As someone who’s relatively new to the field of UX design, Design Thinking is a concept I’ve never come across before I started attending Parsons last year. I was mostly a visual artist by trade, so the framework of Design Thinking wasn’t relevant to my previous work for the most part (though some ideas similar to its tenets have come up informally). The logic behind it made perfect sense to me, at first. No questions asked. The fact that I was being taught this framework by respected instructors from a respected institution in the heart of New York City lended it so much credibility in my eyes.
Design Thinking became my bible while I was working on my first UX project. I found myself constantly referring back to it, making sure every aspect of my design process adhered to its standards. I never once stopped to think about why it is, and has been, regarded as the be-all, end-all method for designing applications. I trusted it, and believed that following it to a T would result in a successful project.
I’m sure that white supremacy isn’t the first thing that comes to most people’s minds when Design Thinking is brought up. It certainly wasn’t the case for me—which is precisely why the title of this article immediately caught my attention while I was browsing through the list of potential readings for this project. It intrigued me, and the gears in my head started turning. What solidified my decision for choosing this particular reading was the author himself: Darin Buzon sounded like a quintessentially Filipino name. Undoubtedly so. Just to satiate my curiosity, I looked him up and gave myself a pat on the back for correctly identifying a kababayan. I was excited to read a critique on this concept I’ve just recently learned about from the perspective of a Filipino designer like myself. What compelled him to write this thinkpiece? Were there any challenges unique to his experience that colored his perspective on Design Thinking? If so, what warning signals should I look out for once I start working professionally in the UX field?
It’s no surprise to me that I ended up loving this article. Buzon examines contemporary and historical systems of design through an often dismissed lens, calling into question practices that have been established as the only “correct” ways of doing things. I’m a huge fan of his unabashed bluntness in highlighting the flaws of Design Thinking and its ties to capitalism and white supremacy. He also draws connections to past ideologies of the Modernist movement and how its influence impacted the formation of and attitude towards present-day design systems.
Modernism, in my design education, was lauded as nothing short of revolutionary: the ideas of Modernism’s key proponents are still widely regarded and actively used in the design world today. Modernism and the Bauhaus are essential aspects of design history, and understanding their origins builds a solid foundation for a designer’s skillset. Still, it was only through my own research that I became acutely aware of its problems, which were only skimmed over in my assigned readings and discussions. Of course an institution founded and populated by white European men in the early 20th century would be exclusionary, racist, and sexist. It’s not news to me. But it made me start questioning my education—how come Bauhaus ideologies were considered the gold standard? Which tenets of this movement were informed by Western sentiments towards time, labor, and beauty? Why wasn’t I learning more about design from other cultures?
Perhaps it is this exact train of thought that led Buzon to find a link between Modernism and Design Thinking. The clean, functional, and minimalist aesthetic of the Bauhaus was an indirect product of European societal standards at the time, further influenced by wartime climate. It was only, and unfortunately, natural that the very existence of the Bauhaus barred extensive exploration of alternative styles and systems by female and non-white designers. With this in mind, the processes behind the development of Design Thinking’s own ten commandments start to make more sense. Its connection to capitalism is clearer now, as well: its goals are motivated by appealing to consumers for maximum profit. Is the term “human-centric” used to sugarcoat its actual intentions? Associating Western views on money and labor with something as fundamentally essential as a person’s psychological needs may sound like too cruel and dismissive a way to view Design Thinking, but it is effective in putting into perspective how Eurocentric the machinations behind the design industry still are.
This leads me to now consider Filipino cultural views, and how their differences from the West’s might affect our local design scene. Sadly, I don’t know too much about UX back home, but my best guess is that the industry most likely adapted American methods and approaches to UX design. Most of what is considered advanced and high quality in the Philippines is modeled after Western (particularly American) standards of excellence, a mentality that was planted and has pervaded throughout centuries of colonial rule. Since tech is still a growing industry and nowhere near as huge as it is in the US, I’m fairly certain that UX best practices are borrowed from what’s established in the West. Given this, I wonder how similar or different the approaches to UX design would be (or are), considering cultural values like kapwa, or utang na loob, or even how Philippine society as a whole is far less individualistic than its American counterpart. If the Philippines had the resources to build and concretize its own unique systems of design, free of Western influence, how much would the landscape of UX have changed?
After reading the article, I was curious to see how other people responded to it. I was in for a whirlwind when I looked up the comments. They skewed towards the negative, chastising Buzon for dismissing “tried and true” methods from Design Thinking. Maybe my mind was so easily swayed because I haven’t subscribed long enough to Design Thinking to become attached to it. I was certainly alerted to the fact that I’d first learned about it while sitting in a classroom of a New York City art school, and that the praise and approval I received for being faithful to its ideologies came from professionals who trained under prestigious Western institutions and workplaces. However, Buzon never outright claimed that Design Thinking was ineffective, but rather that it shouldn’t be regarded as the only “right” way to approach UX design. Commenters took offense to his apparent blasphemy and retaliated by pointing out the irony in Buzon’s use of academic English (the language of the colonizer, formatted in a largely inaccessible manner) to expound on his arguments, his probable utilization of Apple products when typing up the essay, and the like. To me, these counter-arguments are reductive and disregard the very real racial and socioeconomic bias that drives the UX industry. Simultaneously, I feel that Buzon also hit his mark and reached his intended audience if he was able to garner this much vitriol in the reactions he received—he successfully instilled a sense of discomfort in the average designer, thereby opening up further conversation about more possibilities and alternative approaches to UX.
I would’ve preferred it if Buzon presented his own suggestions for what his ideal, decolonized version of Design Thinking would look like, rather than solely critiquing it. But I suppose this might be difficult to imagine, even for a professional like him with years of experience under his belt. When design history is so entrenched in the Western canon, is it even possible to conceptualize anything else? Considering how much of non-Western countries’ recorded history is a response to the presence of colonial powers, can alternative design systems be truly independent of Western influence? Would my relationship with technology be any different if the apps, websites, and platforms I currently use were developed from framework(s) other than Design Thinking?
There are too many factors to consider when pondering this hypothetical. Instead, focus should be shifted to what this article actually achieves: in challenging the status quo, Buzon communicates a hope for potential innovation in the field of UX, spearheaded by marginalized designers. As I immerse myself more fully in this line of work, I’m excited to see how it evolves, and aspire to make meaningful, positive contributions in the future as a marginalized designer myself.