Be conscious of your implicit biases of other cultures

Everyone has cultural lenses. Our culture affects how we perceive the world. For Americans, eating insects is considered gross or yucky. However, communities in Africa and South America consider it a delicacy or a customary food source. As a designer and writer, you need to be conscious of your implicit biases of other cultures because implicit biases can impact your research.

Web and product designers for decades westernized their audience personas (read takeaway in Design for Emotion section to learn more about personas). In other words, pre-established personas don’t account for users originating from non-western cultures. These assumptions occur because our “lazy brain” will fill in the gaps of a narrative with preconceptions. Often our “lazy brains” fall to the deficit-framing bias, which is when we define people by their shortcomings. 

We can’t turn off our brains to avoid assumptions, but we can rewire them by changing our mindsets. For deficit framing, you need to rewire your brain for asset framing, which is when we identify positive truths about our audience and focus on our audience’s agency. When viewing a different culture that is your target audience, ask yourself, “How do they overcome challenges by using their ingenuity, community organizing, and power?” The words ingenuity, community organizing, and power have positive connotations (usually). They will shift your perspective of viewing another culture as worthy of respect instead of inferiority.