Design x George Aye
Co-Founder & Director of Innovation at Greater Good Studio
Illustration by Bonnie Kate Wolf
Interview conducted by Gabi Bautista on September 10, 2020
Tell us a little bit about yourself. What facilitated your entry into design?
My foray into design comes from early memories of watching some guy on an English TV show saying he was a designer. I remember seeing it and thinking, “I didn’t know you could do that. That sounds awesome.” I struggled, quite honestly, to ever match up to that idea, partly because of who I am, my schooling, and other sorts of insecurities, but I’ve always been enamored by the idea of the industry.
After studying engineering in college, I was fortunate to go through a couple of different internships and slowly began edging my way back into design. I’d say my most fortunate break was getting to work at IDEO when very young. It opened up my eyes to the enormous power of design. I realized if you can make it compelling enough of an object, experience, service, whatever it might be, you can change people’s minds about what they expect and then what they do. Yet even while at IDEO, there was a slight discrepancy between what I thought design could and should be, versus what I ended up actually working on.
Occasionally, I would get excited about where I was contributing, say, to a large social problem. However, in many cases, I was working on projects where I was merely making more stuff. What was mind-blowing to me was we have all this power, yet we’re designing and influencing people’s choice of toothpaste. I thought, “Wait, did anybody else notice this? We’re sitting on something huge here.” I would say there are more important things we seem to neglect or could contribute to if we took our responsibility as designers more seriously. That I kind of wrestled with. I’m now trying to be closer to what I originally thought design was meant to be about, what it’s designed for.
You started from engineering and progressed into co-founding Greater Good Studio. How has that transition influenced you as a designer?
Engineering is a solid background for understanding how to think through things and break big problems into smaller chunks. That methodology is a lifelong foundational piece. What’s limited about engineering, and the way design consulting is often done, is we have a lot of faith the original thesis is sound and go for it.
What this means in engineering is you have a discrete problem with discrete achievable goals. We need the right material choice which at the molecular level can perform under these types of stresses. Then we expand it to designing a product and services. We need this goal to be achieved, where this market share has been increased by this amount.
We don’t pause to check, “Is the original question asked of us as a design team the right one?” I don’t mean “right” as in, “It could have been 15% versus 10% market share.” I’m asking, “Why are we doing this project at all? Should we be doing this? In fact, have we completely missed the point? By doing this, are we actually making things worse?” Part of the reason we don’t tend to ask these questions is there’s a direct threat to our existential goal of existing as a consultancy. The tension of wanting to do jobs and asking why are in conflict with each other.
If you take to heart my early observation that we have a responsibility in the work we produce, we’re happy to enjoy the spoils of our work when it achieves the goals of the project, but we’re much less interested in taking responsibility when things go sideways. Design loves to say, “We increased impact in all these ways,” but we never talk about the wasted money and wasted community loss of trust when it doesn’t go well.
I realized when I entered this space, design for a long time had a huge chip on the shoulder which said, “We demand a seat at the table, the big boy table of business.” Design has fully done that. It has a seat at almost every business table with full-blown CEOs who are former designers or designers still. What I don’t think people realize is design is being invited to the social sector tables as well, and they don’t even realize they’re there. In fact, they’re showing up drunk in many cases saying, “We’re going to post-it note our way through this. We’re going to have a beginner’s mindset. We’re going to fix racism, and we’re going to do it in six weeks because I have another project for Pepsi right after this. So let’s get to it.” That’s how it feels. Designers showing up at the tables of a serious sitdown dinner, drunk and looking for wings.
Where do you feel ethics comes into play with all of this and when considering the responsibility of a designer?
It feels so behind. We seem so naive in our ability to have these conversations. I definitely think some set of ethical stances would be helpful, but I say that with caution because I don’t know what they ought to be. Not because I couldn’t figure it out, but because it’s an anathema across the whole field. We don’t tend to have a practice of saying no. Projects typically get turned down for practical, operational reasons. That doesn’t require ethical standards. It’s “We can’t do it because we can’t afford to.” What I found as a studio in the social sector is when we say no, it’s because I can’t afford to say yes based on a different set of goals or rubric.
If you talk about ethics, one butts right up against morals, which I’ve realized are different. You can have a set of ethics but be immoral. One can be moralistic and not have ethics. They are not one and the same.
“You can have a set of ethics but be immoral. One can be moralistic and not have ethics. They are not one and the same.”
To be moral means there is a sense of right or wrong. Ethics is simply a practiced set of codes, of methods. You can be completely methodical, have practice in it, and still do heinous acts. So ethics is one thing, it’d be great if we had morals as well. You could say Facebook built their business “with” and “for” communities. It’s still ruining America and the globe. If anything, it’s so good at its harmful behaviors and how well it studied the “with/for” parts. So that’s no protection. It’s not enough.
There has to be some rubric for decisions, saying “Why are we doing this?” If the answer is to make as much money as possible, please be explicit about it. Don’t wrap yourself up in some sort of American flag dipped in altruism. Both are harmful because it’s all lies. There may be altruistic outcomes, perhaps, but don’t let that be the forefront of what you say. Because the hidden agenda will bleed through your decisions, like “We will happily allow the spreading of patently false information because it leads to more engagement. People are smart enough, let them make their own decisions about what’s true. By the way, if it’s six times stickier, that leads to a much higher margin on our ads and marketplace.”
Where does the accountability fall?
There is none. You believe everyone’s going to make the right decision. And if the counterargument says, “Well, that’s censorship,” that’s a long way from censorship. It is simply the idea that if everybody believes the earth is flat, and you repeatedly tell everyone it is, anyone who has ever seen a ship getting smaller as it goes over the horizon might start to wonder, “Maybe I’m seeing it wrong. Maybe I don’t know which way is up.” That gaslighting at a global level has to be accounted for. If you don’t take responsibility, can you at least acknowledge it’s happening? Apparently, that can’t even happen.
At Greater Good Studio, what are some methods or approaches you take to working on projects?
I can certainly speak to taking a different approach from the very beginning. Enormous credit to my co-founder, who saw immediately that starting one way and then adapting to be something else later would be much harder than starting from the right place. But “right place” is subjective. Our version of right is certainly not meant to be anybody else’s, but I do think there’s an example here. One way of doing it “right” is not working with commercial clients.
By not having any commercial clients in our portfolio, you’d think we’re all set. But there are a number of instances where the framing of the project is screwed up. We’ve sent about 30 breakup emails over the last nine years turning down opportunities which felt intractable. Even if we suggested different ways of doing it, there seems to be enough insistence on a particular method or approach incompatible with what we believed. We had to say, “I’m sorry, we can’t do this. It’s not you. It’s me. We have to end this.” So even amongst the social sector clients we have deliberately chosen to work with, we found the need for a rubric was critical.
If the rubric is, at the very outset, “Are you contributing to society in some way? No. Okay, then I guess you should go with someone else. If you are contributing to society, great. Let’s see if there’s an opportunity for you to contribute.” Even then, wouldn’t it be much easier if we said, “Sure. Let’s do whatever you’re asking for.” But this cavalier “yes” can lead to all types of harm and goes back to your question about ethics.
We don’t have much of a guard right now. If we just told people we work with nonprofits, most people’s reaction is “Thank god, I’m so glad you exist. Good for you.” It’s just a pat on the back, which means any work done in the social sector as a designer could be given a thumbs-up with zero critical review. No matter how immature you might be about doing it. No matter how much potential harm you may have. No matter how much white saviorship might be emitted in the project. The idea that charity is the only model for contribution is even slightly dangerous because it perpetuates the idea that people are broken and need to be saved.
How does your team engage with communities? How do you build trust?
If you and I were in a relationship, even if I hadn’t done something wrong to you but knew you’d been wronged in the past, might it not help to start by saying, “I can see you have been wronged. Before we begin a project together, do you want to talk about what happened? Then, tell me if you want to do anything new.”
The scale sounds complicated, but if you think about it at a simple interpersonal level, acknowledging what was done before, particularly when it had a traumatic or deceptive quality, is a place to start. The transfer of power through the simple act of listening and responding with demonstrable differences tends to go better than, “We’re doing a listening tour. I’m gonna ignore everything. Nothing changes. Thanks, here’s the plan, regardless of what you said.”
The difference between those approaches is technically you both listened, but one had an apology and the other didn’t acknowledge anything. One had changes based on what you heard, the other had none. One might be left with “Hmm, maybe they might listen,” versus “Here we go again.” It’s not difficult, but it does mean you start acknowledging, do you want the right people to do it? If that’s true, might that be somebody else? Then, it’s about determining if we’re a good fit for your needs. That dialogue allows the community to say, “Yes, we want this team to show up, or get the hell out of my neighborhood.” Sadly, even if they did say no, most people don’t have the power to stop it from happening.
You’ve touched on the dynamics of power and privilege. Can you tell us more about your relationship with them and how power and privilege have shaped your perspective as a designer?
I wrote an article, Design Education’s Big Gap: Understanding the Role of Power, a few years ago which talked about understanding this concept of power and how little I understood it. I’d certainly been subject to other people’s power but never noticed it was a “thing” to observe or be aware of. I assumed that’s just how the world worked. It was sobering to realize there might be a massive gap in my understanding. So I started to explore it through projects, writing, but mostly just talking.
I realized this phenomenon was present my whole life. It’s helped me explain scenarios where I’ve felt stuck, completely compromised, and thought there was no way out. Those are the worst times of my life, and if you put power as a lens and review, it’ll be, “Oh right, I was set up to fail.” I had been set up to not be successful because power was so stacked up against me. I thought, actually, that’s really helpful. Having power as a lens to look through helps me understand what happened and helps me cut through what could be hours—if not weeks, possibly years—of conflict and tension that is both avoidable and explainable. I’m a little more clear about the next upcoming event, phone call, situation, relationship, whatever it might be.
Let’s say you put the lens of power to siblings and birth order. Because I have three kids now, it’s helpful to see how power was distributed amongst them and what I’m setting up to use that power distribution. When I ask for help or who I work with, my role triggers the amount of power already distributed from birth.
Similarly with design, who we call on to do research, who we listen to for advice, and who we deliver our work to, again, triggers the default distribution of power. Without knowing it, you might keep affirming how power was distributed, which in most cases was completely unfair from the start. Versus thinking, “What if my design work was deliberately meant to disrupt power and redistribute it, in fact, to rebalance it?”
Rather than defaulting all the power to a client, especially a funder client who has enormous power already, I might proportionally discount how much I trust that person’s opinion, versus those impacted by decisions. It’s always been conveniently staggered this way. People with power tend to not be impacted by decisions that affect millions of people.
“People with power tend to not be impacted by decisions that affect millions of people.”
One could afford to be loose about a decision, a policy, a plan. People directly impacted by those decisions tend not to be given the power to make their concerns heard. Our job in many cases is to work out how to get this person’s voice heard by those who have the power to hire a design team like us.
This can be a self act of disruption, but it’s about doing it through the lens of power deliberately, which will allow folks to go, “This work feels different. I feel different at the end of it and want to try it again.” Sounds crazy for a business development strategy, but it’s more about giving people the chance to heal. Isn’t that wild? I didn’t think design had any responsibility to heal people, yet there is this feeling I’ve experienced myself and heard from others of finally feeling heard. “Yes, there was some design and some products were made, but I was heard.” I sometimes think, I’m glad we did, but how long have you not been heard? Oh, a long time. That’s really troubling.
What would you say the definition of design is within the social impact space?
It’s varied. I’m not sure I’m willing to tell you what the definition ought to be, other than to be mindful of how it’s been done. Recognize that the narratives we’ve told ourselves about how design ought to be done might not be helpful.
If we’re saying human-centered is the methodology we know as our studio, there’s an inbuilt conceit that because it’s centered on humans, surely every human will be better off. Let’s think about that more. This relies on studying people’s behavior and responding with their behaviorally appropriate product or service. What they might do is actually activate addictive behaviors, destructive behaviors, things people are trying to avoid doing. Through your “human-centered” methodology, you now understand humans even better than you did before, so your product/service can be more precise and potentially more harmful.
The most stressful example is the JUUL e-cigarette, designed by two Stanford grads who took design thinking classes at the d.school. Somehow, they didn’t see the massive potential harm in telling everyone it was going to help people stop smoking. Obviously, this was going to create new addictions. If they didn’t realize it, one of the moments they could have said, “Hey, we’re causing more harm than good,” was to decline the purchasing of their company by Philip Morris/Altria. Funnily enough, they didn’t turn down the multibillion-dollar offer.
What drives me nuts is their post on LinkedIn for a Director of Corporate Social Responsibility, a global position because they have shit-tons of money they can use to create a foundation which I’m sure will be for smoking cessation. A foundation based on reducing tobacco-smoking, built on the backs of money made by creating new addicts.
As a professor, how are you teaching your students about these topics?
I feel like I’m ruining them. I’m ruining them because I’m getting them to better realize how so much is broken, and how we convince ourselves we’re helping when actually we’re not. To pick your way through it is a horrible process because you have to go through this awakening of, “What else? What other terrible thing is George going to tell me?” But there’s hope I have for myself and for our team. Understand that people are way more complicated than we give them credit for, and start from a place that says most people are able to fix problems for themselves. We should trust that their capacity to help themselves is often limited by the conditions built for them, not by being inherently incapable.
Then it’s about barrier removal in many cases and sometimes a new design. But if we start with, this person is broken, and there’s a gap in them I have to fill with a product I have, you end up in places where you go, “How is it possible after 50 years of providing budget planning lessons for people living near poverty, poverty hasn’t changed? Hmm, I better go back to doing another incredibly expensive study on poor people.” That’s troubling.
By the time students become working professionals, some of the original intuition of “I think most people are good” gets beaten out of them.
What would you want those key takeaways for your students to be?
First, the history of the harm done in this country has left an indelible mark. If you’re looking to poke your nose into complex social issues, it behooves us to understand the factors that led to the current phenomena, state of poverty, disenfranchisement, or disinvestment.
Secondly, if there is a potential opportunity for you to do something, rather than rushing to do a project with some ambitious goal, pause and check in with those people you’re hoping not to “study” but to learn from.
Only after those steps could you say, “Okay, we’ve learned something new. There might still be something left undone,” and a host of other questions should follow. If we start with the foundational pieces of slowing everything down, pausing to understand the history, and seeing if there are any gaps left based on what you learned from the people impacted by this project, then maybe there’s something you can contribute.
If you could give someone switching into social impact design advice, what would it be?
If you were to work full-time at a nonprofit or spend as much time volunteering, expect at least a year of deprogramming, of working through everything you’ve heard about people living anywhere near the poverty line and how to help them. Be dedicated to being open to those new learnings, almost treating it like therapy. Writing out your reflections would be powerful. Reflect about what you thought was true, compared to what you now consider to be more true.
“Reflect about what you thought was true, compared to what you now consider to be more true.”
Share your reflections. I’d love to read it. That’s easily what’s been happening for all of us at the studio, whether we worked in the social sector for a long time or not.
So much I thought was one way, I realized was another, or 15 others, and I wasn’t willing to allow for it before. Almost every year we’ve been in business, I run up against another realization, from how you’re supposed to do business development with nonprofit clients, to how funding works, to the fallacy of how philanthropy as a whole is there to help society.
How can we foster inclusion and diversity within our profession?
A thorough review, almost an audit, of your hiring process would be helpful. A small but practical step might be exit interviews with the people you didn’t hire, perhaps the final candidates considered so you’ve got a better idea of who they are, versus ones only seen in resumes or portfolios.
This would be stunning but never happens, to be able to have an interview and say here’s why we didn’t pick you. Then, ask the interviewee what was it like to be turned down and to have gone through the process. But the first part is usually the reason why nothing ever happens, because you can’t typically explain why you didn’t pick this person.
So much of the “no” is wrapped up in white supremacy culture. Those hiring might say phrases which are all a proxy for “It’s not a good fit,” or “This person didn’t give me the warm and fuzzies I was expecting.” That’s bullshit. It’s because you weren’t comforted by the mirror you wanted to see, versus the challenging person in front of you who does everything you want but doesn’t fit the mental model you had. If you can say that out loud, you might go, “Oh shit, maybe this is why we didn’t hire you. We should really think about this.” That reflection, aided ideally by people who you were interested in helping because they were interested in being hired, would be so illuminating.
Even as basic as being able to articulate, “Why do we hire the people we hire? What are the behaviors we’re looking for?” and not using code words like “We want people to be a good culture fit.” When looking back at other places I've worked, I've heard leadership ask rhetorical questions, “Do I feel comfortable imagining being stuck at an airport gate lounge with this person?” That’s what you’re basing this on? So you're looking for someone to hang out with? That’s terrifying.
We end up in situations where mostly social networks and your tight-knit, carefully shielded racial groups tend to be together. So if we want to have those types of discussions about “How do we make it more diverse?” we have to examine why it is the way it is right now.
There’s so much to unpack there, I wish we had more time.
I left a cliffhanger, maybe that’s what it is.
It is! Things to ponder after reading.
The season finale.
