the problem, understand human insights and respond Unfortunately this is where sort of things go a little awry because what they then created in their journey to design a product to help them quit smoking was this little guy, the dual e cigarette, look how cool that is tiny. And what's fascinating about the jewelry cigarette is that it's so uh problematic and attractive That it was valued around about $38 billion dollars when they got acquired by Altria because they were found that they wanted to add it to their addiction portfolio alongside Marlboro and in the most hilariously predictable way. They also started posting jobs for a director of corporate social responsibility two, I'm sure helped them understand how they could perhaps make amends. Can you imagine working on projects like that? Woof, it breaks the question, how did we lose our way, what system and what series of different failures had to happen with that kind of product that I'm holding in my chest bacchanal can exist in the world and being essentially like a massive public health scourge without repercussion. Now, it's not as a design as a single monolithic block. It has adapted and diverged over many, many ways over decades. It's a very divergent process and it's not as though we actually don't already have standards for good practice. Um, there are many out there, but my go to as a design professor is to look at the 10 principles for good design from dieter rams, I think others of what he referenced hair. Um, and you know, he's a bit of a hero to me and what's fascinating is that if you look at this product, this would pass every test That the 10 principles with administer Look even number six good design is honest and this will honestly kill you. We have a craft based framework for good design. We don't actually, that's not a concern anymore and hasn't been, what we lack is an ethical based framework for good design and to keep relying on craft and harping on about craft is actually not acknowledging the problem that we have. I've been really fortunate that for the last, coming on 11 years to be the co founder and director of innovation at greater good studio were based in Chicago and we work exclusively with nonprofits, foundations and government. And in doing so, we've been brought on to look at any number of different complex social issues, some of which are listed here. They wrote the classics. They're persistent, evergreen and awful. But we feel lucky to be invited those conversations because they think they're really important. Now you would think that with us coming into these spaces that either our clients or our studio would have this ethical framework. I mean, why am I on the stage of not having one of those? But it turns out we don't, we have proxies, we make stuff up all the time and that makes us, I think a real liability in some of these very complicated spaces. I think it makes designers a real liability in these complex social spaces. The clients we work with are building towards an equitable society. So it's greatly important to us that we treat them with both care and respect, which is why it's been so motivating for us to kind of like develop systems for ourselves. But in almost every design firm I've ever worked and every design I've ever met at the individual level, I find that this has been true. It is a B Y O E scenario, Bring your own ethics that is not good enough for an industry. It is remarkable. We've got this far, B Y. E. It can't cut it, which means that we can be quite dangerous in some scenarios without an ethical framework. We have the opportunity to understand from our users and we run the risk of exploiting them. Instead, we have the opportunity with designed to redistribute power or without an ethical framework. We run the risk of concentrating it as we tend to do without an ethical framework. We have the opportunity to prevent new social issues, but we end up running the risk or simply Ameliorating them. We could be doing so much more. And one of the proxies that a reference is this quite a little voice that I've had and I know for a fact, all of you have I have not met a single working professional designer who has not had this conversation with themselves, but the competition will flare up in the worst time. Thank you and I myself, I'm mad at myself and how much you've done that I failed. So that means that that that the conditions by which you go don't blow it, You've got a good thing here, don't blow. It is absolutely present in that industry. Uh this may be hard to read, but these are 10 moments when that quite a lot of voices come up to my head. Um I love it. If you maybe want to take a photo, I'd love to talk to you at the at the bar afterwards, because I'm definitely gonna need a drink after this and talk to you about when the times that you've had that quiet little voice come up and what you did in that situation, I'm not going to shame you at all, far from it, but I want to talk about how we can tackle that without having the counter narrative, which is in all our studios that tell us our industry has trained us to say yes typically around how much we can do it and when we can do it by we have very little training on how to say no. It is an absent, conspicuously absent component of our design education. And I think part of the reason why it is so is because we so rarely talked about this notion of Power and we've heard a few times referencing it and I want to actually define it because I think the way Power gets discussed perhaps by designers is that well someone else has it? I don't Or is that the thing that maybe president binder has and is discussing with other world leaders and I think that's true, but I want to bring it down to a scale that's a little more interpersonal. Let me share this definition from my co founder that power is the ability to change another person's reality. And when you think about that for a minute, because there are probably times when your reality got completely changed for months at a time because of an email or text or some notes alongside this definition for Power is the idea of power asymmetry and the idea that often lopsidedness in power is often how things go that distribution is often kind of concentrated with small number versus the masses. So to kind of hone this in a little further, I'm going to visualize with a basic triangle and made in keynote. Okay, can I ask anybody here in the room, have you ever had a project and from the very 1st 2nd you hear about you go I'm screwed. I'm never getting out of this alive. The budget doesn't make sense. I don't understand who this team is, what this is like the schedule is off. How do they expect me to be successful? Anybody had a thing like that. I think my whole career was spent doing that. So what that means and this is why the triangle makes sense. That is you on the sharp pointy end of that triangle. Does that help you make? Does that help you feel it? That means that somebody somewhere in the world on the wide end applying that pressure. Now some classical asymmetric relationship exists in the world. And here are just a few law enforcement with detainees, doctors and patients, employees and employees funded through grantees, teachers with their students, landlords with renters, local government with community leadership with their front line staff. These are almost pre scripted asymmetric relationships. You have to take a lot to fight that Now along the spectrum between the pointy end to the wide end guess where greater good studio shows up along that it was painful to have to admit how far over to this wide end we actually are. We don't get projects unless we are aligned with those with great power. Which means we run the risk of every time we do a project of working in the shadow of our clients Asymmetry, we can actually make things worse just by showing up. And just because we said yes, the project. I'm wondering if some of you go, oh yes, there was a project. I did. Mm hmm. I love this quote from Alice walker, the most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any. That's what was trained into me maybe because I'm an immigrant? Maybe because I was always the lowest young, youngest and lowest person on the totem pole at everywhere I worked. But it behooves those with power to remind you don't have any. So one of the most disruptive ways of trying to maybe disrupt how its symmetry works. It's saying no to refuse it to disrupt it to to um challenge how it's being prescribed. So we gut check all of our projects and all of the new business development. Every monday we operationalized as part of our culture To try to see if we can challenge the notion of how power was distributed to us as a design studio. That's only 12 people in Chicago And over the last 10 years while I'm really proud of the portfolio projects we've done. It's the 50 plus break up emails that I'm really proud about. The breakup emails in like it's not you, it's me. I'm really sorry we can't do this with the single largest breakup being for U. S. A. I. D. For $2 million. Which means I'm I feel confident up to $2 million. I can turn it down if it's two billion and one who knows what I'll do. But I feel like I've been tested up to that much. So design I would argue has some issues. So without deliberate intervention it's designed really serves society. So when we think about introducing design to social issues, I want to be sure. Is that really the right approach that has a direct impact on our business. For sure. But it's not about whether greater good should do it, but rather whether we should be having designers in the room at all, Design primarily has served two goals. And I think that without acknowledging this, we are pretending it isn't happening. Design build capital and seeks comfort. Kind of reminds me of this conference actually both things are happening at the same time and that comfort seeking competitive design means that we'd rather not say anything. I think the design could be doing so much more and you can't remember the last several years now we've had people whining like little toddlers. We weren't designed at the table designed at the table. We were so ready to get design at scale. We never stopped to wonder if perhaps weeks causing harm at scale in that rush to get to 1000 designers. 1,510,000 designers. Oh sure. What it is with scaling should happen. What is preventing us from causing more harm? And I would argue that every major brand has a dark side that has been brought to you by design were an accelerant to those social problems. Sorry to be such a downer. And at this point, I think design leadership, Well, it might be hopefully trying to say I didn't know like some sort of like naivety, but I think there is a willful ignorance at this point, it's no longer really capable of pretending it isn't happening. We're not going to begin our mindset our way through this, it's time to grow up. And I think what we part of what the issue is that our design culture is set by what we celebrate the all the awards that we drive for the all the recognition. I wish there was an award for the projects we've turned down. That was really hard to visualize. Which is why I try to make these little boxes with squares that are dashed lines, but that would at least have some recognition for the effort it takes to turn things down. But what if saying no wasn't just a choice you made because you know, you have to run the risk of looking difficult. What if it wasn't about just a personal choice anymore? Was something a little bigger? Whatever you said, there was a system of accountability similar to the ones we have in many other professional organizations, other professions that we are adjacent to. From medicine to law. Even architecture, heck even real estate agents have to get a license. Are we about that? What if we had a code of ethics? What if as an industry we had a shared set of understandable practice. What if we had to be licensed and accredited? What if we needed continuous education in order to qualify and earn that right to do this work and others, there are things that are already established in any other industry, Many industries and architecture being our closest brethren. Why not in design across the board. Now, I can understand if perhaps you think that well that's just going to make it harder to become a designer. And I I agree I don't think design needs more gatekeeping, but I do think we need more accountability. Some recourse if things go awry recourse if julie cigarette happens again for another community and you could say I don't want to participate in that. That sounds too expensive. Really annoying and slow. You're right. It is, it's gonna suck. But there will be a bifurcation I believe for those who are going to practice this type of accountability and will serve a clientele that is seeking the accountability and then there will be those who will not, that will probably be okay. But over time, just like architecture, I don't know if anybody can actually build a building anymore without having a licensed architect. I'm sure there are some that that won't. So I want to just peek a little into the future because I think we're so close now because it's it's not it's actually not that far off. I want to share with you this social change by design database that is a listing and if you it's a long billy address. But if you take a look, it shares a database that myself and others Other moderators developed that has over 200 organizations. That is the future of this industry. Perhaps getting us closer to this accountability that we have been talking about. These are design organizations that have designed themselves differently to push back this counter narrative that they've been taught when they were growing coming up, just like I was, I'm proud to be amongst this list, but I'm also proud to help curate it because I want to show what it could look like and to show in which ways how design could do something a little more. Perhaps we could use design to build power and perhaps were designed to seek truth. We have everything we need. If only there was like profession of like people who could handle ambiguity and be creative when push comes to shove. Oh man, wouldn't that be great? We're so close to have this future. And I think it will likely happen if we just stop the and listen to that quiet little voices inside all of us. Thank you for letting me go over