Decolonizing Design Thinking with Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel PhD, is the Associate Director for Design Thinking for Social Impact, and Professor of Practice at the Taylor Center for Social Innovation and Design Thinking at Tulane University, where she teaches design thinking from an emancipatory perspective.

Design Thinking is a powerful set of tools and mindsets that can help people solve problems. But which people and which problems?

So first off, if you're new to this conversation, design and design thinking can be racially biased, because people are racially biased. As Dr. Noel says in the opening quote I chose, most of us don't understand our positionality - especially if you see yourself as "white". It's essential to see and understand what position are we looking *from* when we look *at* people and the problems we seek to solve for them.

Design is, in essence, making things better, on purpose, and it's a fundamental human drive: To improve our situation by remaking our surroundings. But when we design for and with other people, the process becomes more complex.

So, you might not see yourself as a designer, but if you solve problems for other people or build systems that other people use to solve problems, you might be a designer in the broadest sense, or design thinker, even by accident. 

So...you need to get serious and clear about how you learn about problems (ie, do research), frame them and solve them for others (ie, design - attempt to make something better on purpose).

If you do see yourself as a Design Thinker, you might feel challenged by Dr. Noel's reflections on Design Thinking, not as a set of Boxes to be ticked, but as a universe of different ways of thinking and knowing. Dr. Noel makes beautiful diagrams and models for the creative process that breaks out of the hexagons and double diamonds beautifully. I recommend checking out the screenshots I've taken of some of these models from her talks in the Links section

Another resource I suggest you dive into is Dr. Noel's Positionality Worksheet, 12 Elements to help you and your team see the "water they're swimming in." You can also check out a Mural version I mocked up.

As Dr. Noel writes in her excellent Medium article "My Manifesto towards changing the conversation around race, equity and bias in design" it's essential to start with positionality, for yourself and for your teams. That's point one. Who are you in relation to the people you are working with and solving for?

Point Two of her manifesto is about seeing color, oppression, injustice and bias. For this I recommend getting a deck of her Designer's Critical Alphabet cards on Etsy. They're awesome!

Point 3 might surprise you: Dr. Noel suggests that we "Forget Diversity, Equity and Inclusion"...and instead embrace Pluriversality. DNI assumes an inside and an outside, an includer and the included. Pluriversality looks to remove the center and honors multiple ways of knowing and doing, each with its own valid center. 

It's nice to believe in a single ultimate truth for everyone...but that's not going to happen. Pluriversality suggests that there are more than one or more than two kinds of ultimate reality.  Pluriversality is essential for our time - finding a path forward together while respecting other's paths and ways.

Pluriversality was a new term for me. I suggest you watch Dr. Noel's talk at UC Davis on Embracing Pluriversal Design to learn more.

And I suggest you read the rest of her Manifesto for yourself! 

I am thrilled to share Dr. Noel's ideas on DeColonizing Design Thinking. It's a critical conversation for our time. Design Thinking still has so much to offer the world if we are willing to lean into it and engage in dialogue with fresh and evergreen interpretations of it. People have been designing for as long as we've been people. Learning and respecting the pluriverse of Design Thinking in all cultures can deliver powerful progress.

Enjoy the conversation as much as I did.

Dr. Noel's website

Dr. Noel at Tulane University

Dr. Noel's Critical Literacy Alphabet

Alberini Family Speaker Series Lecture

Dr. Noel's manifesto towards changing the conversation around race, equity, and bias in design