the limits of empathy and expansiveness of community.

One thing that interests me about thought leaders or colleagues I work with, is how they approach their craft; the principles and processes that they use to form ideas and solutions. The skill many leaders and designers emphasize is cultivating empathy; the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. The assumption is that when we understand how someone feels, we can know them, uncover their needs and diagnose a solution. We can ultimately design a fix for them. We might even believe that we have come to understand them better than they understand themselves, and thus are able to prescribe solutions that we are convinced will work for them. This is typically the approach in human-centred design, but how often do we pause to ask ourselves, which humans are really at the centre of our design?

Human-centered design (HCD) is a term product creators use to describe a process of designing for people. Empathy is regarded as the route to know our audience and users. It’s a methodology that has produced innovative products and been credited by brilliant thought leaders. So what’s the harm and how could this be limiting when it’s created so many possibilities? Well, it can and there are copious examples of when good intent in HCD hasn’t equated to beneficial impact.

As a DEI practitioner, my work exists because of the negative impacts that “genius” design ideas, structures and products have had, and continue to have, on large, complex populations of people. They are not centred, equitably recognized or considered when systems or products were designed. They slipped between the cracks or were generalized as a monoliths. Documentaries like Coded Bias highlight bias in algorithms that carry prejudice and discrimination towards women and dark skin tones. Most organizations have had their share of negative press and lawsuits due to discriminatory design of products, employment practices, inaccessible buildings and websites.

On the flip side, when marginalized communities aren’t completely overlooked, designers may exploit communities by extracting knowledge and monopolizing off of their ideas. It’s a subtle, yet grand form of plagiarism, appropriation and fraud. The work of Sasha Costanza-Chock and design justice promotes design practices that are community-led and dismantle structural inequity. Sasha’s book, ‘Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need’, explores real-world, case studies of product ideas and platforms that have been extracted from communities and then made inaccessible to the source. It also explores the interconnectedness of systems. Nothing we do or create is exists in a vacuum, it has a trickle effect on society, ecology and economy.

Design Justice Principles:

1. [image of a growing plant]
   We use design to sustain, heal, and empower our communities as well as to seek liberation from exploitative and oppressive systems

2. [image of three breaths of air]
   We center the voices of those who are directly impacted by the outcomes of the design process.

3. [image of seven dots]
   We prioritize design’s impact on the community over the intentions of the designer.

4. [image of a rising dove]
   We view change as emergent from an accountable, accessible, and collaborative process, rather than as a point at the end of a process.*

5. [image of a brook with rocks]
   We see the role of the designer as a facilitator rather than an expert.

6. [image of puzzle pieces]
   We believe that everyone is an expert based on their own lived experience, and that we all have unique and brilliant contributions to bring to a design process.

7. [image of open hands]
   We share design knowledge and tools with our communities.

8. [image of a solidarity fist]
   We work towards sustainable, community-led and -controlled outcomes.

9. [image of vines in the shape of a heart]
   We work towards non-exploitative solutions that reconnect us to the earth and to each other.

10. [image of five flames]
    Before seeking new design solutions, we look for what is already working at the community level. We honor and uplift traditional, indigenous, and local knowledge and practices.

This is not to claim that ALL forms of HCD or classical design practices are wicked or corrupt, but unless we proactively and intentionally design with inclusion and equity at the forefront, we risk making unnecessary errors, developing solutions that don’t work for all and being slammed with lawsuits. Whatever your motivation may be, whether it’s to “do the right thing” or be part of sustainable and innovative solutions that are resilient, adaptable and cutting edge, know that empathy will only get you so far. The magic happens when we have humility, and acknowledge that we can’t solve on behalf of others but that brilliance lies in community and not in a single person or designer. And so, beyond just emphasizing with people, what if we designed with people to co-create services, products, and structures that actually meet their needs?

A myth we often hold as truth, is that empathy allows us to “remove our shoes and walk in another’s”, or that we can “remove our lenses to see through the eyes of another”. By having this mindset, we trust that empathy is the way we can centre others and design for them. However, our lenses are shaped by our culture, upbringing, personality, values, beliefs, and motivations. Although we can try to understand someone else’s experience, we also need to recognize that we will never FULLY understand it. Below is an example from a training I conducted as a part of the EDI Advisory Board at Brands For Better that illustrates this concept.

I can’t take off my blue lenses and just exchange them for your rose coloured lenses. Instead, I would be overlapping the lenses, and when we do that, we create purple. We can never completely remove the lenses through which we experience our world. Our lenses will exist as filters and influence any work we do and all things we design. We all carry biases that will seep their way into our work. The surest way to mitigate individual bias is to work in diverse groups and have multiple people engaging with the problem or design with their unique lenses.

So where might we make shifts to design differently?

• Co-design > Classical design.

  • In classical design, the user is regarded as a “subject” that a researcher extracts insights from to generate a report with findings that is then provided to the designer. The user may never interact directly with the designer. Whereas when co-designing, the user is regarded as a co-designer that has shared decision making power. They are brought in as contributors rather than held as external subjects. This creates a community of practice.

This is a figure from the Convivial Toolkit on what co-design truly looks like vs classical design practice

• Collaborative > Extractive

  • Uplift, empower and recognize the community of co-designers that contribute to your designs. This can look like granting access, providing adequate compensation, capability and skills building and forging relationships between participants. Have a high regard for reciprocity and mutual value exchange. A fair question to keep top of mind: what is the value that co-designers gain from this experience? How can they co-own the product or what will be offered to them in exchange?

• Proactive > Reactive

  • When engaging with communities, build relationships early and don’t start with the solution. We might come up with a fully-baked solution and then bring in “users” to confirm and validate our approach. This may be in a testing phase or via a review gate before launching. By already having a defined solution, we risk having to go back and retrofit (which takes time and money) and reinforce existing power dynamics that, we, the outsiders (and designers) who have not experienced the problems, are the ones prescribing the solutions and it could be difficult for users to express that the solutions actually are not in service of their needs. By being proactive, co-designers are brought in at the very beginning of the process (or as early as possible) with continious exploration and relationship building.

• Facilitation > Expertise

  • Hold your role as a practitioner and facilitator vs an expert. Lean on and trust community expertise and lived experience. Trusting community expertise means granting shared decision making and for communities to have equal power (if not greater power) in what the outcomes are. As a facilitator, hold the container and facilitate activities that offer tools/frameworks for community members (co-designers) to express themselves, collaborate and participate in ways that are flexible with a variety of mediums. No DEI practitioner is an expert of every community and all topics (even those who claim to be). DEI leaders should not be relied on to view content through a inclusive lens (as a check-box), because it is impossible for any one person, no matter how extensive their practice, to be able to do this effectively if they are not involving community members most impacted. There are cultural nuances, language considerations and other conditions that matter that a single “DEI expert” who is not part of the community can ever fully comprehend. Direct and equitable engagement with diverse groups is often the missing link that results in harmful design.

• Open source > Closed source

  • To make widespread progress in DEI, one organization cannot do it in a silo. Since we work within interdependent systems and organizations, we need all organizations and people to actively be in the work. It is a field in which hoarding strategies and practices do more harm and slow down progress. We must release our learned responses to scarcity and share openly within and across communities. The most challenging part of this work isn’t typically knowing what to do, but it’s in the implementation and willingness to unlearn, work differently and take accountability. When possible, make your resources freely available and allow people to redistribute and modify with appropriate credits and recognition.

This is in no way an exhaustive list of principles and I’m continously learning and practising in my daily work. What I know for sure is that solutions lie within communities and that the diversity and complexity of humanity needs to be considered, not only at the end or centre, but continuously throughout the design process. Empathy may be how we stretch, but community is how we grow and expand. By engaging in community, we flex our ability to de-center our own world (and egos) and see the interconnectedness of many worlds and systems.

my journal excerpt from 2009 titled ‘empathy’. re-reading this now I realize what assumptions I might have made. I didn’t get curious, but instead created a story about a stranger based on observable qualities. As you read this, consider, is it possible you may have ever done the same?

Late Sunday evening I stand in line
at the store behind a homeless man
buying a big bottle of brandy with his
last twenty dollars, and a sick feeling
consumes me when I wonder why he
spends the money on booze and not
on a haircut, or why he won’t use it
to find a job, I question why the alcohol
appears friendlier to him than working
towards a better future, until I realize

this man may not believe
there is anything left for him in this world,
and how familiar we all are with the feeling of
not wanting to try anymore, of convincing
yourself you are too far gone past the point
of no return to want to spend time or money
on the future when the past has been so
much less than kind, so I empathize.

And I don’t tap his shoulder to interrogate him,
I say nothing, I smile. I am not judging him for buying the bottle.
I understand the struggle of just being awake,
and it’s okay if it helps him to forget who he is
and why he doesn’t want to remember anything
about reality when he wakes up, just for one night,
because we’ve all been there.

As I leave, he watches me go, and I think he
knows exactly what I was thinking, or at least
I hope he does, because I try to put myself
in his shoes for a minute and they are not
comfortable and it is not at all comforting to
know he will wake up in the morning with less
money in his pocket and less hope than before.