Black Stories/29: Lesley-Ann Noel

Lesley-Ann Noel, the author of Design Social Change, is a designer, researcher, and educator who practices design through critical and anti-hegemonic lenses with a focus on equity, social justice, and the experience of those who are often excluded from design research. Dr Lesley-Ann Noel’s research interests are centered around those who would traditionally be excluded from community-led research, design-based learning, and design thinking. She practices primarily in the areas of social innovation, education, and public health. In her research, Lesley-Ann highlights the work of designers outside of Europe and North America and promotes critical awareness by introducing critical theory concepts and vocabulary into the industry. Lesley-Ann has a BA in Industrial Design from the Universidade Federal do Paraná, in Curitiba, Brazil. She also has a Master’s in Business Administration from the University of the West Indies in Trinidad and Tobago and earned her PhD in Design from North Carolina State University in 2018.

Lesley-Ann has been awarded honorary doctorates for service to the field of design by the University of the Arts London (2023) and the Pacific Northwest College of Art (2021). She is an active member of the Design Research Society and a co-editor of ‘The Black Experience in Design’. She is an Assistant Professor with a focus on Design Studies in the Department Media Arts, Design, and Technology at North Carolina State University. 

Listen in to here more of her story...

• Full Episode Transcript
• Lesley-Ann Noel:
• Ask these questions from a different point of view and will sometimes be intentionally oppositional to uncover things that the rest of us are not seeing.
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• Justin James Lopez:
• Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of Amazon's Black Stories where we highlight the stories of Black designers, researchers, and creative minds from all around the world. I'm your host, Justin James Lopez, and today I'm joined by Lesley-Ann Noel, as we talk about challenging the status quo and designing a more equitable future. Let's hear her story.
• Well, Lesley-Ann, thank you again for joining us on this episode. As always, I wanted to just open up by allowing you the opportunity to introduce yourself to the audience here.
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• Lesley-Ann Noel:
• Thanks for this invitation, Justin. I don't even always know how to introduce myself, so I'm going to use something that's very succinct and then maybe as we talk we'll get more in depth. I am Lesley-Ann Noel, and I consider myself a design educator, design researcher, designer, and author. I wear a lot of different hats, but all of these hats are related to design.
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• I think I have a big identity around design, but of course there are other identities because we're all multilayered. So I am a Black woman from the Caribbean, from Trinidad and Tobago in particular. And I actually studied in Brazil. I did undergrad in industrial design in Brazil. And so these identities, Blackness, Caribbeanness, maybe even South Americanness from the Brazil experience, and these identities, I also carry around with me in the work that I do. So maybe I'll stop there and then as we talk, more of my identity will come out.
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• Justin James Lopez:
• Yeah, we'll pull the layers back for sure. Thank you. I really appreciate this episode and this meeting for the audience here. I was actually originally introduced to you or your work through reading the Black Experience in Design, the book, and all of these things will be linked for anyone. Don't leave just yet. After that, I was like, well, I wonder what else? And then I saw the Design Social Change, your book, Design Social Change, but it wasn't out yet actually. So I had pre-ordered it and then I forgot about it, and then one day it just popped up on my doorstep and I was like, oh, I've been waiting for this. So I read it, which I absolutely love. And the cooking metaphor, all of it was absolutely amazing. That will make sense to the audience later when they read it. And then I was like, you know what? I want to talk to her.
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• Lesley-Ann Noel:
• Yay.
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• Justin James Lopez:
• And in my head, I'm like, I wonder how I would do that. And I was like, oh, I have an entire podcast that I can invite her to. So that's how we got here. Let's step back. What is the core theme and what was the inspiration for that?
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• Lesley-Ann Noel:
• So this is also going to be a multi-layered answer, but the big theme is about people understanding that the world isn't just one thing that is fixed or the world doesn't happen to us, we happen to the world, too. And so we can actually design the worlds that we want. So I guess that's maybe the big, big theme that I am asking people to question the world around them and dream of a different world or dream of the world that meets their needs, and then figure out how they're going to take some action through design. It could be big action, small action, but the big idea or the takeaway I want people to have is that I want people to feel energized after they've read the book and say, "I'm going to do X, Y, Z."
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• And it has actually happened a little bit where, like, my mother's becoming famous, because I talk about this. My mother read an early draft of the book before it was published, and then she called me and she said, "Okay, I think now I'm going to reach out to the school." She lives within walking distance of a school, and she says, "I'm going to reach out to the school and work with the children and see what they want to change in the world."
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• And so tied to your question as well, what was the inspiration for this book? I did work with children during my PhD work, my doctoral work, I created a design camp for children where I worked with them for three weeks and encouraged them every week to ask bigger and bigger questions. And they wouldn't have heard this language that I was asking them to challenge the world. But that really is what I was doing where I worked in a pretty rural community in Trinidad where I'm from, and the first week asked the children to think about the things that... questions they had about play. So first we talked about the rights of the child and human rights and stuff like that.
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• And then I invited them to think about play and the ways that they played and what rights they wanted to have access to. And I don't remember the exact questions that I gave them, but the first week was really about them questioning that smaller space around them. And then the second week it got a little bit bigger where they had to focus on their school and they had to about the things in the school that they wanted to change. And then the third week we got bigger and they had to think about the community that they lived in and what were the things that they wanted to change. And what I think is really important from a design perspective is that, so if this was work, maybe somewhere else in the social sciences, we'd be writing down what are the things that people want to change?
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• And maybe that would be where the research would end. But designers don't work like that because we first think about the things that need to change, and then we design them. And so in that workshop with these children, and this might sound like banal design to some people, but I just thought it was so empowering that they were able to clearly articulate the things that needed to change. And then they could draw something and say, "Well, this is the thing that's going to resolve the problems that I have." And some of the things that they talked about are kind of funny. I tell this story often, but I still think it's funny every time I tell it. The school had a lot of mango trees, and the children said, "Well, that's the problem." How could that be the problem? And the problem was actually related to the kinds of rules related to the mango trees. So they couldn't climb them, they couldn't pick the fruit.
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• And then when they moved to the bigger space of their town, I thought the way that they wanted to address some of the issues that they thought were important, I thought they were really big ideas for children who were between eight and 12 where they talked about, "Okay, well actually we don't have enough tourism in our town, or there are no jobs, so let's create this party bus so that people know that this is a town to come to, and then they could spend a little bit of money and everybody gets happy."
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• So I really, I've been thinking about that maybe for the last five years. And when I got the opportunity then to write a book about design and a book about design that couldn't really be about design, because my book is part of a series, and it's not a series of graphic design textbooks or industrial design textbooks. It is a series of books about design, but outside of design, like design in the real world. So when I got that invitation to create a book around that kind of theme, design outside of the world of design, I thought, okay, well, I've been excited hearing people designing the worlds that they want. So maybe that's the theme that I'm going to come up with.
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• Justin James Lopez:
• That's such a wonderful program to start early with children and trying to understand. It really almost takes you back to the beginner's mind and understanding, while some of it might seem so silly, what we think are problems, but you think about it as we get older, that child that thought these silly things were the bigger problem, they just become adults that focus on silly things that they think are the bigger problem. And I think the issue is this concept of not really applying the design thinking to problem solving.
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• And you discussed this pretty aptly in your book of when you're looking through the perspective of problem solving, starting with understanding the problem space and really, really identifying what the problem is and what is that framework, because that's the foundation. And my question, I guess here is, where did that start for you? Because we talk about post PhD, but let's take it all the way back to when you were younger. Where did this passion for design/design thinking, where's that rooted for you?
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• Lesley-Ann Noel:
• I would say that I've been in design my whole life, and nobody believes that when I say that, because there are always these programs where people are saying, "Oh my goodness, we need more people of color in design, blah, blah, blah." And then I show up and I say, "Well, actually, I think I've been a designer since I was five."
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• Justin James Lopez:
• Since I was five, yeah.
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• Lesley-Ann Noel:
• Maybe not since I was five. But there is design all around us in ways that maybe we don't always see. So I'm from Trinidad and Tobago and we have carnival. And so it means that actually everybody is designing from very young because every school child has to design a carnival costume. And there are other things that we do in design, but I would actually say, yeah, I've been in design forever and maybe looking at different questions in design.
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• So I clearly remember sixth grade design classes and seventh grade and eighth grade, and I never stopped. I always thought I would've been in design, but where specifically in design has changed over the years. So I thought some years that I would've been a photographer. My first job was in advertising... Or maybe my second job. Actually, my first, first job was in a textile design, a Batik company. So I've always been in different areas of design, but the kinds of questions that I was asking were different because maybe I was more involved at first in fashion or in product design. If you're thinking about carnival that's related to performance. And so all of these different kinds of questions, whereas now I think I am very firmly located in the world of social design where I am always asking questions that are somehow related to equity and better conditions of life for people in everywhere.
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• Justin James Lopez:
• Yeah. I've noticed that your work tends to emphasize on the importance of this critical reflection. I think from the individual perspective and the collective perspective as well. How do you think designers, all designers, not just the ones with the title, to your point of the 5-year-old Lesley-Ann, how do you think designers can practice this effectively to create more impactful and equitable work?
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• Lesley-Ann Noel:
• One thing that I'd encourage other designers to do is to remember that it's our responsibility to ask questions, to look for difficult questions, to see where there is inequity and figure out are we doing anything to address this? Are we doing anything that somehow props up these unfair systems? And sometimes people say, "Well, okay, that's not our job as designers," but sometimes the things that we do can perpetuate systems of inequity.
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• And then there is just also the role that we play in bringing awareness to issues that other people might not see. I think designers have played a good role in making people very aware of problems related to access, disability. Like certain things around access. I think we've made people aware of this issue. And so that's some of the work that we do. We bring awareness to issues of inequity and injustice, and we have to ensure that our design isn't actually perpetuating these phenomena.
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• So in one of the classes that I teach, and this class actually influences what I've written in this recent book, Design Social Change, very early on in the semester, we talk about what is oppression? And oppression is, you could think of oppression as a very kind of a physical thing where somebody's pushing somebody down. And we talk about that a little bit in class. And if oppression is this phenomenon of people being pushed down, how then in the products or systems or services that we design, are people somehow being pushed down? Or how are we somehow making it possible then for people to continue to be pushed down?
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• And so if we take that kind of lens, we could think about, oh, is it that our design is somehow excluding people who can't... I'll just give an example. I don't hear very well. So maybe someone might be designing something that doesn't help people who don't hear well. And somehow we are then kind of playing a role in pushing down that group of people in society. And I've found that when I talk about that whole phenomenon of pushing people down and encouraging students to see where are people being pushed down, I found that it has made it easy, actually, for them to start to figure out, oh, these are some things that we need to address, and these are some changes that we can try to make through design or with other people.
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• Justin James Lopez:
• Yeah. That's a wonderful perspective to take. And I think I recall reading a part, and sorry if I butcher this, but I remember one part that really stuck with me was challenging yourself to design oppression out of the work and equity into the work.
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• And I thought that was really interesting is because to your point earlier, that idea of designers saying, "Well, that's not our job as designers." But it is a design problem. And that's, I think, a really interesting perspective. And I find my life has always been, I guess I could be described as a contrarian in many ways, where regardless of the perspective, I always try to look at a different way to see it, the problem or just a statement.
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• So when I heard you say that, my initial thought, literally, I was like, well, what I would say to those people is, "It may not be your job, but it is a design problem. And as designers, we're uniquely positioned to solve that problem." And I guess my question here is, we talked about where the design thinking and where this kind of focus started way back to 5-year-old Lesley-Ann, but you're so passionate about this concept of equity versus oppression or oppression versus privilege and how to create equitable spaces. Where was that triggered in your life? Where did that rise up in your life?
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• Lesley-Ann Noel:
• Okay, so actually before that, I'm going to say as designers, we are well poised to propose solutions, possibly. Sometimes we can't, but we are also well poised to listen in a way that maybe sometimes other people can't. And also to share information and knowledge in ways that other people can't. Sometimes our job is about solution finding. Sometimes our job is about problem finding, which is a little different to finding the solution. Because that's actually something we do pretty well as designers. We find different problems to focus on. Sometimes our job is about communicating with other people. And so there are many different roles we could be playing in supporting people on this journey.
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• But the question of where did this interest in equity come? That's an interesting question. It probably came at different times in different ways. And so very early on, I'm going to go way back almost a 5-year-old Lesley-Ann, but not quite that young. But my mom was in a feminist social group, I suppose. Actually the name was Housewives Association of Trinidad and Tobago. I remember going to those meetings as a child, and I don't even remember what they talked about, but it means that I grew up with this awareness of women and women's empowerment. So on one level, then in that early base, there always was an interest in better rights for women from different groups. So I grew up in a household where that was something that we were always interested.
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• In other spaces, and at other times, I had different equity questions that I was interested in. So when I was in college and undergrad in Brazil, a lot of my questions were around economic and class issues. And that had to do with the context that I was living in. I lived in a hall of residence where the majority of my roommates, my fellow hall mates, were coming from some level of poverty into the university system. And we talked about class issues all the time.
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• And then maybe my first racial awareness came from those early days in Brazil where even in Brazil, I was often the only Black person. So technically I wasn't the only person of color in maybe my design program, but I think in the five years that I was in my industrial design program, I can remember... I can count the Black people on maybe one hand. And two of us were international students. I was born, I am old, so I was born in the early '70s. So it meant that around me in my childhood, people were very racially aware and very conscious of Black power and things like that. And then when I went to Brazil in the '90s, that was the second wave of that experience for me, where it was like if I was in a second Black power movement where the Black students on campus where I was in Brazil were organizing and advocating for themselves.
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• And so that was certainly another place where I learned to talk, to use this language of equity. And then the next wave would be when I came to the United States in 2015. So I've been in the States for several years now, but I don't think I am allowed to not think about race any day of my life here in the States. So I mean, this is another wave. So I mean, there was that wave. Then from 2015 to 2020 when I was just here... For most of that time, I was a student and I was thinking about race on that level. That was a period where there was a lot of confrontation then between let's say, people being pulled over and shot. And there was all of this conflict between people, Black people, and the police during those years. And then of course, from 2020 to now, there's a different type of language around race and equity, but haven't only been interested in race.
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• And sometimes I have this conversation in my classroom where the students might expect me then as a Black woman to talk about race. And when we talk about race, sometimes I tell them, "Well, I am talking about race now, but I want you to see that equity issues, they're always there. And if we can identify inequity and oppression, we should be able to see as clearly when it is about race, when it is about gender, when it is about ability, when it is about economic class. And the idea is that we can see that people are being treated unfairly, and that actually just for life to get better."
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• I know that that sounds like kind of wishy-washy, but for life to get better, all of these issues have to be addressed little by little. And I also say in one of the classes that I teach that it is in fact a moving goalpost where once we've addressed these issues, then maybe our way of seeing the world will get a little bit clearer, and then we'll identify other issues that need to be addressed and other issues.
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• And actually, there's an activity that I love to do with students and sometimes in design workshops where I ask people, "Well, after we've dealt with racism and sexism and xenophobia and everything, so in 30 years time, what do you think we'll be dealing with? And what's the inequity we'll be trying to get rid of then?" And it's a hypothetical kind of conversation, but it's sometimes interesting for people to see where else might people be being pushed down that maybe we are not actually seeing today, that we'll be able to see more clearly in 30 years.
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• So the example I sometimes give to start the conversation is my son is left-handed. We are very casual in how we exclude left-handed people from stuff, but maybe in 30 years time, we'll just say that that's the real cause. And we'll look back in horror at 2024 at the fact that there are so many can openers that existed that left-handed people could use or something like that. And sometimes it's interesting to see what people propose as new things that will be trying to address as we're trying to seek better conditions for everybody.
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• Justin James Lopez:
• Yeah. That triggered me a bit. I'm left-handed. [inaudible 00:24:29].
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• Lesley-Ann Noel:
• Oh, wow. So tell us where you feel excluded.
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• Justin James Lopez:
• Yeah. What's interesting is my mother and I are the only two left-handed people in our family, but I at least had my mother growing up where the rest of... I grew up in the '90s. One of the earliest memories that I had of feeling included was my mother buying me a left-handed notebook. It's such a simple thing that nobody at that point thought of. And I did have all of the experiences of teachers trying to force me to write with my right hand, and a lot of these different experiences that I try to forget now.
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• But I remember that, and I remember the feeling. There's a quote where it's, you don't always remember what people do or say, but you'll always remember how they make you feel. And that was such a pivotal moment for me because I remember I think I cried a little bit. It was the first time that I really felt kind of seen in that spectrum, where I would always... It's such a simple thing, but writing with a traditional right-handed notebook, especially the ones with the springs, made it very difficult for me to actually start sentences and move through my [inaudible 00:25:49].
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• And back then, this was just before personal computers were common streams, so everything was written, our essays were written, everything is... So I'm writing and I'm starting sometimes almost like a forced indent into the page. And that caused a plethora of different issues. But also it impacted my penmanship. It would change depending on where I was on the page. And I would... Writing with a pencil was horrible because I would erase my writing as I was...
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• All of these different things. And don't get me started on the chalkboard. I hated the chalkboard conceptually. But when you said that of most people don't think of this, and I think a prime example of what you're talking about when it comes to what is inequity and what is equity and what is equitable spaces? Because naturally, especially when you are a person of color, and you'd mention the concept of inequity, everyone expects, to your point, expects you to talk about race. But all of these identities, reaching back to the beginning of our conversation where you talk about all of the identities and how you kind of peel back the layers and realize that people's identities, or the matrix of oppression, is what I like to call it, they interact because everyone's oppression is directly linked to someone else's privilege in a way.
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• Lesley-Ann Noel:
• Yeah. Yeah. Yes. I mean, so many things that you said there. I wasn't always attuned to left-handed exclusion, right? So my own story about that as a mother is one day, I think we were maybe trying to get ready for school or something like that. My son was getting something to eat, and we are rushing out of the house or just rushing trying to get ready. And I asked him to open a can of tuna or something like that. I said, "Okay, just make yourself some tuna for breakfast." And he was already maybe about 12. So I just put the can there and I said, "Okay, just open it. I'm going to go back and get ready." And then I came back and he hadn't opened it. And I said, "What is wrong?" Just as the mother screaming, "Let's get out of the house."
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• And he says, "This can opener does not work for me." And that blew my mind because here I was, this designer who's so interested in accessibility and stuff like that, and I did not even know that the can opener was right-handed. And I knew about left-handed scissors, of course, but that kind of just brought home to me that idea that of people moving through this world that looks okay, but maybe it's not.
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• And of course, as a person of color, I know this, or as a woman, I know this. But I hadn't thought about it even on that level as a person who is left-handed. Or there are other oppressions or other scenarios that kind of keep people back. And so I just think that that's a skill that all of us as designers have to cultivate where we're learning to either ask questions, look, see, try to figure out where is it that people are somehow being held back, and then how... I mean to use the words that I just used, how, as designers, we could just design out that held backness.
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• Justin James Lopez:
• Yeah. I love so much of what you said because... And throughout this entire conversation, I'm so grateful for you to join a show, because one of the things that I think about is how that really kind of shows up where a lot of the times we can sometimes say, "Oh, I didn't know." And I like to replace that with, "I didn't consider."
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• Because I actually had this interaction recently that took me back where a friend of mine, we were just out having dinner, and he hadn't considered that I was left-handed until I picked up my fork. And he said, "Oh, you're left-handed." And I was like, "Yeah." And I remember him saying this so casually he said, "But you can probably..." Because we were getting ready to do a kickball thing. And he was like, "But you can probably kick with your right leg though, right?"
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• And I was like, "Yeah, I learned how to kick with my right leg." And it was so interesting because I didn't even think about it at that moment. And it was his immediate natural response of like, because we're so inclined to do what is normal for us. So everything that I learned from being ambidextrous to... Because I can write for the most part with both hands, and when it comes to baseball, I learned baseball and I learned how to bat with both sides, kickball, I learned how to kick with both sides. And I'm actually almost predominantly better with my right. And in my head, I always thought [inaudible 00:31:04] experience. So they say, "Well, just do it this way."
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• Lesley-Ann Noel:
• It was a survival mechanism for you.
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• And so on one hand, it is a good skill, I suppose, because it does show that you are resilient and you could figure things out. But sometimes it's not... I'll say in quotes, sometimes it's not so easy. Or if you think about things that the survival strategies that some people of color have to use, some of this is stressful for you to have to be switching all the time. So I don't know if it's the same level of stress for you to be switching between right hand and left hand, but really sometimes people could make life a little bit easier for you and for different people who are facing oppressions.
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• And really, that's the design question that I'm focused on right now. How can we just make this experience better, easier, more peaceful for people who the experience is not designed for? So people who are in the majority group, the dominant group, they'll always have a good experience. But really in the design work that I'm doing, that I do, and I have to say maybe that I do from time to time, because most of the design work that I do is teach, but some of the design consulting work that I do, I'm really always asking those questions.
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• Justin James Lopez:
• I love that because my brain naturally does that. My brain... And I mentioned this, I can sometimes be a contrarian, but the way that my brain processes information is to naturally question things that people think are absolute. Like when someone approaches me and goes, "This is a hundred percent the truth, the way it works." Even if it might be true, I go, you know what? I don't know.
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• Lesley-Ann Noel:
• No.
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• Justin James Lopez:
• Now I got to question this. Now I have to go do my independent research. I'm going to learn as much as I can about this topic, and then whether or not I prove it to be true or develop my own opinion on it, but my brain automatically, it just rejects some things just because other people think that they're true. And I realized that there's a whole cohort of people that do the opposite.
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• Lesley-Ann Noel:
• Yes. And so I will encourage your listeners to read the section, the recipe in the book where I talk about being intentionally oppositional, because really being a contrarian as you as you describe yourself is important. We do need people in the world who will ask these questions from a different point of view and will sometimes be intentionally oppositional to uncover things that the rest of us are not seeing.
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• And actually, so if we come back to my introduction, I didn't say in my introduction that I ask questions, right? And maybe that's part of my introduction. Actually, I'm also known for something called the designer's critical alphabet. And that alphabet was really about me just asking a lot of questions. And then as I asked the questions, I'd kind of write them down and create a card around it. So the designer's critical alphabet is about, it started off as being about critical theory and how this critical theory could apply to design. It kind of morphed and it isn't quite about critical theory anymore, but it was always about trying to get designers to ask more critical questions in the work that they do.
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• And I guess that's where I'm still professionally, that I want to ask questions. So you'll find some of the work that I'm involved in is about asking questions and trying to prompt people to think a little bit more deeply about the work that they're doing, about the experience of people who do design. You know, just ask a lot of questions.
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• Justin James Lopez
• Yeah, I think that that's definitely another layer for sure. And I think it's really important to some of the conversation that we've had earlier. And I guess to close this out, and I think that's a perfect segue here is, for individuals that are inspired by your work or will be, after they read all of your work, and they're looking themselves to use design as a tool for social change or for really like, kind of combating any of these types of systems, what advice would you offer to help them navigate both, I guess, the challenges and the opportunities in that space?
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• Lesley-Ann Noel
• So some of the challenges in creating social change, there are few of course, but you know, one challenge is one risk. Maybe it's, I don't know if it's a risk or a challenge, but sometimes we think that we can do nothing, or sometimes we think that we'll be less powerful or less impactful than the reality, you know. So, I guess one thing that I'd encourage people to do is do something, right? Figure out what is the thing you want to change or what is the issue that you've noticed and do something. So we were just talking about left handedness. The issue that we might notice is that left-handed people aren't well accommodated in, well, I teach them in the classroom.
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• So the first thing I could do is maybe I'll talk about it. Second thing I'll do is take a proposal to an administrator. Or you know, and we can always, the idea is that there is action that we can do on any level, right? If my thing is graphic design and I decide, you know what, I'm going to create a poster that makes people aware of this left-handedness exclusion issue, that's another something that I'm going to do. If I am going to go out and find 10 other people who are interested in the same cause and call them all together and say, hey, let's form a group, that's the action that I'll take. But you know, the one thing to do is to take action and make sure that you keep the momentum going, right? Did I answer your question? I'm not sure.
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• Justin James Lopez
• Yeah. You did, you did. No, I think that it was an open-ended question, right? Of just like, if people don't know where to start, and I think that that's like amazing. If you don't know where to start, get started. Like that's probably the best thing is like, analytical paralysis I think beats most people. And that it's really interesting because I think about this quite a bit of the fear of change and the fear of failure will defeat more ideas than adversity ever will. And I think that that's kind of what we're getting at here of like, well, you don't have to change the world to get started, but you have to get started to change the world. You kind of...
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• Lesley-Ann Noel
• Oh I love that! I want a T-shirt that says that!
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• Justin James Lopez
• Yeah, but, but Leslie and this has been absolutely amazing. Thank you again for joining us. I really enjoyed this and I like, I hope that we can continue to have this conversation.
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• Lesley-Ann Noel
• Yes, thank you so much for this invitation, Justin, and I look forward to other conversations in the future.