Nearly a decade ago, when I was actively facilitating design thinking workshops, I would always resort to a trusted empathy exercise: Drawing Each Other.

The premise was simple. Grab a sheet of paper and pen. Find a partner. Look them in their face and then draw what you see…but without lifting your pencil or looking at your paper.

I did this exercise countless times and the results were always quite riveting. Smile and laughs abounded as people showed each other silly depictions of one another.

Each time I thought myself, “Wow, this really helps participants build vulnerability and empathy with each other.”

I eventually stopped running the exercise because I stopped facilitating design thinking workshops (that’s a story for another day!). But an exchange with a Black female facilitator several years ago changed my entire view of the exercise.

We were talking about creative exercises for a session and, as I proposed Drawing Each Other, she said “No way, we’re not doing that.”

I was a bit surprised. But her reasoning was eye-opening. She said that, as a Black woman, she hadn’t felt comfortable participating in this sort of exercise in the past. She didn’t like having white peers dissect her face and exaggerate her features on paper. She didn’t want to subject folks of color in the session to that.

And that’s where I had my a-ha moment. I immediately made the connection to racial stereotypes and misogynoir (the intersection of racism and sexism). History has shown us time and time again how Black people — and Black women in particular — are mistreated and dehumanized as caricatures in art and illustration:

It got me thinking about all the other ways that this “fun” and “innocuous” drawing exercise could contribute to exclusion, discomfort, and distress for those on the margins: for autistic folks who may struggle to maintain eye contact, people with hand tremors, amputees, blind people, those with facial disfigurements, those with insecurities relating to their physical appearance, introverted folks, and so forth.

And what is this exercise commonly called? “Blind drawing” (oh dear).

You may not always be aware of the possible or actual harms of your exercises, especially for marginalized folks. But you can be better prepared to prevent some of them.

Here are a few concrete things you can do:

p.s. I teach the practice of discernment of oppressive patterns in The Grove: Foundations of Design Changemaking if you want to dive deeper!

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