Mike X — Design itself is part of the problem
This essay was presented as a part of my work in the Design Leadership unit in the Master of Design Futures program at RMIT University.
Every time I have a conversation with Mike, I feel like my brain grows a size…
Mike is an anthropologist and sociologist who works in strategic design in Sydney. He’s also the founder of the How Might We Do Good community on Slack, where deep discussions of design, ethics, shifting paradigms (in the actual Kuhnian sense) take place.
In this conversation, I had intended for Mike and me to explore some of the ideas emerging from my concept of a “politics of design leadership”. That’s not quite where this conversation goes, as we range over matters related to design being a part of the problem in a capitalist society where power is vested in a system that favours structural inequality, marginalisation, systemic racism, and ignoring the needs of the real users of what we design to the benefit of incumbents.
Perhaps more than any other, this conversation has moved my thinking forward. As a white, cis, hetero, middle-aged man, I’m well aware that I’m 100% part of the problem, even if I try to do my utmost to be a good ally. It’s absolutely up to me to sit back, listen to designers and users from marginalised and structurally disadvantaged groups, and design for and especially with them in order to subvert the systems we find ourselves in. As Michael notes, for the West in particular, that’s a white-dominated, patriarchal, neoliberal, capitalist system.
We are all whether we like it or not, bound to that system, and in many cases bound within it, with our own power repressed by structure.
As designers, we contribute to the problem as much as we try to solve it. Much of the design we do, and in almost every case, the clients we do it for, are based in capitalism, and treat other humans as an extractive resource, to exploit either as customer or employee. As designers, we are also in a unique position to do something about this, and drive change from within, designing from a bottom-up perspective, focussed on design goals that break down inequality.
Too much of the conversation around design ethics, and by association, design leadership, is about not doing bad, rather than actively doing good or a complete upending of inequal systems over time — no less than a Velvet Revolution — to replace capitalism as it exists today with an alternative; one that allows people to make money to live, but regards inequal power, marginalisation, and resource extraction from people as anathema.
I’m considering how Mike’s revolutionary views around the dismantling of 21st Century neoliberal capitalism mesh with my own politics and my role as a designer. I like to consider myself pretty progressive and a good ally, but I wonder what more I now should be considering and bringing into my role as a designer and more widely as a member of society.
I have no doubt that the conversations Mike is driving, and that I’m participating in as much as I can, have the potential to massively shift the boundaries of design as a discipline, design leadership, and the public sphere. I’m interested in seeing where they go and playing an active part.
