Race, Identity, and Designing for the Diverse World

Project Inkblot had the distinguished pleasure of leading an invigorating, joyful, intense, affirming and inspiring workshop about race and identity for Tide Risers’ last Salon at Carley Roney’s beautiful and cozy Brooklyn home. Say what?! You might be thinking, “A workshop about race and identity that wasn’t filled with feelings of anger, fear, anxiety, sadness, exhaustion, guilt or dread? How, Sway?” By the way, these were all words that fellow Tide Risers used to describe what immediately comes to our minds when thinking about these topics. It comes as no surprise then that most of us feel lost when it comes to how to speak about these topics at work, at home, and in our communities.

Project Inkblot’s perspective is that the construct of identity in our society (race, in particular), is a zero sum game. It’s premised upon the notion “if I win, you lose” and vice versa, so it’s no wonder that we are constantly having to defend, or be defensive, in order to protect our identity. Even in our language, the signifiers for race vary. For some, you’re just a color, for others you’re an ethnicity or a religion. It’s no wonder we are all so confused. The madness of these social constructs often have volatile and real life consequences that are unequally distributed by design. Without talking about identity and race in productive ways, sans shaming and invalidating one another, how can we create true diversity in our work places, or anywhere else for that matter?

True diversity is not just throwing a Black or brown face on an ad. That’s tokenism. That’s filling a quota. That’s a bandaid solution without a real regard for why this is still a top pain point for all of our major institutions in 2017. So, how can we shift how we grapple with these issues? First, we can stop viewing diversity as a problem that needs to be solved. It’s actually an opportunity to develop better and more effective businesses. That it is still a major business challenge isn’t inherently bad or wrong. It just isn’t effective. It’s just not aligned with what most of us say we actually want for our businesses and organizations, which is to provide the best services and products for our clients/customers — services and products that directly and authentically speak to what people are actually dealing with. The reality is that our customers and clients are shifting as the makeup of our world shifts. With increased globalization and location independence, it would be a missed opportunity (with potentially harmful consequences) to not have the makeup of your business reflect the makeup of the world around us. The challenge actually is that most businesses don’t know how to course correct. We, Project Inkblot, assert that this is a design challenge and a potentially exciting one.

We all know the adage, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” The lack of diversity in businesses, both internal and external, is one of those things. While we might see more visibility of traditionally underrepresented faces in media, an increase in D/I departments at Fortune 500 companies, and an increase in HR quotas to hire people of color, women and so on and so forth, this information can be misleading. It’s great that this is happening, and at the same time, there is still a major gap in the distribution of equity in decision-making and economic power in the business world. Typically, that’s because the people you’re trying to reach are usually not in the decision-making roles at your companies. Often, we walk into meetings to hear that the client wants to reach “young women of color between the ages of 25 to 35,” only to notice that there are none of their target demographics on their leadership team or that the new program an organization is running to support HIV positive LGBTQ youth, consulted no HIV positive LGBTQ youth. You get the picture, but what do we actually do about it?

Have you truly looked at who your team is comprised of? Do you know anything about their life experiences and their stories? Have you done the same for your stakeholders? Your core decision makers? Your clients? Do you know who they really are? Like, who they really, really are? Beyond surface market research and check boxes? Do you know what they are challenged with on a daily basis? Do you sense that they truly feel heard and acknowledged by you? Humans are complex and nuanced beings. We embody multiple identities at once; not just one. That exact plurality is how Project Inkblot defines diversity. It’s the presence of these multiple points of views at once, sometimes conflicting with one another and sometimes challenging one another. That tension, that fluidity — that informs the design of our work with our clients. Innovation is what emerges when all of these lived identities can flourish and be fully expressed.

That’s why the way we approach diversity has to also be complex, fluid and nimble by design. When we run workshops for our clients, we explore questions like:

• What are the identities we inherit? That we are born into? What about the identities we choose?
• What are we responding to in our external environment that drives us to make certain decisions over other ones? And, how do our identities inform how we see and experience the world?
• How others see and experience us?

It’s not as kumbaya as it sounds. It’s actually the critical points of reference for us to begin designing the products and services that will make a lasting difference for our customers. It should come as no surprise that how we interact with the external world through our identities is also how we design new products and services.

Whether we are ideating with a client on a new wearable tech product to address women’s safety, designing a training program for a media company to onboard their staff, designing a multi-city launch program for an entrepreneurial incubator program, or running a workshop like we did for Tide Risers, we are constantly using our Design for Diversity methodology to produce the most authentic and effective services and products. Guess what? The outcomes always far exceed people’s expectations. Maybe it’s because we are AHHHMAAAAZING and charming, but mainly (and most likely) it’s because diversity as a design process always works.

Buoyan Gao and Jahan Mantin are co-founders of Project Inkblot, a media, service and program design consultancy that uses a Design for Diversity™ approach to build inclusive programs for organizations and companies. They are also the creators and executive producers of the film series, Fit the Description.