This is a three-part series focused on building a decolonized practice with the people we design with.

Last week in Part 1, we reflected on the tensions, learnings and experiments we’re working through as part of our decolonizing work to shift power with generosity.

This week in Part 2, we’ll look at ways to overcome paternalism and othering while centering living and lived expertise.

Next week in Part 3, we’ll challenge other elements of white supremacy culture.

This series does not attempt to be exhaustive. Rather, it reflects where we are in our decolonization journey.

Tension: Paternalism and othering are deeply embedded in the tools and processes we use as designers

Indicators

One of many manifestations of white supremacy culture, paternalism looks like valuing learned expertise over living and lived experience as expertise.

Many community members shared stories of clients who were unwilling to offer compensation to research or co-design participants, hire people with living and lived expertise on design teams, or pay people with living and lived expertise at the same rate as learned expertise.
Across stories shared, paternalism showed up when the words or actions of someone in a position of power demonstrate they do not "trust” communities to be able to define their own needs or make decisions for themselves.
Othering showed up as exclusion (us vs. them mindset), marginalization (we are / know better), and unconscious bias in favor of the status quo (a preference for preserving systems of structural inequality and oppression).

Paternalism can also look like an over reliance on personas as a proxy for living and lived expertise.

While personas can help build empathy for the people and communities we design with, over-relying on them can be problematic as they reduce complex human behavior, experiences and decision-making to two dimensional monoliths.
Furthermore, they are imbued with the assumptions, unconscious biases and stereotypes of the people creating them (no matter how evidence-based) and people with living and lived expertise rarely have any control over the narrative, let alone the outcomes.

Are we perpetuating paternalism and othering by expecting 'users' to change behavior without addressing our own?

Designers wield immense power in influencing, shaping and changing behavior. By default, the leading agents of behavior change are presumed to be ‘the user’. Unique to the the social sector is a dynamic where ‘users’ (i.e. who benefits) aren’t always payers (i.e. who pays).
Power differentials aside, in the social sector, the role of designers are typically focused on changing behaviors and improving the lives of ‘users’ who represent individuals and communities that are underserved by mainstream systems. This understanding frames how we scope, define challenges, ideate, test and bring ideas to life. They impact people and the communities we claim to serve long after we’re gone and yet, we don’t always ask ourselves and our clients (i.e. who pays) how we might be part of the problem to begin with.

Questions we’re noodling on

As allies and advocates of people with living and lived expertise, how might we design it into the fabric of our work?
How might we do this meaningfully (i.e. avoiding tokenism, perpetuating harm) while ensuring fair value exchange (e.g. compensating people for time and expertise)?
How might we model the change we wish to see?

Experiments we're trying

Scoping living and lived expertise into our projects from the get-go:

Including compensation for people with living and lived expertise in our budgets and proposals.
Hiring people with living and lived expertise as part of our design teams and compensating them at the same rates as ourselves.
Consciously working to avoid extractive design practices that intentionally or unintentionally manifest as an entitlement to the stories, trauma, value or time shared by people with living and lived expertise.
Sharing decision making power with people with living and lived expertise.
Providing cash compensation to research and co-design participants with living and lived expertise.

Learning about the harms inherent in design and actively seeking ways to transform and decolonize our design and research practices towards approaches that are joyful, ethical, equitable and community led. For an example, see IDIA’s decolonized design research framework.

Being the change we want to see. What if every design engagement involved turning our tools and methods on ourselves and our clients, asking: How are we part of the problem? What behaviors, systems or structures do we need to dismantle, shift or change? How might we model the change we wish to see?

Reflection

What resonates with your experiences? What diverges from your experiences? What does this bring up for you?