Basecamp Banning Political Talk at Work Will Create Bad Human-Centered Design

All software companies should be a human-centered design companies.

April 2021, Basecamp announced some company changes through their blog that sparked outrage. 15 years ago Basecamp made a similar announcement stating the company no longer needs user testing or feedback because they were confident in their direction. This type of thinking is commonly known as the genius complex. A famous example is Steve Jobs. The genius complex is the belief that research isn’t needed to back up design ideology. It is the confidence of understanding the user's wants and needs. Curating editorial decisions is always valuable when done right. This being said, you won’t always be right. As history repeats itself, Jason Fried raised eyebrows with a list of new policies that limit Basecamp’s designer's ability to create better solutions.

1. No more societal and political discussions on our company Basecamp account.

-Jason Fried, Basecamp Blog

Human-centered designers build things in service to humans who make up society. Society is inherently political. You cannot tease these things apart.
Ironically enough, through this statement, Jason Fried made a political stance. Anytime power dynamics are involved it is politics. Basecamp’s changes centralized power at the top and shut down conversation from any voices that might question this power. Fried can only say these changes are useful if society and politics don’t affect him every second of every day. This means he is benefitting from the status quote.

Through these policies, Basecamp’s leaders are saying the human experience and context don’t matter. Both are ethical and empathic burdens in the field of design.

Different voices can open up new modes of thinking. If this perspective is closed off you’re only designing for yourself. A good human-centered designer uses other perspectives to understand and validate opinions. This is important because today there are so many experts who can communicate their ideas effectively. That so, we should never stop questioning what’s prescribed to us and feel empowered to ask questions to validate ideas.

A designer's job isn’t to make beautiful things it’s to investigate the world to create solutions. Regardless of the company or product, human-centered design has a responsibility to amplify many different voices to create the most universal solution possible. Absorb then distill this information. Just understanding this information can create a lightbulb moment from simply understanding the context of why. It’s a designer's job to have those hard conversations. If it’s hard it’s probably because you're doing it right.