Surviving IDEO
May 28, 2021 4:17 AM Subscribe
David Kelley’s idea of making a company where he could work with his friends took on new meaning. When you don’t consciously design a workplace to include, develop, and support diverse employees, working with your friends can mean promoting primarily people just like you; young, white, cis-male designers without apparent disabilities. Not only does this create a difficult and even soul-crushing work environment for people who don’t match the dominant archetype, but how can a homogenous group competently design for our diverse world?IDEO, one of the world's foremost design firms, has a serious diversity problem. Former employees such as George Aye and Elizabeth Johansen say it is an unsafe workplace for women, PoC and WoC and detail years of abuse by colleagues and managers. Rachael Dietkus, a licensed clinical social worker and design researcher, offers advice on the matter and workplace trauma.
We had IDEO come in to our org. I remember that in terms of team composition it was made up mostly of Asian women, based in their Singapore office, with a couple of team members based in Shanghai. Two of the team were from USA.
As consultants go they were fine. They offered a job to a colleague but she didn’t take it because they didn’t pay enough.
posted by awfurby at 5:01 AM on May 28, 2021
As consultants go they were fine. They offered a job to a colleague but she didn’t take it because they didn’t pay enough.
posted by awfurby at 5:01 AM on May 28, 2021
I took two online IDEO design thinking classes in the last year at the behest of my employer. It was pretty obvious from the get-go how flawed their model of design thinking is from an equity standpoint and how... privileged, I guess? IDEO as a company seemed to be. I couldn't identify with any of the narraters/instructors in the video, including David Kelley. I took the courses, I got the certificate, and my organization is too over-capacity to make time to put any of the principles into practice so I guess it was a wasted effort anyway. But I felt squicky the entire time I was in the courses and saw some pretty racist/biased comments from other students in the discussion forums go completely unremarked upon by the teaching assistants. I said as much in my evaluations but I doubt much came of it.
If you're looking for an example of an organization using design principles for good (specifically in the community development context), I recommend checking out Creative Reaction Lab. They start with a foundational understanding of power and privilege dynamics that IDEO's brand of design thinking just ignores.
posted by misskaz at 5:53 AM on May 28, 2021 [13 favorites]
If you're looking for an example of an organization using design principles for good (specifically in the community development context), I recommend checking out Creative Reaction Lab. They start with a foundational understanding of power and privilege dynamics that IDEO's brand of design thinking just ignores.
posted by misskaz at 5:53 AM on May 28, 2021 [13 favorites]
I worked for IDEO in a support role in the mid-to-late 1990s, and it was absolutely a culture of entitled white boys. It was a open secret at the time that the women who worked in the admin roles in the company HQ were looked at as a pool of "girlfriends" for the executives. In my office, there were no female designers at all and only a couple of female engineers, and absolutely no people of color. One of my co-workers was reprimanded for sexual harassment, but not terminated. I have no doubt things have remained the same over the last 20 years.
posted by briank at 5:59 AM on May 28, 2021 [15 favorites]
posted by briank at 5:59 AM on May 28, 2021 [15 favorites]
George Aye & Elizabeth Johansen describe the problems well. But the final link is extremely troubling to me, and points to a dead-end when we think about abuse at work. I love my therapist and there is absolutely a place for identifying that what is happening at work is abusive, and getting support outside of work for that. BUT, this type of siphoning of workplace resentment and rage at inequity into self-help solutions is totally ineffective and also dangerous.
The ONLY intervention that leads to pay equity at work is collective bargaining and a union contract that makes salaries transparent and bases them on seniority not arbitrary (racist & sexist) ideas of merit. The ONLY intervention that protects us from being arbitrarily fired by white boys with no self-awareness is a union contract with a Just Cause provision and defined disciplinary process. The ONLY way we can change workplaces like this is to have a structure that builds in solidarity with coworkers -in resistance to the ways our employers intentionally divide us.
I'm lucky to have landed in a department that has a boss who is deeply committed to equity, who thinks daily about racial justice in relationship to our workplace, and who is a kind person who chooses to facilitate an environment of respect where we all have opportunities to shine. That's great! I don't feel traumatized every day I go to work, and that is huge. But having a nice boss is simply not enough. The only reason I can be ASSURED that I get paid as much as my male coworker (if my boss was to become influenced by her own unconcious bias, or if she left the organization) is the fact that we have a contractually mandated pay scale and we all know to the penny how much everyone makes because it's based on our job title and hire date.
posted by latkes at 6:58 AM on May 28, 2021 [29 favorites]
The ONLY intervention that leads to pay equity at work is collective bargaining and a union contract that makes salaries transparent and bases them on seniority not arbitrary (racist & sexist) ideas of merit. The ONLY intervention that protects us from being arbitrarily fired by white boys with no self-awareness is a union contract with a Just Cause provision and defined disciplinary process. The ONLY way we can change workplaces like this is to have a structure that builds in solidarity with coworkers -in resistance to the ways our employers intentionally divide us.
I'm lucky to have landed in a department that has a boss who is deeply committed to equity, who thinks daily about racial justice in relationship to our workplace, and who is a kind person who chooses to facilitate an environment of respect where we all have opportunities to shine. That's great! I don't feel traumatized every day I go to work, and that is huge. But having a nice boss is simply not enough. The only reason I can be ASSURED that I get paid as much as my male coworker (if my boss was to become influenced by her own unconcious bias, or if she left the organization) is the fact that we have a contractually mandated pay scale and we all know to the penny how much everyone makes because it's based on our job title and hire date.
posted by latkes at 6:58 AM on May 28, 2021 [29 favorites]
This Medium piece is awful for so many reasons. "Surviving" implies it was going to kill you. It links to a list of characteristics that are supposedly "white supremacy culture", which are incredibly insulting to non-white people. Matt Yglesias put it well.
posted by matt_arnold at 7:08 AM on May 28, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by matt_arnold at 7:08 AM on May 28, 2021 [3 favorites]
Tema Okun's piece is indeed bullshit - from a thread that was deleted because their piece was bullshit!
But - matt arnold - that medium piece doesn't use it....why are you linking to a Yglesias piece which has nothing to do with it?
posted by lalochezia at 7:24 AM on May 28, 2021 [2 favorites]
But - matt arnold - that medium piece doesn't use it....why are you linking to a Yglesias piece which has nothing to do with it?
posted by lalochezia at 7:24 AM on May 28, 2021 [2 favorites]
> in terms of team composition it was made up mostly of Asian women, based in their Singapore office
> absolutely a culture of entitled white boys. It was a open secret at the time that the women who worked in the admin roles in the company HQ were looked at as a pool of "girlfriends" for the executives
Just happens to be a coincidence!
posted by Borborygmus at 7:25 AM on May 28, 2021
> absolutely a culture of entitled white boys. It was a open secret at the time that the women who worked in the admin roles in the company HQ were looked at as a pool of "girlfriends" for the executives
Just happens to be a coincidence!
posted by Borborygmus at 7:25 AM on May 28, 2021
lalochezia: In George Aye's Medium article, one of the earliest paragraphs has the phrase "traits of white supremacy culture" which links to a list of them. It's Tema Okun's list of traits.
posted by matt_arnold at 7:26 AM on May 28, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by matt_arnold at 7:26 AM on May 28, 2021 [5 favorites]
This is almost triggering to me.
In my opinion, IDEO is a huge used brown bag of hot air. I cannot think of any positive aspect to the business, and I hope it will be one of the organisations that die in the coming revolution. It is no surprise to me that it also has a toxic work culture, because the toxicity comes with the foundational lie. I think that toxic workplace culture has spread to a lot of design companies and design schools across the globe.
Now, for those who are not engaged or interested in design: what IDEO sells is the initial programmatic phases of design, at it has been practiced since antiquity, though they sell it as something new.
The actual design proces has several phases, the first of which is programming: figuring out what the brief is in more detail than "make me a handheld device that can help me navigate a UI". It is undoubtably a very important phase and it has been a driver of design since the mid-19th century. Most people know the phrase "form follows function", which meant something rather different when the Chicago architect Louis Sullivan coined it in 1896.
After that come several other phases that lead to more directly tangible end results - things that have to do with aesthetics, manufacturing, costs, and sales. All of those phases are complex, difficult and cross-disciplinary. And IDEO is really bad at them all. You might have a very good concept for a bicycle, but if you can't execute, that bicycle won't ever sell. IDEO has figured out a way to circumvent that problem. They aren't really designing products, they are selling "design thinking".
The programmatic phase is the one that engages clients and that clients are able to appreciate. It's a good business model for IDEO. And for thousands of design students all over the world, it is a safe place, because "design thinking" is a lot more comfortable than actual design. But it is a horrible design philosophy. I'm sorry, client, but I am highly educated to be very interested in curvatures, colors and different types of composites so you don't have to think about them. Just like you don't have to know everything your dentist knows.
The reason this is triggering to me is that I have worked in a toxic environment that was a design research center. And while reading this, I realized that the reason the toxicity is contagious is that everyone involved in this at a senior level knows they are selling hot air/snake oil/Trump University degrees. One senior person was so confident in her position that she openly talked about the lie and the fraud to a civil servant in my presence. (Let's just say it wasn't smart). So anyone who questions this is a threat. They have built a global community where David Kelley is God, and I have not in the ten years I worked there met a POC. But I don't know if that is because of racism.
Hear me out. When I was very young, I worked to become an early female voice in a male profession (not design, I've been through a few phases in life). And I learnt that if you are from an outside group, you have to be smarter, better prepared, and more outspoken than the inside group. I am guessing that applies to POC in the design world. And I am guessing that people who know they are basically fraudsters are very afraid of smart, well-prepared and outspoken people. Also, if you are smart, well prepared and outspoken, you will begin to ask uncomfortable questions. You might not think they are uncomfortable, specially when the company publishes a little book where they praise questions and mistakes. But smart questions expose the lie, and no one can live with that. You don't really pose questions, you pretend. And the mistakes thing is only there to persuade clients that it doesn't matter that the product doesn't sell or work. White guys who got their degree because their parents are rich are excellently prepared for this type of work.
Oh, do I sound like an angry bitch? Hell yeah.
posted by mumimor at 8:46 AM on May 28, 2021 [64 favorites]
In my opinion, IDEO is a huge used brown bag of hot air. I cannot think of any positive aspect to the business, and I hope it will be one of the organisations that die in the coming revolution. It is no surprise to me that it also has a toxic work culture, because the toxicity comes with the foundational lie. I think that toxic workplace culture has spread to a lot of design companies and design schools across the globe.
Now, for those who are not engaged or interested in design: what IDEO sells is the initial programmatic phases of design, at it has been practiced since antiquity, though they sell it as something new.
The actual design proces has several phases, the first of which is programming: figuring out what the brief is in more detail than "make me a handheld device that can help me navigate a UI". It is undoubtably a very important phase and it has been a driver of design since the mid-19th century. Most people know the phrase "form follows function", which meant something rather different when the Chicago architect Louis Sullivan coined it in 1896.
After that come several other phases that lead to more directly tangible end results - things that have to do with aesthetics, manufacturing, costs, and sales. All of those phases are complex, difficult and cross-disciplinary. And IDEO is really bad at them all. You might have a very good concept for a bicycle, but if you can't execute, that bicycle won't ever sell. IDEO has figured out a way to circumvent that problem. They aren't really designing products, they are selling "design thinking".
The programmatic phase is the one that engages clients and that clients are able to appreciate. It's a good business model for IDEO. And for thousands of design students all over the world, it is a safe place, because "design thinking" is a lot more comfortable than actual design. But it is a horrible design philosophy. I'm sorry, client, but I am highly educated to be very interested in curvatures, colors and different types of composites so you don't have to think about them. Just like you don't have to know everything your dentist knows.
The reason this is triggering to me is that I have worked in a toxic environment that was a design research center. And while reading this, I realized that the reason the toxicity is contagious is that everyone involved in this at a senior level knows they are selling hot air/snake oil/Trump University degrees. One senior person was so confident in her position that she openly talked about the lie and the fraud to a civil servant in my presence. (Let's just say it wasn't smart). So anyone who questions this is a threat. They have built a global community where David Kelley is God, and I have not in the ten years I worked there met a POC. But I don't know if that is because of racism.
Hear me out. When I was very young, I worked to become an early female voice in a male profession (not design, I've been through a few phases in life). And I learnt that if you are from an outside group, you have to be smarter, better prepared, and more outspoken than the inside group. I am guessing that applies to POC in the design world. And I am guessing that people who know they are basically fraudsters are very afraid of smart, well-prepared and outspoken people. Also, if you are smart, well prepared and outspoken, you will begin to ask uncomfortable questions. You might not think they are uncomfortable, specially when the company publishes a little book where they praise questions and mistakes. But smart questions expose the lie, and no one can live with that. You don't really pose questions, you pretend. And the mistakes thing is only there to persuade clients that it doesn't matter that the product doesn't sell or work. White guys who got their degree because their parents are rich are excellently prepared for this type of work.
Oh, do I sound like an angry bitch? Hell yeah.
posted by mumimor at 8:46 AM on May 28, 2021 [64 favorites]
Wow, Foci, thank you for posting this. Rachel Dietkus' article in particular is very helpful for me in the current moment (although as someone who has been told point-blank on more than one occasion that I needed to "manage up," I'd like some more detail on what the heck else I am supposed to do if I don't manage up).
My therapist, of all people, recommended I seek a job at IDEO many years back when I was floundering through my PhD, and I am so, so glad I did not. Academia was doing a bang-up job already of reinforcing my own racism, imposter syndrome, and internalized misogyny.
posted by All hands bury the dead at 9:33 AM on May 28, 2021 [4 favorites]
My therapist, of all people, recommended I seek a job at IDEO many years back when I was floundering through my PhD, and I am so, so glad I did not. Academia was doing a bang-up job already of reinforcing my own racism, imposter syndrome, and internalized misogyny.
posted by All hands bury the dead at 9:33 AM on May 28, 2021 [4 favorites]
I applied for a job at IDEO once, and a friend of mine reviewed my cover letter. Her notes said "there's no way you're going to get a job there with this cover letter. It's fine, but they think they're doing God's work over there and designers are all KILLING themselves for a chance to work with them. If you want to work there, the letter needs to show that."
I didn't revise it.
posted by chinese_fashion at 9:48 AM on May 28, 2021 [9 favorites]
I didn't revise it.
posted by chinese_fashion at 9:48 AM on May 28, 2021 [9 favorites]
And while reading this, I realized that the reason the toxicity is contagious is that everyone involved in this at a senior level knows they are selling hot air/snake oil/Trump University degrees.
Oh, shit- this really speaks to me. I've seen this exact thing in my own field, and having worked in marketing communications research for more than a decade, one thing I can tell you is that nobody still really knows why advertising is successful or not successful.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 9:48 AM on May 28, 2021 [12 favorites]
Oh, shit- this really speaks to me. I've seen this exact thing in my own field, and having worked in marketing communications research for more than a decade, one thing I can tell you is that nobody still really knows why advertising is successful or not successful.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 9:48 AM on May 28, 2021 [12 favorites]
...the reason the toxicity is contagious is that everyone involved in this at a senior level knows they are selling hot air/snake oil/Trump University degrees....smart questions expose the lie, and no one can live with that. You don't really pose questions, you pretend. And the mistakes thing is only there to persuade clients that it doesn't matter that the product doesn't sell or work. White guys who got their degree because their parents are rich are excellently prepared for this type of work.
Just adding to support that this sings with the sound truth makes when said; thank you. For me it's leaped right into meaningful chord with an ever-applicable Fred Clark essay a few years back that included the similarly singing:
posted by Drastic at 10:05 AM on May 28, 2021 [12 favorites]
Just adding to support that this sings with the sound truth makes when said; thank you. For me it's leaped right into meaningful chord with an ever-applicable Fred Clark essay a few years back that included the similarly singing:
Constantly arguing in bad faith leads to thinking in bad faith and to living in bad faith, until bad faith is all you’ve got left. Calculation becomes habit, that habit supplants thought and one winds up in the perverse circumstance of earnestly arguing for the goodness of oil spills.Oil spills, in the source essay due to current events of the time. But ever and always applicable to so much of the toxic systems and their toxic outcomes in the world; replace oil spills with core useless snake-oil-sellling. Everyone knowing a thing is false but pretending and acting as if it's true cannot help but be toxic. Until bad faith is all they've got left.
posted by Drastic at 10:05 AM on May 28, 2021 [12 favorites]
smart questions expose the lie, and no one can live with that
Revision: nobody with integrity can live with that.
posted by flabdablet at 12:28 PM on May 28, 2021 [2 favorites]
Revision: nobody with integrity can live with that.
posted by flabdablet at 12:28 PM on May 28, 2021 [2 favorites]
>They aren't really designing products, they are selling "design thinking".
It's unfair to tar a whole sector for the tall poppies, but it is this creation of desirability that keeps me thinking I can smell grift.
posted by k3ninho at 3:11 PM on May 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
It's unfair to tar a whole sector for the tall poppies, but it is this creation of desirability that keeps me thinking I can smell grift.
posted by k3ninho at 3:11 PM on May 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
Strange, after so many years, that IDEO are still promoting the design of their original Apple mouse as an iconic example of their work. Not the mouse with two or more buttons like Doug Englebart’s from the 60s. Not the one with the separate chording keyboard like Doug Englebart’s. Not the one shaped to be comfortable to hold in a typical hand (or an atypical hand). Not the one which did away with the rolling ball that would acculturate dirt and jam. Not the one that freed people from the tyranny of a chord. But the other one: square and with just one button because the designer high priest said so.
posted by rongorongo at 4:53 AM on May 29, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by rongorongo at 4:53 AM on May 29, 2021 [2 favorites]
Oh wow...
There's a well-known segment on IDEO that ran on ABC Nightline, you can find it on youtube as "Shopping Cart" or "IDEO Shopping Cart." It shows the phases of the "Design Process" that we teach in PLTW Engineering and includes a long interview with David Kelley where he talks about, basically, how the old way of doing office work is dead and this model of everyone chaotically shouting out their ideas and breeding creativity by not being afraid to break rules is the new model.
I think this video segment must have been enormously influential... It's been a part of the PLTW curriculum, in the Introduction to Engineering course, I think since close to when the program was founded in 1997.
https://youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DM66ZU2PCIcM
I don't it's in the curriculum anymore - maybe it's been moved to the Engineering Essentials course - but yeah David Kelley's ideas about workplace culture at cutting-edge firms has been a part of the high school engineering curriculum for years. Thanks for linking to this article.
posted by subdee at 11:46 AM on May 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
There's a well-known segment on IDEO that ran on ABC Nightline, you can find it on youtube as "Shopping Cart" or "IDEO Shopping Cart." It shows the phases of the "Design Process" that we teach in PLTW Engineering and includes a long interview with David Kelley where he talks about, basically, how the old way of doing office work is dead and this model of everyone chaotically shouting out their ideas and breeding creativity by not being afraid to break rules is the new model.
I think this video segment must have been enormously influential... It's been a part of the PLTW curriculum, in the Introduction to Engineering course, I think since close to when the program was founded in 1997.
https://youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DM66ZU2PCIcM
I don't it's in the curriculum anymore - maybe it's been moved to the Engineering Essentials course - but yeah David Kelley's ideas about workplace culture at cutting-edge firms has been a part of the high school engineering curriculum for years. Thanks for linking to this article.
posted by subdee at 11:46 AM on May 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
Design thinking in and of itself is actually pretty useful. It tries to break people out of old habits and work towards figuring out what actually works for customers as opposed to just going with what the company “thinks” is best.
I participated in a design thinking workshop at a previous job over the course of a week. It was expensive, paid for by the parent company, a Firm from Germany flew a team in to lead it and meant to solve some big problems. I was relatively new to the company, familiar with many of the brainstorming methodologies. We had 4 teams, winning team would get their idea implemented with an increased budget from said parent company. I was surprised on my team when the early brainstorming work didn’t match the suggested ideas on my team. Finally, pulled my boss aside and found out that they already knew what they wanted to get through so just play along.
Turns out, every team did that.
Makes me wonder how often that kind of thing happens and then everyone wonders why “design thinking” or other non-traditional business methodologies are “implemented” and then when they don’t work, are blamed inappropriately.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 11:41 PM on May 29, 2021 [4 favorites]
I participated in a design thinking workshop at a previous job over the course of a week. It was expensive, paid for by the parent company, a Firm from Germany flew a team in to lead it and meant to solve some big problems. I was relatively new to the company, familiar with many of the brainstorming methodologies. We had 4 teams, winning team would get their idea implemented with an increased budget from said parent company. I was surprised on my team when the early brainstorming work didn’t match the suggested ideas on my team. Finally, pulled my boss aside and found out that they already knew what they wanted to get through so just play along.
Turns out, every team did that.
Makes me wonder how often that kind of thing happens and then everyone wonders why “design thinking” or other non-traditional business methodologies are “implemented” and then when they don’t work, are blamed inappropriately.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 11:41 PM on May 29, 2021 [4 favorites]
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