On July 7, Bruce Nussbaum published an article at Co.Design called Is Humanitarian Design the New Imperialism? It put knots in the buns of many people. I ask a different question: Is Bruce Nussbaum the Glenn Beck of Design? And I don't mean it in a good way.
If you want to read some of the responses to Nussbaum's article, try this post at designobserver.com.
What really surprises me is that so many people are defending humanitarian design, which assumes the arguments in Nussbaum's article carry some weight. That assumption is flawed.
Instead, people should question the tripe of the article itself. In it, Nussbaum asks a bunch of questions and doesn't really go out on a limb to write what he means. He hides behind questions intended to raise doubt. I wonder if that wasn't his goal. I mean, he doesn't come out and say humanitarian design is good, if immature, and he doesn't use his questions to urge further research, suggest courses of action, implores practitioners to continue their work, or offer any other useful advice. Instead, there is a distinct tone in his post that we should all leave well enough alone. He has the writing chops to know the difference, so one must infer that this was done intentionally, to cause a sensationalistic fuss with a bunch of whiny, negative criticism couched in seemingly innocuous questions.
Maybe I'm just getting old, but I am, quite frankly, get sick and tired of hearing this non-productive crap from people, like Nussbaum, who should know better.
Perhaps the greatest error Nussbaum makes is confusing humanitarian design with humanitarian designers. (Of course, he's not the only one. It's a popular error indicative of the imprecise and lazy thinking that's a hallmark of our modern times; Susan S. Szenasy makes the same mistake in her commentary.) He does it by using examples of the actions of individuals and then transfers their perceived shortcomings onto the field. This is bad reasoning and bad form. Considering Nussbaum's an academic, this kind of error of category is inexcusable.
People make mistakes and (hopefully) learn from them. That's what we call experience. Humanitarian design is a new field with no particular body of knowledge yet, so its practitioners all have little experience. If they don't make mistakes now, then they'll never learn. Instead of pissing all over them, Nussbaum should encourage them. And if they've committed some error, then he should have the stones to point them out directly and factually, as constructive criticism, and try to suggest solutions. Instead, he does neither.
And why shouldn't designers extend a certain influence over those they try to help? We routinely allow medical doctors to exert influence over our health. Why shouldn't humanitarian designers be afforded the same respect? It's not like they do it for wealth or fame or glory. They do it because it's the right thing to do.
What are we supposed to do? Sit back and watch as people in other parts of the world suffer? It's not enough to just donate money or send "aid" to places where it's needed. Money isn't enough if you can't use it effectively. And in cases of the truly destitute, they haven't the time to solve their own problems because they're too busy trying to stay alive. I've often said that design is what you do when you don't know what to do next. Humanitarian designers are trying to help people who don't know what to do next. But they don't necessarily know how to design either. So let's have some designers help them.
Nussbaum asks the question "Might Indian, Brazilian and African designers have important design lessons to teach Western designers?"
Of course they would! But are there any? Why don't we hear more about them? Maybe they're there but unnoticed by the media and therefore by potential clients? It wouldn't be the first time the media screwed things up. Maybe the local designers haven't the local funding or support to get the job done? Maybe there aren't enough of them (yet) to form the critical mass needed to support humanitarian design efforts? Maybe they're too busy earning a living because their local economies aren't yet strong enough to support the kind of volunteerism that usually accompanies humanitarian design efforts?
Maybe Nussbaum should have done some frakking homework before writing that post?
See, I've done it too, just to prove the point. By asking a bunch of questions, I undermine Nussbaum's argument. But whereas I'm being honest about why I'm using this cheap and lazy tactic - to make fun of Nussbaum's sad little article - Nussbaum himself gives no such explanation.
Either local designers are engaging in humanitarian design, or they are not. If it's the former, then people like Nussbaum should know about it. If he knows about, then he's not being truthful in his article; if he doesn't know about it, then he needs to stop having opinions about matters of which he is ignorant. If it's the latter, then again Nussbaum is either ignorant of the facts, or misleading us by leaving the question open. And in either case, the issues that are being addressed by Western humanitarian designers are obviously not being addressed by local designers (yet). Nussbaum's question is therefore moot.
And then there's the comment related by Nussbaum and attributed to Kishoreji Biyani, "that there was a better, Indian way of solving the problem." I assume that Nussbaum's relation of Biyani's words is accurate. Given that, I would submit that Biyani's design credentials, being nonexistent, disqualify him from even having an opinion on the merits of the design solutions on which he commented. For Nussbaum to give weight to Biyani's comment seems more cronyism (they're both "business experts") than anything else. The issue at hand, I should say, was providing clean drinking water to villagers. Just because the villagers happen to be in India doesn't make the problem of clean drinking water an Indian problem, requiring an "Indian solution."
To me, Biyani's remark sounds nationalist and protectionist. As if everything in India were invented/designed/developed by Indians. I doubt he worries about having clean drinking water for himself and his family. His point of view is as far removed from those of the villagers as mine is from a Canadian First Nations person living in a village in Nunavut. The only people who should be passing judgment on the proposed solutions are the villagers themselves. Biyani's commandeering of the role of design arbiter in this case is as much an affront to the Indian villagers as is Nussbaum's attempt to undermine the notion of humanitarian design is to designers.
Nussbaum also questions the value OLPC project. This is, of course, a classic example that luddites use to argue that "technology is bad." But this too is flawed; it is bad argumentation to have a single instance stand in place of a category. Just because OLPC is apparently unsuccessful doesn't mean other efforts are similarly doomed. I never thought OLPC was a good idea, for exactly the reasons that so many others have written extensively about, not because it was bad humanitarianism, but because it was bad design: expecting computers to solve the educational problems of a uncomputerized society is just plain stupid.
What's worse is that Nussbaum doesn't mention all the successful efforts in humanitarian design, which are detailed better by others elsewhere (e.g. here or here) than I can do here. Why is that, I wonder? Is he just naturally biased, or is he intentionally trying to undermine humanitarian design? I can't see a third option here.
The reasons why humanitarian design efforts fail generally fall into just a few categories: politics, Politics, egomania, greed, ignorance, and malice. While one might gently reproach designers for thinking that these factors would not interfere with their efforts to do good, one can hardly blame them for the short-sightedness of bureaucrats, the corruption of government, the greed of businesspersons, the ignorance of the uneducated, and the malice of the self-absorbed. And before you start wailing on me for making false categorizations here, I know exactly what I'm saying here. So go ahead and complain; I don't care.
Nussbaum suggests that we westerners are uninformed of the particulars of the situations in other parts of the world. Well, DUH! Of course we're not. Every designer worth his or her salt will readily admit that understanding the client/user/other is the first and most fundamental task in any design intervention. Design is a service - designers design for others. Only the most egomaniacal designer will claim total superiority over those for whom one designs (think starchitects for instance). Still, the expertise of the designer provides a unique perspective that is generally better informed than that of the end users in many ways. So the designer must tread this careful line, accepting what the users say they want, without violating one's own ethics, and also raising their awareness of issues they probably haven't considered.
And that's exactly what humanitarian design places as a foundation of their field. This is very well expressed very well by Project H Design, for example, an effort noticed but dismissed by Nussbaum as he falls into that category error I mentioned earlier.
Should I thank Nussbaum for at least starting a conversation? No. There's plenty of more polite, well-reasoned, and erudite ways to do that. All he did was lob a figurative grenade into a room full of people trying to figure out how to do the right thing.
There is absolutely no benefit gained from Nussbaum's article. I regret having read it, but since I believe strongly that everyone has an obligation to stamp out incompetence wherever it is found, I am constrained to write this commentary. It's the second time I've read an article of Nussbaum's, and the second time I felt my stomach turn that someone of his position should produce such unmitigated tripe.
Let me return for a moment to the title of my post. Glenn Beck is perhaps one of the most vile persons on television today. Pretty much everything that he says is either a lie or a calculated and Machiavellian maneuver intended to achieve an agenda hidden from his viewers. That parallels nicely what I think about Bruce Nussbaum's article about humanitarian design. So yes, I would indeed say Nussbaum is design's Glenn Beck.
In case you're wondering what I think about humanitarian design, here's the short version. Humanitarian design is fundamentally about people helping others who seem to be in need of it. It's a good sign of our society that we feel this urge, and it should be encouraged. Now we can either wallow in our little egocentric mental models that the world is as we have experienced it, or we can step outside ourselves and see what's really going on. Nussbaum is happy to think only in terms of his own worldview, which is one of the two principal ideologies in the West (those being "the West is inherently good", and "the West is inherently bad"). I prefer to step back and recognize that everyone has their own ideology in this regard. We're all the same in our differences; we're all screwed up in our own special and unique ways. And the only way we'll ever get out of this self-constructed nuthouse is to make the effort to step back from what our very narrow experiences tell us and recognize that we all suffer the same affliction. The solution is to communicate, to express ourselves, to work together, to share. It will take time to learn to see past the differences, but it's the only way to resolve our difficulties.
Some say that this sort of thing means all culture will blend into a single homogeneous blob, effectively wiping out all notions of diversity. That's bollocks. You don't have to give up who you are, or even who you think you are, to be able to accept the differences of others. And acceptance is the first, necessary step to be able to work together with "them," whoever they might be, to get some really good shit done. It's easy to do; I do it all the time. And I just won't put up with close-minded people who think it's not possible. I think Bruce Nussbaum is one of those people.
So here's what I promise, to myself and to you: I'll never read another article, paper, or post by Nussbaum; and I'll never write about him or his flawed thinking again. Because he doesn't deserve it.
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