This glossary of terms relating to design responsibility is an attempt to sort out wishful thinking from reality. Use it as a guide to help you find where you stand on issues. Case studies involving designers, artists, marketers, and brand consultants are examples of how people in our field integrate a more responsible behavior in their daily practices. My perspective and my conclusions reflect my interests and professional experience. You may disagree with me on many points. You probably will—but I do hope that you will find below an incentive to develop and assert your own opinions.
ADVOCACY
Case Study: Liquid Agency
Related Topics: Altruism, Content Marketing, Pro Bono
In most civilized countries, from Albania to Uzbekistan, independent government officials are appointed to plead the cause of ordinary citizens whose legitimate complaints cannot be resolved by legal institutions. In the United States, the system does not provide this service, and people with special needs or issues must scramble to find help outside the public sector. Private advocates volunteer to fill the gap, making advocacy a uniquely American occupation.
Driven by a feeling of solidarity, unsalaried advocates pester bureaucrats, write petitions, gather signatures, raise money, call journalists—all along giving everyone a hard time in order to get results. Advocates are the real heroes in the Land of the Free—but here lies a contradiction: their unpaid status is their greatest asset, and the reason they are so efficient. Their moral superiority over paid workers is a major competitive advantage. They are not mercenaries but guerrilla fighters on the battlefront of administrative hurdles.
Advocates are so effective that brands, aware of the power of unsalaried supporters, embrace advocacy as the best way to promote their interests. Their preferred marketing strategy consists of turning loyal customers into brand advocates. Liquid Agency, in Silicon Valley, is one of the pioneers of this form of “commercial” advocacy. Brand experience specialists, their success rides on the groundswell of social media: they say that, on behalf of their various clients, they’ve been able to generate more than thirty million unprompted conversations between new customers and enthusiastic, unpaid brand advocates.
Savvy marketers don’t sell products, they sell authenticity, the one thing money can’t buy.
ALTERNATIVE MEDIA
Case Study: Paris Opera / 3Ème Scène
Related Topics: Cultural Activism, Fake News
Gone are the days when alternative media was a novelty. Paradoxically, proposing radically different content to a highly selective public is now a mainstream practice. Traditional newspapers and magazines are developing digitalized platforms for distributing niche viewpoints with a “zine” mentality. Provocative headlines, short indie films, and special-edition podcasts are available on frequently updated web feeds targeting atypical readers. Relentless content stimulation has become the norm. The participatory culture that alternative media platforms were supposed to foster has in fact promoted a sense of uniformity.
Call it subculture fatigue.
Miraculously, a handful of media institutions manage to create alternative forms of communication whose appeal is different—but differently. One example is the 350-year-old Paris Opera company that sponsors short videos by contemporary filmmakers and avant-garde artists. The performances are original creations, not previews or medleys. Available on YouTube, the 3ème Scène series is conceived as a third “stage”—as a filmic alternative to the highly emotional experience of live ballet and opera performances.
ALTRUISM
Case Study: Designers Without Borders
Related Topics: Charitable Gifts, Mentoring, Pro Bono Work
Altruism is a nineteenth-century concept, an invention of French philosopher Auguste Comte. He believed that we were hardwired to put the welfare of our fellow human beings before our own. Nice try. Since, no one has been able to prove that he was right. There is no scientific evidence that a totally selfless concern for others is even possible. The reality is a lot more pragmatic: we engage in altruistic behaviors because helping others makes us feel good. The health benefits of volunteering are clinically proven. Compassion and kindness are more effective against depressive disorders than Prozac.
This could explain why designers are a pretty upbeat group. Concern for the common good is a shared notion in this profession. Called upon to solve problems that affect the quality of life of users—and the bottom line of their clients—most designers can’t afford to be completely self-absorbed. They cannot ignore societal issues. Willy-nilly, they serve the interests of others—in fact, that’s what they do best.
There is no shortage of designers eager to join like-minded communities of generous problem solvers. Designers Without Borders is a nonprofit foundation that can open doors to altruistic designers by putting them in contact with the right clients. Hired by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), they can look forward to delivering high quality design services to crisis-affected populations in Africa and elsewhere. And there are perks, too: you can win design awards while developing great communication campaigns for people, and institutions in the developing world can showcase your talent in ways commercial assignments do not. And keep in mind that juries love to give design awards to projects that serve worthy causes.
Case Study: Black Lives Matter
Related Topics: Civil Disobedience, Protest Marches
To have an impact, antiwar movements need powerful images. Most popular are photographs of peaceful demonstrators offering flowers to police officers in full riot gear—a genre pioneered at the height of the Vietnam War by photojournalists covering antiwar protests. However, manufacturing antiwar imagery has always been a challenge. There is no memorable poster for anti–Cold War or anti–World War II sentiment. In contrast, opposition to World War I produced the Dada movement—probably the most original of all twentieth-century avant-gardes, and still a source of inspiration for protesting artists today.
In the twenty-first century, the wars that are the focus of most dissent have names like “War on Terror,” “War on Crime,” or “War on Drugs.” Profiting the military-industrial complex, these “wars” often target minorities, African Americans in particular. More than any other group, they are victims of racial profiling, police brutality, and systemic violence. One organization, Black Lives Matter (BLM), regularly holds peaceful protests, marches, and rallies. An international activist movement, it might turn out to be as influential as the Vietnam antiwar movement was fifty years ago. BLM has a great logo, but no powerful imagery—not yet—except for a raised fist, a ubiquitous symbol of defiance.
BARRICADES
Case Study: Ukrainian Mirror Protest
Related Topics: Civil Disobedience, Political Posters, Protest Marches
Think of them as mixed-media art installations. A seventeenth-century Parisian invention, the first barricades were simple chains extended across narrow streets to prevent government forces from storming inner city neighborhoods to make arrests. With each new rebellion, barricades became more efficient, as protesters realized that messy piles of indiscriminate objects were harder to dismantle than tidy structures. Over the centuries, novelists and poets have celebrated these homemade barricades as bastions of creative resistance. The twenty-first-century versions are built with sandbags, tires, cobblestones, barbed wire, bamboo poles, scaffoldings, and even snow.
The US Army Corps of Engineers has developed high-security barricades to be used against terrorists—and insurgents. Portable and computer controlled, these crowd-control fences are sci-fi blockades with none of the heroic appeal of ersatz fortifications. To fight the dehumanization of street confrontations, protesters in Kiev staged a living performance while facing riot police. Forming a barricade by standing shoulder to shoulder, they held mirrors while defying their armed aggressors. Known as the Ukrainian Mirror Protest, it was a perverse “selfie” moment. Forced to look at themselves, some paratroopers appeared confused, embarrassed, and ashamed. A few looked away. A couple tried to smile.
BEHAVIORAL MANIPULATIONS
Case Study: Persado Software
Related Topics: Calls to Action, Fake News, Outrage Addiction
One could argue that design is a manipulative discipline of sorts. The role of a designer is to influence the way people relate to a product, a service, or a message. However, the design process never aspired to become a science. Design Thinking is the closest we ever got to a systematic study of the laws of creativity. But today, with the advent of artificial intelligence and machine learning, a number of design agencies are morphing into “cognitive content” platforms. They develop proprietary “behavioral algorithms” to identify the “optimal” visual language and wording to “drive action.”
It’s a lot of jargon to say brainwashing.
A dizzying number of new ventures are using cloud-based market research and computer data analysis to solve their clients’ communication needs. It’s a brave new world. They can tell you which part of a photograph has the most visual effect on a specific target audience. They can create elaborate dashboards to visualize consumers’ browsing habits and favorite keywords. They can automatically tweak messages to find the exact words that will get people to “engage.” One London-based platform, Persado, has cataloged one million words and phrases and rated them based on sentiment analysis. “The software can create a message, optimize its language, and then translate that message into any of 23 languages.” Using a technology called “emotion ontology,” Persado can appraise which subjective feeling is most likely to trigger the desired response.
BIPARTISANSHIP
Case Study: Climate Solutions Caucus
Related Topics: Advocacy, Nonpartisan Journalism, Political Correctness, Red and Blue
In politics, bipartisanship is the Holy Grail. It is a mystical quest for all elected officials. Their constituents expect them to put their principles above their electoral self-interests. You and I would like to think that we’ve elected politicians who can win support from colleagues across the aisle. Investigating sexual misconducts, and punishing acts of anti-Semitism. Everything else is a polarizing topic, and the only way lawmakers can reach a compromise is to wheel and deal behind the scenes.
But miracles do happen: quantifiable facts on global warming are prompting some members of the US House of Representatives of both parties to form the truly bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus. With slogans like “Science is patriotic,” they strive to educate their members to depoliticize the environmental policies in the United States. Could the climate change trigger a real sea change in a frozen and gridlocked two-party system?
BREAKING THE RULES
Case Study: École 42
Related Topics: Hacktivism/Activism, Whistleblowing
Eventually all rules must be broken. Today grammatical rules are at the forefront of a culture war, fighting a losing battle against the assaults of digital technologies. On mobile devices, keystrokes have a mind of their own. Social media sound bites pack together acronyms, memes, typos, emoticons, hashtags, homophones, slurs, ellipses—and split infinitives. Like it or not, electronic text-speak is here to stay.
Disruption is the latest buzzword. With innovations that are counter-intuitive, disruptive business models are driving the cyber economy. Making headlines are cars without drivers, people who are famous for not being famous, and schools without teachers or academic programs.
Such is the concept behind École 42, a private, nonprofit, tuition-free computer programming school that doesn’t have any faculty, does not issue a diploma or a degree, and is open 24/7. With two campuses, one in Paris, France, and the other in Fremont, California, the school embraces peer learning, whereby students are expected to self-organize and assist one another. During the three to five years it might take for them to complete the curriculum and become world-class developers, the digital economy will have evolved—new rules will have to be broken—and École 42 graduates will be prepared to program the next disruptions.
CALLS TO ACTION
Case Study: The Nerdy Nonprofit
Related Topics: Consumers Boycott, Memes
The most celebrated call to action (CTA) in the history of graphic design is probably Alexander Rodchenko’s 1924 Constructivist poster featuring a woman who appears to be calling citizen to come get books for free—part of a campaign to democratize literacy. Already a century ago, rallying cries were used to infuse a sense of urgency to advertising messages. Much more prosaic are today’s CTA. They are widgets found on websites’ landing pages, as part of “inbound” marketing strategies designed to “convert” casual browsers into loyal customers and promoters of a brand experience. These “Click Here,” “Get Started,” or “Learn More” buttons trigger in users a Pavlovian reaction. Before they know it, inadvertent clickers have signed up for a free ebook, joined a club, downloaded a document, or registered for a free trial.
To be effective, the CTA buttons must be brightly colored boxes with rounded corners placed on the eye path of readers, toward the bottom of a page, in an uncluttered corner. They must contain compelling incentives in the form of active verbs, set in a sans serif typeface. Deviate from the rules, and your CTA will not elicit the proper “click” reaction. Distasteful as they are, CTAs are key to websites’ efficiency, particularly for nonprofits that rely on donations to survive. A blog, thenerdynonprofit.com, offers advice and tricks to help charitable organizations adapt inbound marketing tactics to their needs. In today’s environment, even the most worthy causes, with the most ethical fundraising guidelines, must learn to push people’s buttons.
CARICATURE
Case Study: Caricature Studio X
Related Topic: Hate Symbols, Satire
A portrait that distorts certain existing features is often more “lifelike” than a faithful photograph. A good caricature, drawn by a talented artist, captures the likeness of a person better than a mirror image—better indeed than a selfie. It shows a representation of what our brain sees when analyzing a face: not a complete image but a composite of unique features: a particular hairline, a pointed chin, crooked teeth. Instantly, when meeting someone, we try to identify the two or three things that give that person away. It is a comparative process, during which the neural activity focuses on deviations from the norms—physical traits that do not conform to what’s considered average.
There is a difference between a caricature and a stereotype. A caricature “celebrates” the deeply human characteristics of a face, while a stereotype accentuates demeaning attributes with the intent to shame and offend.
So far, no one can explain why silly caricatures are such a source of delight. Capitalizing on the power of the passing chuckle, Caricature Studio X is a software program that lets you distort photographic portraits into funny faces. It allows you to push the limits of what makes you recognizable. However, a self-generated caricature will always lack the empathy that makes a traditional caricature, drawn by an outside observer, such a fascinating artifact.
CAUSE MARKETING
Case Study: American Greetings #Givemeaning
Related Topics: Altruism, Charitable Gifts, Corporate Philanthropy, CSR
Get out your handkerchiefs. Cause marketing is a tearjerker. It is a dramatic form of entertainment as indigenous to the American culture as Hollywood movies or late night television. Brands have figured a way to turn buying their products into more than just shopping for goods. It is now the pretext for powerful and compelling storytelling: an epic fight against the forces of evil, with the consumer in the leading role. From bringing clean water to African kids to saving polar bears, curing cancer to finding a home for stray dogs, all causes are good causes—good for business, that is. With formulas like “Doing Well by Doing Good,” “Eradicate Poverty Through Profit,” and “Turning Purchases into Donations,” brands are competing with nonprofit charities for a share of an ever-expanding market that turns feel-good consumption into brand loyalty.
Amazingly, not all cause-marketing campaigns involve financial contributions to charities. Some are just about “issues”—like creating awareness about infertility, as American Greetings did recently with its #GiveMeaning campaign targeting millennials. As sleek as a film preview for the release of a major motion picture, the commercial captures painful emotions with realistic poignancy. It tugs at your heart, sadistically exposing a young infertile woman’s attempt at keeping face during a friend’s baby shower. With cause marketing, blatant manipulation is not a deterrent, apparently. Viewers loved the commercial, so much so that American Greetings, only as an afterthought, “teamed up” with the National Infertility Association to “raise awareness” of this taboo subject.
CHARITABLE GIFTS
Case Study: Oxfam
Related Topics: Altruism, Corporate Philanthropy, CSR, Pro Bono
Gifts that give back, as some charity donations are called, are gaining popularity as alternative greeting cards. They can be sent in lieu of flowers for birthdays, graduation, weddings, or funerals. They take the headache out of picking the right gift for that special someone who has it all. They can turn hectic holiday gift shopping into a feel-good experience.
People who give to a charity in the name of a friend or a relative are serving their needs as well as the needs of disadvantaged recipients: they get to stay in touch, share their values, make a difference, and claim the high moral ground. By “personalizing” their philanthropy, they turn their generosity into a social asset. Narcissism? You bet. That’s how the charitable system works.
Focused on alleviating global poverty, Oxfam, an international confederation of NGOs, came up with an original charitable gift that’s refreshingly spunky. For less than what it costs to fill a gas tank, you can purchase a goat. “Sourced locally and fully vaccinated,” the goat will supply an African family “with milk to drink or sell—not forgetting the crop-boosting manure.” Also available in the Oxfam gift catalogue are donkeys, sheep, chicken, and beehives. Move over Hallmark Cards.
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
Case Study: MIT Media Lab Disobedience Awards
Related Topics: Barricades, Protest Marches, Whistleblowing
Once or twice in your lifetime you might be confronted with a situation that requires you obey your conscience rather than the laws of the land. Acts of civil disobedience are moments of truth: righteous, not malicious. From tree sitting to draft dodging, and from tax resistance to website defacements, they are nonviolent options embraced by individuals for whom the prospect of going to jail is the lesser of two evils. Indeed, people with strong personal convictions are running the risk of being treated like enemies of the state. But that’s not as bad as living the rest of your life as a coward.
Acts of civil disobedience by designers often involve putting up signs or tearing them down—a relatively benign practice described as “vandalism” by authority figures. Through history, people have been jailed, and even sentenced to death, for printing and distributing pamphlets. Case in point a French feminist, Olympe de Gouges, who was guillotined during the French Revolution for publishing and posting irreverent notices.
We live in different times. MIT Media Lab has created a Disobedience Award with a substantial cash prize to support citizens “who take personal risks by challenging our norms to benefit society.” Most interesting about this initiative is the way it was designed. The nomination process relied on crowdsourcing, with the individual or individuals who identified the final winner being rewarded as well. The assumption is that we can all take pride in knowing someone who puts his or her conscience above the law.
CIVIL RIGHTS ADVOCATES
Case Study: Act Up
Related Topics: End Racism, LGBT Activism
It is more difficult to advocate the rights of many than the rights of a few. Human rights advocates, who fight to uphold universal standards of justice, are often accused of ideological imperialism by non-Western governments. In contrast, civil rights advocates, who champion the rights of minorities, get to be local heroes. While all want to influence public opinion in order to stop injustice, the first group tries to shame wrongdoers and dictators, while the second group lobbies to harness laws as positive forces in society.
Civil rights advocates speak up on behalf of people who otherwise wouldn’t be heard: from juvenile delinquents to transgender students, and from homeless patients to handicapped veterans. Today, ACT UP—acronym for AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power—is a role model as a minority group that was able to turn the unpopular HIV/AIDS global epidemic into a heroic fight to uphold the civil rights of million of men and women. A leaderless and somewhat anarchist network of angry activists, it was “democratic to a fault” according to Larry Kramer, one of its founders. However, in spite of its chaotic management, or maybe because of it, the grassroots movement retained its authenticity and inspired its members to demonstrate publicly not only their commitment to the cause, but also their audacity and courage in the face of the deadly disease.
CLASS STRUGGLE
Case Study: Aaron Draplin
Related Topics: Barricades, Geopolitics, Protest Marches
A couple of years ago, alluding to “class struggle” or “class warfare” in polite society was inappropriate—a blunder. Only socialists used those words. The politically correct view at the time was that there was no class struggle anymore and that diligence and hard work could lift anyone above the fray. The American Dream was an achiever’s paradise. Then, in 2011, income inequality grabbed the headlines. “We are the 99 percent” claimed the radical movement Occupy Wall Street. Suddenly it became fashionable to mention that the top 1 percent in the USA owns 40 percent of the nation’s wealth. Today, class struggle is back in style. Its opposite, meritocracy, is dropping off the charts.
In terms of iconography, the revival of class struggle means a few more raised flags, raised fists—and raised eyebrows. One designer, Aaron Draplin, has been ahead of the populist curve with logo designs that challenge the sleek corporate look of the old elite. His gruff, utilitarian, plain-speaking, baseball-cap aesthetics is a genuine reprieve from too much neoliberal gibberish. The secret of his success is something called “class consciousness”—the pride of being part of a social condition shared by many.
CODESIGN
Case Study: PROUD
Related Topics: Human-Centered Design, Problem Solving/Heuristics, Social Entrepreneurship, Sustainable Design
“Selling” a design solution to a client is often the most challenging step of the design process. And even when a good proposal gets approved, it can run into unexpected obstacles in the implementation phase and be stalled forever. Codesign is an increasingly popular approach that secures the participation of all parties involved in the early stages of the process—thus avoiding crippling controversies later on. It is also a socially responsible participatory practice: it takes into account the opinions and ideas of all stakeholders before defining the objectives of a project. Instead of imposing a vision that comes from the top, codesign “excavates” dormant issues by allowing people who are usually marginalized to “own” the problem—and its solution.
PROUD, a consortium of European policy advisors, has published a series of position papers and guidelines spelling out in details the why, when, where, and how of codesign. Written to help decision makers support codesign practices, the documents are useful for designers as well. Pragmatic advices are mixed with philosophical considerations. Accept that codesign is a journey, not a set process or outcome. Hire an independent codesigner to facilitate the process. Expect to venture outside your comfort zone. Be ready to usher in real changes that will be owned by the community of stakeholders. Ultimately, good sense is what prevails: regenerating a missing social dialogue is the best way to insure the long-term acceptance of any design proposal.
CONSPIRACY THEORIES
Case Study: MoMA Good Design Campaign
Related Topics: Fake News, Hate Symbols, Whistleblowing
Fiction writers will tell you that the most important thing when telling a story is figuring out who’s speaking: the narrator, the author, or both? Maintaining a dialogue between different voices gives readers a choice of points of view. Likewise, in nonfiction writing, naming divergent sources ensures some objectivity. In contrast, when narrator and author blend into a single omniscient storyteller, you get “factual narration”—a series of unverified claims, the stuff of myths, fake news, and conspiracy theories.
However, simply dismissing all conspiracy theories as evidence of paranoia is suspect—almost as suspect as denying the Holocaust or embracing apocalyptic prophecies. The claims of some conspiracy theories are oddly reminiscent of the findings of historical revisionism, a legitimate discipline that challenges orthodox views of historical events. Recently, the CIA cultural propaganda during the Cold War came under the scrutiny of revisionist historians. They examined the covert role of the Museum of Modern Art in fighting communism: how the venerable institution literally manufactured Abstract Expressionism as an antidote to Soviet Realism; how its curators promoted midcentury modernism as an American doctrine; and how MoMA’s famous Good Design campaign, a well-orchestrated merchandizing initiative, had been financed by the CIA. Nothing today is safe from the inquisitive probes of cranks, meddlers, provocateurs—and revisionist historians.
CONSUMER BOYCOTTS
Case Study: Ethical Consumer Magazine
Related Topics: Civil Rights Advocates, Outrage Addiction
Boycotts are launched to remind brands that their connection to their customers is first and foremost an emotional bond. Branding is all about relationships—and don’t you forget it.
Being boycotted is the equivalent of being sent to your room because you’ve been naughty. It is not always effective as a way to correct a situation, but it has the advantage of forcing a dialogue about issues. Successful boycotts in the past included the civil rights boycott of the Montgomery, Alabama, bus company, and the anti-apartheid boycott of South African products—both in the 1960s.
Today “brandjacking,” as the practice is sometimes called, works best as a way to send to a company’s stockholders the message that the leadership of the organization is deficient, sometimes resulting in the ousting of the CEO. Sustaining a boycott is the main challenge. Social networking can help spread the word, but don’t count on it to keep the boycott in the news, given the short attention span of this medium.
A Manchester-based not-for-profit magazine and website, Ethical Consumer, is a reliable source of information regarding the social, ethical, and environmental behavior of companies. It publishes reports and calls for boycotts of companies deemed unethical by its findings—a system based on nineteen strict criteria. Its database holds 40,000 companies, brands, and products, replete with analysis to help readers choose the most ethical products and services.
But beware, ethical consumerism is a full-time job.
CONTENT MARKETING
Case Study: Getty Images/In Focus
Related Topics: Calls to Action, Cause Marketing, Fake News, Net Neutrality
What you read online is not information but “content.”
Content stands at the intersection of what you want to know and what someone else wants you to know. Marketers analyze your search engine records to fabricate the kind of news, stories, videos, and messages that might “engage” you, and turn you into a loyal customer.
The ultimate goal of content marketing is not merely to sell stuff. That’s the job of advertising. Its function is to convert you into a believer—into a sincere advocate of a brand or a cause.
Today, loyal customers are recruited as “unpaid” employees who unwittingly promote products and services on social networks.
The electronic Getty Images newsletter, In Focus, tells the stories “behind the lens,” offers “visual insights,” including tips for “small business solutions.” It mimics journalism but it is in fact “content”—best described as entertainment, complete with reportages, interviews, analysis of visual trends, films, profiles, red carpet updates, reviews of creative tools, and picks from the archives. All images are spectacular, gutsy—and for sale. The “Stories & Trends” of this upbeat website let you experience the excitement of living dangerously from the comfort of your desk chair.
CORPORATE PHILANTHROPY
Case Study: Engage for Good
Related Topics: Cause Marketing, Charitable Gifts, Nonprofits
The world’s poorest is a huge untapped niche market, not as a pool of potential customers but as a commodity—as a “product” to be sold to benefit the bottom line. As they say regarding e-commerce, “If something is free, you are not the customer, you are the product.” What is true online is also true in real life. As beneficiaries of free corporate handouts, the least privileged people on the planet are cynically exploited—as we are when we download free stuff or access free content on the web.
Corporate philanthropy is a good investment. Among the many advantages is the goodwill it generates with customers, social networks—and with the news media. It translates into increased loyalty, more sales, and positive PR, especially when the philanthropy is part of a concerted brand strategy that includes advertising and cause marketing. Just as significant are the benefits to the corporate culture itself: employees are much happier and more productive when they perceive their employer as a positive force in a given community. Last but not least, there is an added bonus, by no means inconsequential: corporate philanthropy is the price you pay to be admitted to a club of enlightened “who’s who” entrepreneurs.
Explaining to newcomers the finer points of corporate philanthropy is the job of Engage for Good, a club whose membership gives you access to conferences, webinars, guidebooks, news, articles, and podcasts. “You’ve come to the right place to learn best practices, tips, and trends as well as connect with others in this growing field.” Indeed, the field of corporate philanthropy is growing, but whether or not it fixes the problems it proposes to redress is a matter of opinion. Though the poverty rate is decreasing worldwide, it is increasing in developed countries. One in five children faces hunger in the United States.
CROWDSOURCING DESIGN
Case Study: Stanford University, Innovation Masters Series
Related Topics: Breaking the Rules, Mentoring
You are an entrepreneur and need a logo, a website, a brochure design, a packaging strategy? Crowdsourcing design sites make it easy for you to get dozens of ideas and suggestions. Tap into a global network of amateurish designers for “friction-free actionable solutions”—skipping the challenging creative process altogether. Just select one proposal, pay a minimal fee, and use it as you please! An unethical practice that appeals to an uninformed public that doesn’t understand the value of design, crowdsourcing is a threat to a profession often struggling for recognition. It reinforces the perception that good design is something that’s first and foremost pleasing to the eye.
At the same time, like all disruptive phenomena, crowdsourcing design is sparking off a healthy reaction. Accredited design thinking courses are cropping up everywhere, changing the very perception of what clients are buying when they hire a designer to help them find creative solutions. As part of the Innovation Masters Series, Stanford University is offering a three-day design thinking conference to teach business people how to become “drivers of innovation” thanks to an immersion into the design process. Countless other business schools and education programs are doing the same, with online webinars, weekend boot camps, or hands-on workshops. At long last, design is shedding its “pretty picture” image. It’s about time.
CSR/CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
Case Study: Unilever Creative Conscience Awards
Related Topics: Class Struggle, Corporate Philanthropy
Seldom do CEOs take the risk of speaking up in the name of tolerance, civil rights, inclusion, and…higher wages. However, they increasingly find that occupying the social high ground is the best way to keep their employees happy, and, surprisingly, to increase profits. From Greek yogurt Chobani to fast food Wetzel’s Pretzels, the spectacle of chief executives joining the cause of social activists is no longer preposterous. For billionaire business owners, reducing income inequality between top salaried and minimum wage workers is more than a public relations strategy—it is a bottom-line booster.
Corporate social responsibility (CSR), a self-regulatory mechanism by which businesses evaluate the way they obey—or defy—the local labor laws, is old school. In today’s socially polarized markets, in order to be truly competitive, leaders must go beyond mere CSR compliance.
Unilever, the Dutch-British multinational whose consumer products clog supermarket aisles all over the world (Dove soap, Hellmann’s mayonnaise, Signal toothpaste, Axe deodorants, and fifty-two more brands), is boasting a benevolent corporate culture. Bruce Mau Design created a new playful visual identity system to humanize the brand and demonstrate Unilever’s commitments to sustainable living. In addition, the company sponsors the Creative Conscience Awards, “aiming to inspire designers to apply their talents to socially valuable projects, promoting sustainability, freedom, social health and well-being.” Offering slightly higher salaries than its competitors, Unilever doesn’t stop there. Its “Winning Together” internal campaign promises to help free its employees “from complexity and bureaucracy so they can innovate, make swift and bold decisions, look for opportunities and take intelligent risks.” Is capitalism espousing Marxism? Are we ready to adopt one of the most famous rallying cries from the Communist Manifesto, “Workers of the world, unite!”?
CULTURAL ACTIVISM
Case Study: Occupy Museums
Related Topics: Culture Jamming, Satire, Social Entrepreneurship
In America, culture is a consumer product that is not immune to marketing. Among the most lucrative artifacts on the cultural scene are works of art by famous living contemporary artists. Iconic figures in the art world, the likes of Jeff Koon, Cindy Sherman, and Damien Hirst, attract wealthy collectors who can afford to speculate on the value of their prestigious acquisitions as they would with other commodities—real estate in particular. However, for the discriminating venture capitalist, struggling artists are also a profitable investment. The accumulated debts of millions of former art students who are broke and can’t repay their loans is big business for investment management firms. Trying to consolidate their debts makes these bankrupted artists slaves of financial institutions.
Occupy Museums is a coalition of cultural activists who want to bring attention to this scandalous exploitation of US artists. With art schools demanding some of the highest tuitions, the majority of their graduates are forever strapped with debts preventing them from ever being financially independent. Occupying museums is a daring strategy to publicize this issue. The group not only stages protests inside museums, it also attempts to turns their cause into an art project worthy of media attention. Such was the case with the 2017 Debtfair, an event that was part of the Whitney Biennale in New York. Talk about cynicism! The Whitney museum charged twenty-five dollars for visitors to see an exhibition featuring the work of sixty-three artists who defaulted on their student loans—a collective $5.78 million debt. None of the proceeds were donated to help relieve the burden of the penniless artists featured in the show.
CULTURE JAMMING
Case Study: Adbuster Magazine
Related Topics: Alternative Media, Consumer Boycotts, Hacktivism/Activism, Satire
Compared to hacking, culture jamming is a benign pursuit. It belongs to a more gentle age, when disrupting the dominant discourse was an activity closely resembling a conceptual art form. While hacking involves breaking and entering, jamming is a nonintrusive technique designed to disable rather than destroy.
Culture jammers don’t slash posters, smash windows, or crack open security codes. They prefer to distort signals as they pass from transmitter to receiver. Their tactic is to “expose the methods of domination” of the consumer culture with clever visual puns and “semiotic” pranks. Using tropes borrowed from pop culture, they turn logos, advertisements, and billboards into graphically arresting instruments of antiestablishment propaganda.
The Canada-based, not-for-profit Adbusters magazine has been an advocate of culture jamming since 1989. It has done a lot to mainstream an antiadvertising, proenvironmental attitude among its North American readers. Oddly enough, what’s most controversial about Adbusters is not its guerrilla mentality but its remarkable graphic sophistication. Its award-winning layouts and stylized photography, qualities not usually associated with grassroots resistance, have attracted critics who find them too “commercial.”
DATA VISUALIZATION
Case Study: Derek Watkins’s Interactive Features
Related Topics: Fact-Checking, Problem Solving/Heuristics, Red and Blue
More than forty years ago, Charles and Ray Eames pioneered data visualization with Powers of Ten, a short documentary that takes viewers on an exploration of the different scales across the universe. The illusion of time/space travel was achieved thanks to a series of zoom effects, rudimentary by today’s standards but a technical tour de force back then. Today, designers have sophisticated graphic tools that allow them to achieve in a few days what it took the Eames ten years to accomplish. Computer-aided charts, graphs, timelines, histogram, cartograms, and maps can be so exquisitely crafted that they take your breath away.
What hasn’t changed in the last forty years is a relentless didactic approach of data visualization. To be more effective, the visual storytelling is now interactive and searchable. It incorporates tests and quizzes, evaluates your score, and grades your answers. At the heart of all data visualization projects is a desire to instruct and edify.
That’s a tall order. All too often, “data vis” is infotainment—its graphs eye candies for the brain. The sheer beauty of patterns created by networks of scatterplots, stemplots, nodelinks, or sparklines can be distracting. You end up staring at the visualizations, in awe of the technology, but oblivious of the data. Striking the perfect balance between information and delight is Derek Watkins, graphics editor at the New York Times, where he works as “a designer, developer, reporter, and geographer.” However spectacular his designs, he lets the data speak. His interactive features are visual journalism at its best.
ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT
Case Study: Libeco Belgian Linens
Related Topics: Green Hosting, Resource Efficiency, Sustainable Design
Reducing one’s negative impact on the environment is not enough anymore. In other words, being less bad is not the same as being good. Your ecological footprint should—and can—be beneficial, a regenerative force that creates value for everyone involved. A good product contributes to the well-being of users as well as the well-being of people who make it.
Modeling human industry on nature’s process is key. What we produce can be viewed as nutrients circulating in a healthy metabolism. In this perspective, there isn’t such a thing as “waste” anymore. The word “biodegradable” is frowned upon as being too negative. Even “recycling” is phased out, replaced by “upcycling.”
Today, what used to be called “rubbish” is a potential resource, an asset for another cycle of renewal.
A protocol, Cradle-to-Cradle (C2C), pioneered this innovative way of thinking. A business model as well as a rigorous certification process, it encourages a biomimetic approach to the design of products and systems. One company, Libeco Belgian Linens, received the C2C silver label for the sustainability of its supply chain, but also for its production process that “costs society nothing” while contributing to the financial independence of a network of weavers and embroiderers who, thanks to steady employment, can “take back the threads of their lives.”
END RACISM
Case Study: Creative Reaction Lab
Related Topics: Advocacy, Civil Rights Advocates, Hate Symbols, Social Entrepreneurship
The End of Racism is near. Some experts predict that it will happen in 2020, others in 2044. One thing is sure: by midcentury, in the USA, white Americans will have been outnumbered by African Americans, Asians, Hispanics, and other minorities. In Europe, it will happen in 2050. By then, the Western Man will have died of natural causes. White nationalism will be nearly extinct, only afflicting residents of nursing homes. New forms of assimilations will have been invented. Transitioning from one race to another will be allowed—transracial people will have the same rights as trans men and women. Our world will be a more diverse one—a glorious post-racial society.
Dream on.
However, we had better be ready, just in case. A next generation of leaders has to be educated to help usher this transformation. The Creative Reaction Lab (CRXLAB) has the right idea: “to empower black and Latinx youth today to create healthier communities tomorrow.” Its founder, Antoinette Carroll, a St. Louis, Missouri, designer, has recruited marketing and design associates to develop what they call “equity-centered community design,” a problem-solving process focused on exposing power structures and dismantling their systemic oppression. CRXLAB holds multidisciplinary workshops that deal with issues affecting marginalized communities. Can the mechanisms of inequality be “redesigned” to foster justice and equity?
FACT-CHECKING
Case Study: Politifact Truth-O-Meter
Related Topics: Conspiracy Theories, Freedom of the Press, Nonpartisan Journalism
Has fact-checking become a spectator sport? It all began during the 2016 presidential election campaign as a parallel narrative designed to engage viewers and help them keep track of the candidates’ most preposterous allegations. Since, fact-checking has morphed into a lively form of entertainment. Electronic journalism treats utterances by political figures like a game show—with a difference: the more blatant falsehoods get the higher ratings.
PolitiFact.com is a website that checks statements by members of Congress, the White House, lobbyists, and interest groups, and assigns Truth-o-Meter ratings that go from “True” all the way to “Mostly False” and “Pants on Fire.” You can browse topics in alphabetical order (abortion, gas prices, science, etc.). Cute pictograms and rudimentary bar graphs complete the picture. However, there is no hierarchy between issues—fake news about Leonardo DiCaprio gets as much coverage as deliberate lies about climate change. Most worrisome about this website is the confusion between facts and truths. The terms are not interchangeable: facts are verifiable while truths are interpretations—facts deal with “when, where, and how,” while truths deal with “why.”
Before fact-checking the declarations of pundits, fact-checkers should fact-check the meaning of words.
FAKE NEWS
Case Study: The News Literacy Project
Related Topics: Freedom of the Press, Alternative Media, Nonpartisan Journalism, Outrage Addiction
Anyone who has been accused falsely of a minor misdemeanor knows the feeling: trying to set the record straight is tricky. The more you defend yourself, the more culpable you seem. This is the situation in which journalists find themselves when they attempt to counter disinformation. Fake news reports are practically impossible to dispel with verbal arguments. Psychologists explain this phenomenon as an example of cognitive dissonance. Apparently, so acute is the mental discomfort people experience when trying to balance in their mind two or more contradictory facts, they cling to their original belief, however specious. Visual arguments, on the other hand, are powerful deterrents. It turns out that proprietary typefaces act as “validity filters” that can help establish the authenticity of a news article. Less reputable websites, that masquerade as legitimate ones, are usually badly designed with standard typefaces, and even nondesigners can tell something is not quite right.
An intriguing initiative by the News Literacy Project wants readers to stop taking news at face value. In partnership with J. Walter Thompson in New York, they’ve put a literal spin on the alphabet, presenting sans serif capital letters frontally instead of sideways. The result is a 3D font, hard to decipher at first glance, requiring you look closer—much as you do when deciding whether something is trustworthy or not. With headlines such as “See All the Angles,” or “Learn to Spot a Fake,” the news literacy campaign wants to mimic the amount of time and care it takes to evaluate information. Unexpectedly, the brain quickly gets the message. Reading the weird font soon becomes a game. Likewise, spotting fake news could become a national sport.
FREEDOM OF THE PRESS
Case Study: Reporters Without Borders, Press Freedom Index
Related Topics: Alternative Media, Fake News, Nonpartisan Journalism, Outrage Addiction
The freedom of the press, protected by the First Amendment to the American Constitution, is an inalienable human right, but it is also a formidable revenues machine. Censorship makes for dull reporting, whereas freewheeling denunciations boost newsstand sales. As recent developments in American politics attest, criticizing a government sells newspapers. Spurred by the erratic personality of the president of the United States, the stream of outrageous headlines and indignant editorials is the best thing that has happened to a formerly ailing news reporting industry. Donald Trump’s war against the press is a godsend for media tycoons.
Sometimes you wonder.…Readers are traumatized by the relentless journalistic acrimony, but print and electronic subscriptions are up, lifting profits tenfold.
Without censure to dictate what can and cannot be published, the various media are expected to self-regulate and comply with journalistic standards. Codes of ethics often collide with the commercial interests of media owners. It’s a balancing act that pits facts, fairness, and accuracy against market forces. The pressroom is not a battle zone, but it’s close. Reportage, whether in house or from the field, is risky. Reporters Without Borders (RWB), an international, nonprofit, nongovernmental organization, known for assisting war correspondents sent to dangerous areas, should also support people fighting to uphold the truth behind closed doors, in hush-hush editorial meetings. Meanwhile, to promote freedom of the press worldwide, RWB compiles an annual Press Freedom Index of 180 countries, with maps and charts assessing their records. Top of the list is Norway, with North Korea at the bottom. The United States ranks 43, below nations usually not associated with journalistic excellence, such as Estonia, Slovakia, Burkina Faso, and Chile.
GENDER EQUALITY/GENDER EQUITY
Case Study: Aiga Gender Equity Toolkit
Related Topics: Behavioral Manipulations, Political Correctness, End Racism
So far, the only thing that’s truly “equal” between men and women is the fact that they are equally subjected to the same unconscious bias: the superiority of men over women. The culprit for this shared prejudice is not society but our brains, hardwired to emphasize differences rather than minimize them. That’s why well-established gender stereotypes feel comfortable to most of us—in the natural order of things. But people aren’t things. People have adapted, evolved, and shaped their own reality since the beginnings of humanity. Today, to correct a situation that’s unfair, we might have to “undesign” a deep-rooted neurological feature. It won’t be the first time it happened. We’ve come a long way since the Bronze Age. A new term, gender equity, describes the latest efforts to debias people’s minds with deliberate design solutions. From job interview protocols to portraits of female role models on the wall, and from diversity training programs to politically correct parlor games, no action is too small to get the message across. Think of gender equity as deep debriefing.
The American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), the professional association for design, had created a Gender Equity Toolkit, a series of fun “empathy-building” card games and role-playing exercises to help men and women “bond and gain powerful insights into one another by seeking shared values as points of connection.”
One of the activities consists of picking a random word—utopia, sport, married, angry, car, etc.—and asking participants to free-associate on the presumed gender of that word. Is car masculine—and why? What would it take for sport to be associated with girls? The goal is only to get the conversation started. True equality between men and women is a distant goal, but the good news is that gender inequality is no one’s fault; however, fixing it is everyone’s responsibility.
GEOPOLITICS
Case Study: Center for Design and Geopolitics
Related Topics: Data Visualization, Ecological Footprint
Geography is political. It is a representation of the world we live in, and as such it has often been co-opted by local rulers to justify their imperialist aspirations. Not quite a science, geopolitics is a method used to explain national or foreign policies in a geographical context. Manifest Destiny, for instance, was the belief that early American settlers were destined to expand westward, all the way to the Pacific coast, to “civilize” the natives—a founding myth based on a geopolitical assumption. The North-South Divide is another concept that tries to account for the socioeconomic gap between rich and poor countries. The physical features of a particular land, its distance from the sea, its “natural” borders, its soil, its rivers, its climate, are but the infrastructures of a shared mental construct.
New cyber infrastructures are transforming this political geography, recomposing the global landscape of our ancestors. Planetary-scale computations, housed in remote “cloud” servers all over the globe, are generating new geographies. Imagined communities and virtual networks are replacing anachronistic sovereignties. Mental maps must be redesigned, reformed, and replaced. This is a job for the Center for Design and Geopolitics, a think tank based at the University of California, San Diego. There, in the visual arts department, under the guidance of cultural critic Benjamin H. Bratton, a group of artists, designers, scientists, and programmers are working across disciplinary boundaries to prototype alternative frameworks for visualizing stacks of multiple computer-generated topographies.
GREEN HOSTING
Case Study: Green Geeks
Related Topics: Ecological Footprint, Resource Efficiency, Sustainable Design
Minimize, negate, or reverse your carbon footprint. These are three eco-friendly options available to you when selecting the best hosting services for a website or a blog. Three options. Three strategies.
The first strategy, the most modest in scope, consists of choosing an energy-efficient host, one committed to lowering the actual damage to the environment of the building housing its servers. Sustainable construction practices should be enhanced with low-voltage electronic equipment that releases less heat, and optimized air-circulation systems between indoors and outdoors to cool the premises.
The second strategy, designed to compensate for the energy consumption of the servers, consists of purchasing certified “green” credits that benefit industries producing clean energy: wind farms, geothermal and photovoltaic power stations, biopower, or tree-planting projects.
The most ambitious strategy is the third, one that attempts to reverse the global warming tendency by buying a lot more green credit than what would be necessary to merely offset the host’s emissions.
This is what GreenGeeks, a Los Angeles–based web hosting provider, claims it does by putting back into the grid three times as much renewable energy as what it takes away. It does so by investing in wind energy. In addition to using energy efficient hardware in its data centers (option 1), it negates its own carbon footprint as well as the carbon footprint of two additional companies its own size.
HACKTIVISM/ACTIVISM
Case Study: Code for America
Related Topics: Advocacy, Civil Disobedience, Cultural Activism, Open Source, Social Entrepreneurship
Activists are people who take the matter into their own hands: they fix things by forcing responsible parties to act. Hacktivists are people who take the matter into their own hands as well, but they fix things themselves, by going behind the backs of responsible parties to find solutions. Some hackers are coders, but others are simply amateur innovators. Like everything else, hacktivism can be malicious, but it is increasingly ethical, a benign form of civil disobedience that promotes initiatives as diverse as guerrilla gardens, graffiti knitting, pop-up libraries, adopt-a-hydrant programs, call-311 municipal service trackers, or apps to fix security issues. In fact, hacktivism is becoming a legitimate form of community engagement. Ironically, more and more public institutions support various hacktivist “subversive” actions that enhance the urban experience—at a fraction of the cost to them.
On a mission to make governments work better digitally, Code for America is a national nonprofit with a network of hacktivist “brigades”—local groups of volunteers who build civic apps on open data. They believe that they can help “address the widening gap between the public and private sectors in their effective use of technology and design.” Described as the technology world’s equivalent of the Peace Corps, many of Code for America’s projects focus on reducing public costs by creating government services that are simple, effective, and easy to use—for every citizen, rich or poor.
HATE SYMBOLS
Case Study: Anti-Defamation League Database
Related Topics: Civil Rights Advocates, Conspiracy Theories, Outrage Addiction
What do the scarlet letter, the yellow star, the fig leaf, the Confederate flag, Pepe the Frog, and the swastika have in common? They are—or have been at some point in history—hate symbols used to shame, vilify, slander, or malign innocent people who are the targets of racism, xenophobia, bigotry, and anti-Semitism. Today, protected by freedom of speech legislations, vicious individuals are allowed to openly express their hatred with declarations, rallies, songs, slogans, and acts of vandalism that exploit symbols to spread their ideologies. Neo-Nazi groups are particularly dangerous, as they have developed a secret language of codes and signs to recruit Fourth Reich believers, Holocaust deniers, white supremacists, skinheads, homophobes, and right-wing terrorists, just to name a few. They communicate on the Internet, increasingly displaying a wide range of hate symbols that celebrate openly malicious intentions toward minorities.
The Anti-Defamation League, whose mission is to fight anti-Semitism, has created a database of hate symbols that provides an overview of many of the most frequently used graphic devices favored by a variety of white supremacist groups and movements. They itemize more than 150 different ways to make your hate affiliation known to others. Numerical combinations, typographical marks, monograms, insignia, logotypes, trademarks, shields, and coats of arms are encrypted identifiers for some of the most disreputable people on earth. The list includes arcane numerals such as “1-11” for Aryan Knights, “21-2-12” for a Florida-based racist prison gang, and “88” for “Heil Hitler.” Pictograms are countless. There is the “blood-drop” cross for the Ku Klux Klan, with the noose as a symbol for lynching. Keyboard strokes are popular as well, like the triple parentheses for “(((Jews))),” and the “≠” mathematical sign favored by white supremacists to affirm their superiority over other races. However, far from establishing the preeminence of hate groups, these frantic signs are evidence that the individuals involved are struggling to brand their unsavory ideologies.
HUMAN-CENTERED DESIGN
Case Study: A Pattern Language/Christopher Alexander
Related Topics: Behavioral Manipulations, Problem Solving/Global Solutions, Problem Solving/Heuristics, Sustainable Design, UX
The difference between human-centered design and user-centered design is huge: even though both disciplines claim to be concerned with the emotional benefits of a product above its functional benefits, they are not addressing the same audience. Human-centered design relates to “people.” User-centered design relates to “consumers.” It’s more than just semantics. People are unpredictable; consumers have needs, wants, and desires that can be charted; people change their minds; consumers can be manipulated.
Human-centered design develops solutions based on direct interaction with actual individuals. You do field research. You interview community leaders. You listen to complaints. You participate in town hall meetings. You chat with locals at the barbershop. Back at the office you brainstorm with colleagues, consult specialists, draw proposals—all along keeping in mind that your suggestions are supposed to help your clients reclaim control over their life.
A pioneer of human-centered design is architect Christopher Alexander, who believes that lay people could be empowered to design their own environment. His most famous book, A Pattern Language, lays the basis for a process to allow anyone to articulate and communicate an infinite variation of sustainable design solutions that are perfect for now, yet flexible enough to be modified in the future, when and if necessary.
INTERCULTURAL DESIGN
Case Study: HfG Offenbach University
Related Topics: Human-Centered Design, Political Correctness, Unlearning
The best example of intercultural design is probably the Greek alphabet, a system that dates back to the eighth century BC. A method for transcribing phonetically the many complex languages spoken in the ancient world around the Mediterranean basin, it made communication and commerce possible between merchants—Hebrew, Roman, Greek, Phoenician, or Egyptian traders. Today, communications specialists around the world are wondering how to design an intercultural tool as efficient, yet as respectful of people’s idiosyncrasies. They are straining to understand the complexity of the simultaneous homogenization and differentiation of cultures on a global level. How to avoid the pitfalls of cultural imperialism? How to steer clear of cross-cultural oversimplifications? How to focus on similarities between minorities rather than their differences? Making matters worse are the self-segregation tendencies of ethnic groups that resist integration to preserve their traditions.
In Europe, as multicultural design teams are nowadays the norm rather than the exception, a number of universities are offering graduate courses on intercultural design communication. One of them is the Bauhaus-inspired (HfG) Offenbach am Main University of Art and Design, near Frankfurt, Germany. Acknowledging that conflicts can arise when people from different cultures meet, students learn to see these often difficult encounters as opportunities for unusual creative processes. This includes dealing with cultural, socioecological, and religious ambiguity, as well as an understanding the specific dynamics of tribal, regional, and corporate cultures.
LGBT ACTIVISM
Case Study: The Singular “They”
Related Topics: Civil Rights Advocates, Gender Equality, End Racism, Protest Marches
For lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) activists, how do you measure the success of the gay liberation movement? Almost fifty years after the Stonewall riots, you look at the list of corporate sponsors that elbow each other to support Gay Pride Week in the United States. From Bud Light to AT&T, they are all there! You count them as they jostle to build a strong LGBT presence and take advantage of the gay market—about ten million American adults with a 900 billion dollar buying power, by some estimates. You feel proud, indeed. However, the commercialization of what began as a march—not a flashy parade—makes some activists nervous. Corporate ties bring with them a slew of conflicts of interest. The most generous underwriters often have a murky track record, some even giving money to elected officials who vote against LGBT-friendly legislations, with the use of transgender restrooms still the most thorny political issue.
Defending the civil rights of transgender individuals is the next battle. For a growing number of nonheterosexuals, the very concept of sexual identity is becoming a bore. To get rid of cultural stereotypes regarding genders, members of the LGBT community advocate using “they” as a singular pronoun when describing someone other than the speaker or the listener. It is a seldom used, yet grammatically correct, form. Instead of saying, “Oh, no, someone left his cell phone!”—or “her cell phone!”—you say, “Oh no, someone left their cell phone!” Writers have long struggled to avoid the nonsexist yet awkward “s/he” or “his or her” formulations. In English, the pesky pronouns describe the gender of the person who owns the thing, whereas in other languages, the pronouns describe a gender arbitrarily assigned to the thing itself. Either way you must figure out whether an object is male or female. Reintroducing the singular “they” is an elegant design solution that gets rid of that headache!
LOBBYING
Case Study: The Architecture Lobby
Related Topics: Advocacy, Whistleblowing
Most of us loathe lobbyists, almost as much as we loathe dentists—something to do with cavities, perhaps? In the case of lobbyists, we hold them responsible for a form of political rot called bribery. We imagine that they buy lawmakers and members of the judiciary with lavish gifts, free vacations, and cash rewards. We are wrong. In fact, lobbyists buy influence by providing legitimate information on key issues—precious research that’s usually beyond a busy politician’s expertise.
Even though, ultimately, lobbyists try to have an impact on political decisions, they never use illegal means to do so. They don’t need to sneak around: they are allowed to contribute to politicians’ reelection campaign funds. Don’t blame the lobbyists and their clients for using this loophole—blame the outrageous costs of running for public office; blame the marketing and advertising agencies for charging top dollar for their services to candidates; and blame the television stations for asking astronomical sums for airtime. Better: lobby to ban political TV ads and replace them with public debates, town meetings, social media advocacy…and tweet campaigns.
Of interest to all designers is the Architecture Lobby. Its goal is to defend the status of young architects and designers by demystifying big-name creative geniuses who do not acknowledge their staff. Organized as a decentralized network of chapters, it lobbies at the local level on a number of issues, among them enforcing labor laws that prohibit unpaid work and overtime, and establishing a union for architects, designers, academics, and interns.
Case Study: Imgflip Meme Generator
Related Topics: Conspiracy Theories, Satire
Memes are jokes—and like all jokes, either you get it or you don’t. If you get it, you want to share that feeling and spread the fun: memes are infectious, self-replicating, mutating quips. If you don’t get it, you feel excluded. No one will try to explain it to you. One of the functions of a meme is to identify like-minded individuals and give them an opportunity to bond by asserting their particular (and often peculiar) sense of humor. The most common memes are photos with funny captions in “caps lock” mode. Also popular are dopey pet videos, corny GIF animations, bad jokes about dads, misspellings, idiotic TV sketches, optical illusions, weird lyrics, distorted cartoon characters, babies talking like adults, or doctored-up portraits of celebrities.
Memes proliferate on the Internet, but the way they travel is by firing synapses in people’s brains, triggering short-lived but powerful aha moments in the collective consciousness. The pleasure we derive from playing mental games is not new. Since antiquity, people have relished intriguing ambigrams, anagrams, palindromes, and anastrophes, for the same reason we love wacky typos on Twitter, hilarious Instagram #hashtags, or witty pronouncements by politically incorrect cats. A downloadable image-maker software, the Imgflip Meme Generator, allows users to hijack established memes and replace existing captions with custom text. Far from being an offensive practice, creating new iterations of trending memes is an effective marketing tool, a great way for a brand to relate to a cheeky online audience. By today’s standards, “memejacking” is a smart strategy—it shows that you are not dumb, and that you “get it.”
MENTORSHIP
Case Study: Reverse Mentorship, Roche Pharma
Related Topics: Human-Centered Design, Unlearning
Increasingly, inside organizations, senior employees are encouraged to become mentors—to volunteer their time to help new recruits survive as they negotiate today’s cutthroat professional environment. Evidence of a humanist renaissance in the workplace, mentorship programs, sponsored by employers, are quietly changing the corporate culture in the USA and beyond. Altruism is not the main motive. Mentoring is a profitable managerial strategy that increases employee retention, stimulates everyone’s productivity, and facilitates what’s called “knowledge transfer”—the sharing of the collective values, beliefs, and principles that characterize an organization. Unlike teachers, who impart information, or coaches, who boost your performance, mentors provide “perspective”—one-on-one support in a noncompetitive setup. They exist in a parallel universe in which professional relationships are being reevaluated.
The latest development is what’s called reverse mentoring. “Graying” leaders are paired with young employees who mentor them on topics such as technology, social media, or current trends. At Roche Pharma, in Germany, reverse mentoring is much more than just feedback: it’s learning from each other and rethinking everybody’s mindset, ultimately leading to personal growth for both the millennial mentors and the boomer mentees.
The implication of reverse mentoring is radical, indeed. It is the realization that the underpaid interns, just out of college, are just as valuable to a company as its highest-ranking decision makers.
NET NEUTRALITY
Case History: Open Internet Project, 2014
Related Topics: Content Marketing, Open Source
On the web, if it’s free, you are the product. “So what,” you reply. “I’ve got nothing to hide. If my personal web browsing history is a valuable commodity, fine. I have more to gain than to lose from the transaction.” This reaction is what your Internet Service Provider (ISP) wants you to believe. Meanwhile, don’t be surprised if things in your life feel ever more predictable—like the ending of the romantic comedies playing at your local Cineplex. A sneaky sameness is dulling your curiosity as algorithms are working to “get you just the content you want.” Unbeknownst to you, some information is blocked from reaching your screen. Offbeat websites take forever to download. Have you noticed that you seldom venture beyond page two of your Google searches?
The web has become a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor—an anti-depressant of sorts. It eliminates anything that does not fit your expectations as a consumer. In other words, the Internet is no longer a “neutral” medium. It is now a delivery system for preferred digital content. In the USA, it might be too late to wrangle it away from ISPs and politicians. In Europe, Open Internet Project has been lobbying against Google’s predatory tendencies—with some success. One of its initiatives, though short lived, was a collaborative platform, an “observatory” of Google’s least savory practices. Ordinary citizens could contribute by posting concrete examples of Google searches that yielded misleading or potentially harmful results.
“NEXT QUESTION”
Case Study: Visual Prompts
Related Topics: Calls to Action, UX
One of the goals of a press conference is to resolve sensitive issues before they become hot topics. Answering questions in public is supposed to be an opportunity to communicate key messages, right? Wrong. A press conference is in fact an exercise in deliberate ambiguity. If you are on the defensive, the less you say, the stronger you seem.
A “no comment” or “next question” is often an appropriate answer to a tough enquiry, better than a lengthy justification. It is the ultimate response if you need to show your listeners that you are in control. Neither confirming nor denying a fact is a stimulating option. A stern “no comment” is introverted, evidence that the speaker has great poise. A crisp “next question” is extroverted—a powerful interactive device to prompt your audience to pay more attention.
These days, prompting is big business. Online, buttons and boxes pop up at the bottom of most screens to prod viewers toward their next move. In quizzes, tests, and surveys, “next question” navigation buttons are critical—powerful incentive to stay connected. When they light up, they signal that your answer to the previous question was correct and that you can proceed to the next level. You can shrug off everything that happened before. It’s liberating. Next question. Let’s go!
NONPARTISAN JOURNALISM
Case Study: The New York Times
Related Topics: Alternative Media, Conspiracy Theories, Fake News, Freedom of the Press, Fact-Checking, Whistleblowing
“We do not believe that everything in society is either exactly right or exactly wrong,” wrote the editors of the New York Times in their September 18, 1851, inaugural edition. With this statement they introduced what was back then a new concept: nonpartisan reporting. It took guts. Presenting all the facts in a fair and reliable manner is not easy. Doing so on a deadline is practically impossible. Making money in the process is rocket science. Much less challenging is “advocacy” journalism, a genre that relies on facts, but doesn’t pretend to be totally objective about their interpretation. This is the case for a majority of newspapers and magazines that have a strong “editorial” point of view—their voice, their content, and their design unapologetically biased to reflect and even outguess the preferences of their readers. Increasingly, their art directors act as marketing consultants.
Recently, some people have argued that the editors of the New York Times are practicing advocacy journalism: their brand of objectivity is deemed “partisan”—an alternative form of liberal bigotry. Their refusal to sensationalize facts, their carefully edited choice of visuals, and even their understated typographical treatment—everything is held against them as evidence of an elitist conspiracy.
However, today’s growing hostility toward journalistic accuracy is nothing new: it is a throwback to the days when profitable “penny papers” were engines of slander, scandals, and muckraking.
OPEN SOURCE
Case Study: Wordpress
Related Topics: Crowdsourcing, Hacktivism/Activism, Net Neutrality
Open source? Think of it as a lively discussion where everyone is talking at the same time. You can share your ideas, make suggestions, and give your opinion—without having to wait for your turn to speak up. The result isn’t total chaos, as one would expect, but exponential creativity. Wikipedia is a good example of how open source works. An encyclopedia that allows everyone to edit articles, Wikipedia encourages collaboration but doesn’t require time-consuming cooperation. A global information tracker (git) takes care of that problem by coordinating electronically the changes and revisions made to files by multiple editors.
Open source is a successful decentralized developmental model, but it’s also a philosophical stance. As a community, we have more to gain from pooling our ideas than exploiting them individually to try to get rich quick. In this system, everyone has access to a publicly available source code, blueprint, or basic documentation. Some developers have advanced programming skills, while others are just amateurs, but they all profit from each other’s experience and suggestions. A case in point is WordPress open source software, a popular free download that proposes themed templates and plugins for websites and blogs. You can use, modify, copy, build upon, fix, and redistribute the software in anyway you like—and make a bundle in the process—but the improvements you bring to it don’t belong to you. This is the catch: you can create value, but you can’t own it.
OUTRAGE ADDICTION
Case Study: Rabble.ca
Related Topics: Alternative Media, Fact-Checking, Hate Symbols
You’d think that righteous indignation would be a mental stimulant. You’d think that upon learning of some terrible new injustice, you and I would be compelled to do some private investigation—peruse through digital libraries in search of relevant articles, identify keywords, research what they say in the international press, watch one or two TED videos—in other words, poke around in order to verify the offending information. But no. We are too busy reacting to headlines that reinforce our worst fears, that justify our sense of helplessness, that confirm that we are right and that people who do not think like us are wrong. That’s what we do. And it feels good.
Is there a cure for this type of addiction?
Yes, but it’s radical, and you won’t like it. It requires you get out and look around. What you must do is quietly regain usage of your brain. Turn off the TV. Cross borders. Indulge your curiosity. Challenge your own belief system.
A nonprofit Canadian online magazine, Rabble.ca, is just what the doctor ordered: a total change of perspective. Rabble is a left-leaning media source of news analysis that offers an alternative take on politics, feminism, food and health, the environment, and more. The magazine’s indie approach might take you outside your zone of comfort. No spin. Mean arguments. A dialectical view of societal phenomena.
POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
Case Study: Correct!V
Related Topics: Freedom of the Press, Nonpartisan Journalism, Outrage Addiction, Satire
For some reason, political correctness puts middle-aged white men on the defensive.
Women, and members of minority groups, are less likely to feel threatened by the use of linguistic circumvolutions that attempt to promote civility and common decency toward excluded, marginalized, or socially disadvantaged individuals. Used ironically by leftist militants in the 1950s to tease their overzealous and dogmatic comrades, the expression “politically correct” has been preempted by humorless people who contend that freedom of speech includes the right to be racist, sexist, and homophobic. Their opponents proclaim that they too have rights, among them the right not to be offended.
Discussions over the political correctness of politically correct expressions (“differently abled,” “verbally deficient,” “seeing imapired,” “plus-sized”) can quickly turn ugly. Who knew that speech codes could be so polarizing—but they are.
A recent study reveals that politically correct interaction between men and women can actually stimulate creativity. Choosing words carefully when discussing culturally sensitive concepts forces people to come up with smarter and less divisive ideas. Actually, politeness and politics have a common root. Political discourse is not a free-for-all.
CORRECT!V, a nonprofit investigative online newsroom, is one of a number of journalistic outfits that wants to promote “social responsibility” (the politically correct word for left-leaning bias?). A bilingual English-German media initiative, CORRECT!V wants to stop reporters from hurling insults at each other. The goal of the nonprofit organization is to restore the reputation of politically correct information—in the real sense of the words. It is dedicated to researching “the threats and challenges our society faces, abuses of power and corruption in politics, business, sports, and culture, topics such as environment, education, health, and social justice as well as right-wing and religious extremism.”
A tall order. As some people would say: “Who do they think they are—the Thought Police?”
POLITICAL POSTERS
Case Study: Amplify Posters
Related Topics: Antiwar, End Racism, Red and Blue
Unlike regular posters that are displayed on walls, a majority of political posters are designed to be hand held, wielded at rallies, and brandished in front of cameras. Roughly scribbled messages or sophisticated printed images, they began their life cycle propped up in the air, like flags. Chances are, they’ll be discarded at the end of the day, trampled, left in a gutter, or stored somewhere in a corner of the garage. Few will be archived in good conditions. However, many will have a long digital afterlife on social networks. Their legacy will endure. Because they were once part of a live event, political posters acquire an aura of authenticity that transcends their value as original works of art.
Amplifier, a design lab dedicated to “amplifying” the voices of citizen fighting for justice, offers free, ready-to-download-and-print posters designed by well-known artists. The messages are generic enough to adapt to a wide range of topics—climate, feminism, resistance, science, immigration, etc.—yet the art is idiosyncratic enough to appeal to diverse sensibilities. You can choose a “template” by the likes of Shepard Fairey, Josh McPhee, or Stephanie Major, and customize it to fit your cause. Amplifier’s initiative is a brilliant example of the power of art “as a catalyst for meaningful change.” But, ultimately, it is the human involvement—the hands that hold the posters—that gives credibility to the politicized image.
PRO BONO
Case Study: Formes Vives
Related Topics: Advocacy, Altruism, Cause Marketing, Crowdsourcing
Some things money can’t buy. Doing pro bono design work is one of them. Given the right situation and the right client, not charging a fee for your services can be a priceless luxury, as satisfying as the prospect of going on a second honeymoon in Venice, or watching the sunset over the rooftops of Paris. Pro bono work is a chance to reconnect with your passion—with the creative opportunities that are so often absent from high-pressure commercial assignments. Oddly enough, giving back to your community is often a gift to yourself.
Working for free to support a worthy cause shouldn’t be confused with working on specs. But you know that: pro bono is a contractual business relationship between designers and clients, even if the final invoice doesn’t reflect the amount of work required to complete it. Usually, clients pay the production costs—in essence sponsoring your creative output. And your fame. Widely distributed and celebrated, Milton Glaser’s “I heart NY” logo for New York State, or Burkey Belser’s nutrition-fact labels for the Food and Drug Administration, are pro bono projects that have secured the reputation of their authors. In Europe, particularly in politically polarized France, a number of avant-garde design studios embrace pro bono assignments as the building blocks of their identity. Much talked about is Formes Vives, an association of three talented illustrators who make the most of the creative freedom they are granted in exchange for their free services. Most of their design solutions feature cost-cutting, hand-drawn calligraphy and graffiti-style collages that spell out a series of joyful and irreverent messages.
PROBLEM SOLVING/GLOBAL SOLUTIONS
Case Study: MIT Center for Collective Intelligence
Related Topics: Open Source, Crowdsourcing Design, Gender Equality
The ancient supercontinent Gondwana broke apart some 250 million years ago to form the separate landmasses we know today. However, with the invention of the Internet, the seven continents might as well be drifting back together. As people the world over are searching for global solutions to the environmental crisis, we are witnessing a tectonic shift in problem solving methodologies. The concept of “collective intelligence” is turning out to be a game-changing notion.
Knowledge integration is a new science that attempts to merge information models to synthesize our understanding of a same topic from different perspectives. Computers can help, but the human factor still drives this research. At MIT, the Center for Collective Intelligence tries to map out the genome of smart think groups. They want to identify the specific design patterns that characterize intelligent collective decisions. So far they have found three key patterns: (1) Social Sensitivity, which they describe as a form of intellectual empathy, (2) Equal Participation of everyone to the ongoing conversation, and (3), the Gender Effect—the number of women in the group. This last point was a surprise—the discovery of another significant fault line between the male and the female brain. The implication is that the level of collective intelligence rises when more individuals are good at reading the mind of their colleagues. The MIT researchers are quick to add that emotional literacy is a skill that men can acquire.
PROBLEM SOLVING/HEURISTICS
Case Study: Ideo Method Cards
Related Topics: Codesign, Human-Centered Design
Some people call it the antialgorithmic method. As a problem-solving technique, heuristic strategies have been around since the beginning of time. They used to go by the name of “rule of thumb,” “guesstimate,” or “common sense.” In the 1970s, cognitive psychologists coined the term heuristic, and proceeded to turn the trial-and-error tactic into a science. Today, heuristic is a buzzword. Its most popular applications include Post-it-notes brainstorming, mind maps, and disruptive thinking.
For IDEO, the San Francisco-based design consultancy, heuristic is a product. Ideo Method Cards is a deck of 51 cards “to inspire great design and keep people at the center of our design process.” Described as a creative tool, it helps participants reframe problems in unexpected contexts to come up with original solutions. Also available is The Field Guide to Human-Centered Design, a booklet produced by Ideo.org, the nonprofit branch of the company whose mission is to improve the lives of poor and vulnerable communities through design. Like its cousin, Design Thinking, Heuristics is a fuzzy notion that has the merit of emphasizing the critical role of empathy in problem solving.
PROTEST MARCHES
Case Study: Place De La République, Paris
Related Topics: Barricades, Civil Disobedience, LGBT Activism
Crowd scenes are meant to be photographed. They are pageantry, visual happenings, cinematographic events. It’s as if they were staged for the camera. Before anyone else, in the 1910s, American suffragists understood the graphic power of street rallies. The women wore striking outfits and marched down the avenues in choreographed formations. Russian constructivists followed suit with compact parades and demonstrations, captured by the lenses of Vertov and Rodchenko, who transformed the gatherings into dense patterns of flags, shirts, caps, and faces. Today, protest marches are conceived as media occurrences as well, with social networks acting as distribution channels.
In Paris, rituals of political grievances are traditionally celebrated on the Place de la République, a favorite kick-off point for the countless marches that have defined democracy in the French capital. What used to be a rather cramped town square has recently been redesigned to look like a magnificent décor for nonviolent resistance. On its monumental pedestal, the massive bronze statue of Lady République no longer blocks the camera viewpoint: now only a dramatic silhouette behind the crowd scenes, it has been relegated to the back of a vast esplanade. Protest is stagecraft, indeed. The cries of angry mobs eventually die away. Fortunately, the images remain to tell the story.
RED AND BLUE
Case Study: The 2008 Obama Logo
Related Topics: Political Posters
Of all possible colors that can be perceived by the human eye, two stand out: red and blue. They correspond to specific sensations in the brain—one associated with danger (blood), the other with reassurance (blue sky). No wonder political parties exploit these chromatic stimulations to transmit their message directly to the visual cortex, bypassing the frontal lobes where the higher mental functions reside. In 2000, on election night, no one frowned when states with a Republican majority were arbitrarily designated on maps as “red” states. Yet, in hindsight, the implication turned out to be momentous. It was the year of the contentious race between George W. Bush and Al Gore, when the once conservative (blue) GOP revealed itself to be the aggressively (red) populist political party it is today.
In politics, colors, like voters, have a mind of their own. Oddly enough, red and blue are dead set against yellow. The color of hope and optimism, yellow is deemed unpatriotic. There is something suspiciously cheerful about it. Reminiscent of gold, the color of kings and despots, it occupies only 0.08 percent of the surface of flags worldwide. In America, introducing yellow in the color scheme of a candidate’s brand identity would be political suicide.
However, in 2008, the designers of the Obama logo managed to suggest the exhilaration of a warm new dawn with an exclusively red and blue design. Using partially transparent blue and red tints, they were able to imitate the blinding halo surrounding a rising sun. The optical illusion was so effective that you couldn’t help but blink slightly when looking at it. The specific sensation in your brain was that of a sunny and bright solar disk, even though there was no yellow in sight.
REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH
Case Study: We Are the 99 Percent
Related Topics: Altruism, Class Struggle
The prospect of becoming rich is driving the poorest Americans to vote against their economic interests. The national narrative reinforces the myth of rags to riches. As a result, the less privileged among us reject the welfare programs and subsidies designed to help us. We don’t want government handouts. We are convinced that the redistribution of wealth, that transfers money from the haves to the have-nots, is pure theft. It is stealing from those who work hard to give to those who don’t.
One exception: We Are the 99 Percent, also known as the Occupy Wall Street protest movement, a 2011 initiative of Adbusters magazine. Staged as a peaceful occupation, it focused on income disparity, pointing the finger at the richest 1 percent of people on the planet, a small group of millionaires who have accumulated as much wealth as all the rest of us. The catchy 99 percent slogan gave nonaffluent citizen a sense of pride, with the stigma of not being rich no longer the issue. However, as the occupy movement spread worldwide, from Armenia to South Korea and beyond, the 99 percent concept never found its graphic identity. One could argue that a great logo could have unified the various attempts to give the crusade for social and economic justice a legitimate status.
Case Study: Ryman Eco Font
Related Topics: Ecological Footprint, Green Hosting, Sustainable Design
Resource efficiency, a practice that focuses on conserving resources rather than replenishing them, is mired in scientific controversy. Minimizing waste to lower your impact on the environment is easier said than done. For graphic designers, it is tempting to think that the best way is to use less paper and less ink. For large documents, selecting a slightly condensed typeface can shrink the number of pages required. Some designers are advocating using ink-saving letterforms. Ryman Eco, a free-to-download serif font, uses 33 percent less ink because the letters are not fully filled, though, as the ink spreads, the strokes, on the smaller point sizes, end up looking opaque. Its author, the English designer Dan Rhatigan, explains that saving ink also saves the waste generated by ink cartridges and their packaging.
The prevailing belief is that the most eco-friendly strategy is to replace printed matter with fast-loading web pages. But no. Content doesn’t become “green” just because it is dematerialized. Pixels are real. They are physical points of light in a raster image that is stashed away in a file, that lives in a server—that is located in your computer or, most likely, somewhere in a brick-and-mortar data center. Unlike printed matter that’s inert once it’s on paper, digital content keeps drawing electricity from outlets. You cannot unplug cloud computing, an economic activity responsible for dissipating as much energy as the airline industry. What you can do, though, is simply unplug your computer at night to avoid consuming the phantom energy that is squandered when it is “asleep” or merely turned off. Resource efficiency is the twenty-first century version of “less is more.”
SATIRE
Case Study: IFC Documentary Now!
Related Topics: Caricature, Culture Jamming, Memes
Think of satire as a parasite, as a form of humor that lives in or on another organism and benefits by deriving nutrients at a cost to its host. As such, satire can impair the subject it hopes to ridicule, but it doesn’t usually kill it (the terrorist attack on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo is a notable exception). For the most part, television comedians who make fun of politicians, journalists who spoof mass media news articles, or cartoonists who caricature celebrities are not predators. Neither do they pretend to be activists. All they care about is having a little fun at the expense of their victims. There are a few instances of satire taking itself seriously—a contradiction in terms—as is the case with détournement, a popular form of political satire whose goal is to “turn expressions of the capitalist system and media culture against itself.” This kind of satire takes many forms, among them culture jamming, subvertising, doppelganger branding, and the viral propagation of memes.
It’s easier to satirize the bad guys than the good guys. One of the challenges that satirists face is to reach beyond the converted and poke fun at people or things that are actually quite respectable. An American television series, Documentary Now!, belongs to the mockumentary genre, with each episode shot in a different documentary style, to “honor some of the most important stories that didn’t actually happen.” Only diehard documentary lovers will appreciate this opportunity to laugh at themselves. Feeling ridiculous can actually feel good.
SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Case Study: HandUp App
Related Topics: Corporate Philanthropy
There are two paths to creating positive social impact: social entrepreneurship or social innovation. The entrepreneurship option consists of first identifying a social need that hasn’t been addressed yet, and using a business model—a startup usually—to bring solutions to it. The social innovation approach is more serendipitous: you raise money for a cause through fundraising, grants, donors, friends, social networking, or whatever method seems appropriate. The difference between the two fields can be confusing, since they both require creativity, adaptability—and money. Choosing one strategy over another is a matter of personality: if you like the idea of making a profit—but are not keen on fundraising—then social entrepreneurship is for you.
With funding from some of Silicon Valley’s most experienced investors, a San Francisco based startup, HandUp, created a simple and well-designed app that connects small donors to nonprofit organizations working in a variety of fields. The original idea was to connect the residents of the wealthy Bay Area with the neediest cases in their region. Today HandUp is a nationwide charitable giving platform. Donations go directly to the causes or the campaigns of your choice. You can explore local or national charity programs, track the impact of your donations, pledge your support on a monthly basis, or buy gift cards for neighbors in your community. HandUp’s mission is shared by a growing number of businesses that strive to use design to end poverty and spur social justice.
SUSTAINABLE DESIGN
Case Study: EPA Energy Star Label
Related Topics: Ecological Footprint, Resource Efficiency, UX
The main problem with sustainable design is the word we use to describe it. It’s hard to pronounce. It’s not sexy. And no one knows for sure what it means. Some people define it as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the needs of future generations.” Others insist that it is an “ecosystem that can be maintained in a healthy state indefinitely.” What’s more, there is a perception out there that sustainability has a big price tag—it’s a luxury few can afford. However, the worst thing about sustainability is that it makes you feel guilty.
Gone are the days when “eco-friendly” was warm and fuzzy, when “green” meant no harmful pesticides, and when “natural” smelled like fresh laundry. Today you need a BA in economics to broach the topic. Suffice it to say that sustainability is not compatible with perpetual growth, but it’s good for profits because, when well managed, it drives down production costs significantly. Fear not. Free-market capitalism will turn sustainability into an engine for prosperity.
Meanwhile be wary of ecolabels and green stickers, these labeling systems that are supposed to rate the sustainability quotients of consumer products. Their primary goal is to minimize the negative ecological impacts of resource extraction and mass production. In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency has created the Energy Star label that measures the energy efficiency of home equipment, from kitchen appliances to computers and light fixtures. Somewhat flawed, the program is nonetheless a gallant attempt to verify the claims of unscrupulous manufacturers.
UNLEARNING
Case Study: Unlearning from Athens
Related Topics: Breaking the Rules, End Racism
Breaking the rules, thinking out of the box, reasoning backward…each generation coins different expressions to describe what it’s like to be creative. Recently, the word “unlearning” has cropped up as an alternative concept—suggesting that clearing your mind of old knowledge is as easy as pressing the delete key. What if indeed you could simply unlearn prejudice? Unlearn bad habits? Unlearn violence? The idea of freeing oneself from the stifling effects of preconceived ideas is an appealing thought.
Learning to unlearn begins with listening to what we say and questioning the words we choose to describe what we are talking about. For example, can we hear the dehumanizing overtone of the phrase “war on poverty”—an expression that stigmatizes people who experience financial hardships as the enemy? Can we imagine describing the migrant “crisis” not as a threat but as an unexpected influx of highly skilled workers? Are we slightly alarmed when someone uses the Cold War designation “leader of the free world” in a contemporary context?
Unlearning means debunking our unconscious mental models—like the belief that sound money management is essential to survival. In the context of a recent architecture biennale in Lyon, France, a group of experts came together to “Unlearn from Athens”—to explore the many ways the Greek capital, bankrupt and struggling to stay afloat, has exceeded expectations in terms of resilience, self-organization, and the inclusion of migrant communities in the urban landscape. With one of the highest debt levels on the planet, Athens is defaulting on our doomsday predictions.
UX/USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN
Case Study: SustainableUX Conference
Related Topics: Call To Action, Content Marketing, Ecological Footprint
The fancy terminology UX, short for user experience, designates a hybrid form of design, one requiring an ability to conceptualize the interaction between viewers and web content—what it looks like but also how it feels. UX designers have, at their disposal, an infinite number of visual, psychological, and ergonomic tricks to seduce users into clicking forward in search of information, kicks, and deals. The longer the users stay online and have fun, the more likely they are to end up at the cash register. Usability, accessibility, and pleasure, key attributes of UX design, are in fact marketing tactics designed to turn website users into customers.
Meanwhile, the carbon footprint of websites goes up and up: think of the sheer data weight of the bells and whistles—the buttons, the embedded maps, the autoplay videos, the banners, the carousels, the ads, or the syndicated third-party content services. The amount of wasted gigabytes is phenomenal. Each page downloaded contributes to global warming as much as buying strawberries in winter.
Mad*Pow, a New Hampshire design agency, is sponsoring SustainableUX, a free online conference that brings together web designers who want to explore ways to make a positive impact—on climate change, social equality, and inclusion. Championing a less flashy aesthetic is one strategy. Harnessing the power of words rather than banking on the eye-catching appeal of images is another. Developing realistic strategies to reduce the energy consumption of websites is fast becoming one of the most urgent challenges for designers today.
WHISTLEBLOWING
Case Study: Secure Drop
Related Topics: Civil Disobedience, Freedom of the Press, Open Source
Psychologists have long claimed that pointing a finger at things is acting out what makes us uniquely human. Our nearest primate relatives, the great apes, don’t feel the need to point at things, but we do. We point when we want others to see what we see. As babies, we point before we speak—language comes next. As adults, we point to call attention to things good or bad. We can’t help it: finger pointing is an irrepressible urge to show and share.
Reporting wrongdoing (a substitute for finger pointing) has always been problematic: we feel compelled to do it, yet we never know if it’s right or wrong. Since time immemorial, whistleblowers, informers, and leakers have been in turn praised and blamed, extolled for their moral courage or vilified as traitors. For every law that protects them, there is a law that condemns them. At its best, exposing the misdeeds of others gives voice to the disenfranchised. At its worst, it ruins the lives of innocent bystanders.
For amateur whistleblowers, there is SecureDrop, an open source software platform created to facilitate anonymous communication between journalists and their sources—people who have sensitive information to share with the public. These email “dumps” are legal, as long as the documents leaked are not classified. The most prestigious and reputable news organizations, from the Associated Press to the Washington Post, use SecureDrop on a regular basis. More controversial are WikiLeaks revelations, obtained thanks to government whistleblowers and published on the organization’s website. Recently, finger pointers have been busy pointing fingers at their keyboards.