Transdisciplinary Design

Is it Design Imperialism, or is it just bad design?

Posted by Aya Jaffar on December 16, 2014

Bruce Nussbaum’s question “Is humanitarian design the new imperialism?” shattered me. It agitated an age old question I’ve struggled with for a long time: Is giving inherently selfish?

My whole soul believes in serving humanity, and here was Nussbaum (and my internal struggle) asking whether design and acts of giving serve no one in the end, and will ultimately fail. His article startled me, and stopped me in my hurry to advocate humanitarian design.

The colonialized Iraqi imperializes the Ecuadorian

A personal anecdote places me right in the centre of this imperialism Nussbaum speaks of. In 2009, I embarked on a journey with a Toronto based NGO. As a group of university students, we were on our way to help build a school in an indigenous Quechua community in the mountains of the Chimborazo province of Ecuador. I went in with such a high regard for what we were doing, and with an eagerness to get started- Finally, I thought, my fellow humans will have a place to study.

Only later did I understand the naivete of my initial thoughts. I assumed that we were the help these communities needed to thrive and climb out of the poverty trap they lived in; that we were saviours of some kind. However, after spending a month in the mountains, I clearly realized my misguided presumptions were nothing more than imperialist thoughts intensified by stereotypes, living in a bubble, and all those missionary World Vision ads I watched on TV at 3:00AM.

What I realized was that those communities were completely resilient, self sufficient, and self dependent. They didn’t need us. They were doing us the favour: teaching North American kids valuable lessons about life and the meaning of community that was so natural to them. They had enough manpower to mix the cement I poured, or lay down the adobe bricks I made. Slowly, the fog cleared up as I understood that what has been framed as a volunteer trip where we can contribute to helping others, was in fact an educational trip to get us out of our skewed mindsets and dormant sense of responsibility.

 

Solidarity vs Pity & Charity

In An Imperfect Offering, the past president of Doctors Without Borders James Orbinski explains a serious lesson he learned while witnessing devastation in Somalia and Rwanda. Orbinski writes: “In our choice to be with those who suffer, compassion leads not simply to pity but to solidarity. Through pity, we respond to the other as a kind of object…Solidarity implies a willingness to confront the causes and conditions of suffering that persist in destroying dignity, and to demand a minimum respect for human life. Solidarity also means recognizing the dignity and autonomy of others, and asserting the right of others to make choices about their own destiny”. Coincidentally, I was reading this book while I was on my trip to Ecuador, and this powerful clarification helped me understand my own naivete.

As conscientious designers, I think it is integral that we keep that in mind. We are dealing with highly resourceful, intelligent humans who have lived, thrived in their environments, built homes, and loved- all without you and I in their lives. We shouldn’t overestimate our value.

 

With all those lessons learned…

And despite Nussbaum’s doubts, I am still optimistic about Humanitarian Design. I have faith in good co-design. The One Laptop Per Child project might have failed, but countless other initiatives lead by multidisciplinary and collaborative teams have succeeded. I do not think the reason some projects failed were because of who designed what, and for whom. I think the projects failed because they were not well designed projects. The research, strategy, prototyping, and testing cycle must have been inadequate. Of course, individuals conduct these steps within the cycle, and with themselves, they bring their backgrounds, perceptions, stereotypes, and assumptions. Yet I strongly believe that empathy and a deeper understanding of your user will lead to a successful project anywhere- whether your client is a successful company or an impoverished community. Just like the vast majority of design produced in the western world for the western world is bad design, so are a vast majority of the humanitarian design projects. It’s more about bad design, and less about imperialist design.

So, keep calm and carry on designing.