How To Grow & Empower Local Design Talent

Dumebi Iwuchukwu at UXDX Community: Africa. Video: https://youtu.be/fQ-VK3SEn5Y

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

Introduction and the question

[00:00:00] Hi everyone. My name is Dumebi Iwuchukwu, a designer, currently head of design at Big Cabal Media, and today I'll be talking about how to grow and empower local design talent.

[00:00:15] To start, about me. Fun fact: I love words and cartoon dogs. I've seen a lot of my friends say I love one of the two, but I do love both. I've been designing for 10 years now. Currently I'm the head of design at Big Cabal Media. At Big Cabal Media we publish some tech publications, TechCabal.com, and Zikoko, which is a social commentary publication. In my spare time I mentor designers on ADPList, which is about twice a week. And I'm a member of Asha Kochui[?], which is an interdisciplinary community of designers. We have motion designers, 3D designers, all kinds of designers, and we support each other, mentor each other and recommend roles to each other.

[00:01:10] Today I want to answer the question, or I'd like us to approach this talk in a classic way. Design: we start design projects by asking questions. So the question I want to ask is, how might we grow and empower local design talent? Or to put it another way, how might we grow and empower African design talent? Or we could say, how might we improve design education in Africa?

[00:01:43] Why? Why did I go to design education? Because we are all a function of things we know. Every knowledge we have is cumulative. We are the sum total of ideas we have absorbed over the years. The kinds of designers we are is a function of design courses, design influences we've had, mentorship, support we've received as designers. So I'd like to focus on how we might improve on design education in Africa.

Why this matters for Africa

[00:02:14] So why is this important? First is that in the unemployment Olympics, Africa takes the grand prix. Currently South Africa leads with the gold medal at 34.4 percent, followed by Libya at 33.4 percent, and Nigeria. These are the rates of unemployment according to Bloomberg, and these are not beautiful statistics. I'm noting also the fact that in Africa a high percentage of the population are young people, below the ages of 25 years.

[00:02:56] Another factor is literacy rates. Africa has the lowest literacy rate, 64 percent, among the continents of the world. And the other point is Africa has a high population: about 1.37 billion people in the world are Africans. For context, 1 in 6 people in the world are Africans. And an important side note to this is that 40 percent of this number are under 15 years, which means that in the next 10 to 15 years a higher percentage of the adult population of the world are going to be Africans. And with the unemployment rates, we're looking at something else to think about.

The apprenticeship model

[00:03:45] So an approach I want to look at is the apprenticeship model, and why this is interesting is, I'm Igbo by tribe, in Nigeria. I'm from the eastern part of Nigeria and I'm Igbo by tribe. Most Igbo people are businessmen, they engage in trade, and one of the hallmarks of Igbo trade, and Igbo people are very successful and they trade all around the world, is the apprenticeship model. So I'm going to tell a story from the context of my tribe and the culture of my tribe.

[00:04:25] What happens is, for every young man or every young person growing up in Igbo land, there are two pathways. One is getting formal education, and the second pathway is business. So what they often do is, once a child finishes their secondary school or high school, as the case may be, or sometimes in some cases their primary school, they are sent to work, they are sent to serve an established businessman as an apprentice. This apprenticeship usually occurs over the course of seven years.

[00:05:05] During the course of this time they work with the master, learn from the master, assist the master during sales, during stock picking, inventory stocking and all of that. And the interesting part about this is that after the course of those several years, the master sets up the protege, gives the protege capital to start their own business, and that's the interesting part of this. Now in this case, I don't expect a design mentor to give capital to the design protege, but the interesting part about this is that this system has ensured the continuation of the culture of success within the tribe over the years and over the generations.

[00:05:57] Now according to Wikipedia, apprenticeship is a system of training a new generation of practitioners of a trade or profession with on-the-job training, and this is often accompanied by study. I do love this definition so much because of these two parts: on-the-job training and accompanying study. And I'm going to explain why in a few slides.

[00:06:23] Now, why did I use this picture here? This is an image of the Queen Idia ivory mask. It was made in the 1800s, and it's really incredible that a work of this complexity and intricate beauty was made in the 1800s. At that time, the Benin kingdom was known for ivory carving and bronze works, and according to research over the years, scholars have mentioned time over time that even the best practices in Europe could not beat the practices used in Benin in the 1800s and 1700s. And how the system was propagated in the community is that they had a community of craftsmen. We have the masters and apprentices, and so the trade continues, the craft continues. So this shows that as Africans we already have a culture of craft. In different countries of Africa we have pottery, we have paintings and various kinds of artworks.

How people get into design in Africa today

[00:07:32] So we're going to look at what is the status quo, or rather what is the way that many people get into design in Africa at the moment. Right now most African designers learn from YouTube tutorials and free online courses. That's their entryway into design. I remember when I got into design 10 years ago, all I had access to was downloaded YouTube videos, because as at the time I couldn't afford internet. So I had a good friend who downloaded some YouTube tutorials and shared it with me on a hard drive, and for many other people it was the same.

[00:08:09] Now because of this there are some things that happen, which I'm going to talk about here. The pros of this process are that it's cheap and it's accessible. It's cheap, it's not very expensive if you can afford data, or a group of people can put data together, download the tutorials and all share and watch together. It's accessible to anyone. You don't need to get an admission, you don't need to travel to another city to learn, you can do it in your own home.

[00:08:38] But then it has a couple of cons, which are sort of stunting the world of design culture or design economy, so to speak, in Africa. Because the tutorials are usually taught around tools. For example, there are YouTube tutorials, there are Premiere Pro tutorials, there are Illustrator tutorials, so most designers focus on learning tools relevant to doing the kind of design they want to do. So there's a focus on tools instead of processes.

[00:09:12] To put it in context, imagine going to a dentist and finding out that the dentist only knows how to operate the drill, but doesn't really understand your teeth or the health implications of the procedure they want to accomplish. So it's very important as designers that we move focus from just thinking of tools, but also about the entire design process.

[00:09:36] The second point is there's a focus on projects versus building a portfolio. You see, like in Nigeria on Twitter, there are a couple of designers that will say, oh, I can do a logo for maybe two dollars, three dollars, five dollars, and the more senior designers will be very angry and they'll be like, you're underpricing design. And more often, many times, the quality of designs they put out are actually low. But the truth is I can't really blame people, because design has become a way to make money, a means of livelihood. But then there's a better way to go about it: thinking beyond just doing projects to get a quick buck, to building a portfolio of projects or solving a problem for a client. For example, launching a brand, or marketing a product, designing the process to market the product or the process to launch a brand, is more fulfilling and will get more remuneration, or more money, than just a single project.

[00:10:43] The second is focus on aesthetics. Some people complain about the Dribbblization of design, the fact that a lot of people, it's easy, one of the ways to learn even in art over the years is by copying. You go online, you see beautiful things you like and you copy it. But the truth is that copying should only stay in the realm of learning, not in the realm of an actual project, because of copyrights and other things. But then you see a couple of designers, because they didn't have maybe some formal guidance or support, they go on and copy another brand's logo and change the copy and send it as a final file for their client, and that is wrong. Rather, actually focus on solutions: how do I solve the problem for those clients, or how do I improve this client's brand?

[00:11:38] And then the third point, which is important, is many designers starting out focus on gigs or one-off projects, freelancing, instead of thinking in terms of building a design career. Because if you want to build a career, you see someone who wants to be a doctor, they start thinking how do I get into medical school. But many people who want to be designers start thinking which YouTube tutorial do I need to watch. That thought has to change. I need to think, what kind of knowledge do I need to gain in order to build a career in design?

What if training looked different: mentorship, design thinking, learning by doing

[00:12:14] So what if we have a different kind of design training in Africa? What if we have a different kind of training that is focused on mentorship, that's focused on learning and educating design thinking, and learning by doing? Now I'll go to them one after the other.

[00:12:34] So for mentorship, like I said in the earlier slides, I mentor designers on ADPList. At the end of the year a lot of mentees shared testimonials. I actually saw someone who shared how he curated different mentors who specialize in different areas, and in quotes he said that ADPList is a university, because he has someone who discusses user research, he has someone who discusses portfolio building and how to interview with, yes, and someone else he discusses visual design with, and these people guide and mentor him. So mentorship provides an opportunity to have a structured way to learn. Even if someone wants to learn from YouTube, you can have, okay, this is the playlist, this is the order to learn.

[00:13:24] Secondly, design thinking, and I'm not saying this just in the context of the buzzword thrown around, but the process of designing, the process that goes from empathy to research, and research to ideation and brainstorming, to prototyping, testing, and recreating and going through the process all over. Learning how to design feel within[?], because one of the things I noticed is, I was in a group and someone shared how a client gave a revert on the design, and he blocked the client on social media. That was very funny to me, because feedback is not something to get angry about. Feedback is something to welcome, because that's how your design improves. If you have the goal that I'm going to solve the problem of this person, every feedback means that the problem hasn't been solved, so I'm listening for feedback, I'm open to feedback, and I'm taking note of those and inputting it into the process to solve the client's problem.

[00:14:26] And lastly is learning by doing. See, in this process learning by doing comes last, it doesn't come first. It doesn't start from watching a YouTube tutorial and practicing what the person does without understanding why. Mentorship gives you why: you have your whys and you have your hows. Design thinking, you learn this is the process to design. And then learning by doing is when you start practicalizing. If you want to be a UX designer, you start practicing with drawing wireframes, with interviewing users. You learn how to ideate, you learn how to sort the data and find ideas for how do I solve this person's problem. You learn user journey mapping and different things. You learn by doing.

Recommendations for new designers and for companies

[00:15:12] Here are my recommendations. For new designers: you've got this. There's this impostor syndrome, it happens to everyone, where you go on Dribbble, you go on YouTube, you go on Behance and you see portfolios of designers, you get overwhelmed, you feel like, oh no, I can't play this game. The flip side of impostor syndrome is a hunger to learn, because what impostor syndrome does is it exposes areas that you need to learn in. It's just like it's scary to learn how to ride a bicycle, but once you learn how to ride a bicycle you become confident and you can try a few tricks.

[00:15:58] So the solution is, second, mentors. Mentors to guide you, mentors to teach you. Read design blogs and articles. Master design thinking. So in reading blogs and articles and seeking out tutorials to watch, more important than tools is design thinking, and further, fundamental design principles like color, typography, layout, spacing, visual hierarchy and all of that. So it's important. Now I didn't mention courses to take, because those are available, but these are important things you need to do whether you have access to courses or not. And one of the benefits of mentors is some mentors actually are part of organizations that give scholarships or support people to get into bootcamps, so that's an additional benefit that could come from that.

[00:16:57] For companies, one of the things you could do is to sponsor design training in host communities. There's a saying that if you give a man a fish you feed him for a day, but if you teach him to fish you feed him for a lifetime. Most companies have corporate social responsibility programs and they go to communities and give gifts or tokens or aids to communities. More important than that, education is a very critical part of lifting people up from poverty or creating opportunities for people. So sponsoring design trainings: as companies you can partner with organizations like UXDX, organizations like General Assembly, organizations like Interaction Design Foundation. There are a lot of organizations in different countries in Africa, and universities offer design trainings. You can actually sponsor trainings for people to get into design.

[00:17:54] Another thing companies can do is encourage team members who have had extensive experience in the industry to mentor upcoming designers, as it becomes a guidance and provides a pathway for them to start their design careers.

Final thoughts

[00:18:12] Final thoughts. As I wrap up, important things: an approach to look at design education is to start first from mentorship, having someone to guide the mentee or the protege. Like I said, one of the reasons it's important is it helps the person define their why, it helps them define their pathway in design. The second is the learning: design thinking, design process, design methodology. And lastly is the learning by doing: learn by practicing.

[00:18:47] So to conclude, I'll end by this quote by Dieter Rams. He said that indifference toward people and the reality in which they live is actually the one and only cardinal sin in design. So in design, one of the most important values of designers is empathy, the ability to step into people's shoes, the ability to relate not just as an observer but as a participant, and think of ways to solve the problems in our communities. Thank you.