How to be a Diversity & Inclusion activist as a designer
By: Xindeling Pan
Tags: Design, Accessibility, Inclusion, Design Operations, Diversity

In fact, this study found that demographic information can have the least impact on design compared with psychographic or behavioral data. In other words, understanding the different pain points between new and experienced financial advisors will bring more value than just being aware of their gender.

When building a persona, we should focus on capturing information that will be directly relevant to the problem we’re solving, such as pain points and user needs. When the persona’s demographics don’t matter to the solution, let’s challenge the bias and be inclusive in our selection of persona image and name. Make sure to choose diverse photos and give them names that represent various ethnicities and nationalities.

4. Optimize content to a language that speaks to everyone

Communication is not just what you say, but also how you say it and how it’s heard. We should be mindful of the words and copy we used in our designs, from the way it’s written & spoken to the actual content itself. While maintaining the brand identity, consider using more standard and plain language, so that you are able to communicate effectively with more people.

I recalled a lively discussion at work one day when we were trying to find a non-American centric term for “home runs” to describe an easy-to-implement and high-impact idea that falls onto the upper right quadrant of a prioritization matrix. The term didn’t resonate with 6 international workshop participants whose first languages were not English. In the end, we settled on alternatives like “obvious choices”, which everyone could understand.

Avoiding idioms, jargons, and acronyms is one approach to internationalize and localize content inclusively. Optimization also involves accommodating the right-to-left reading pattern. And don’t forget to apply multi-language support to all communication channels, you wouldn’t want French-speaking customers to receive a welcome email in English once signed up for a service.

In a world where almost everyone can connect through the internet, you never know where (location and traffic channel) your next customers may come from. Even between US and UK English, you will want to translate “fries” to “chips.”

In addition to being concise and clear when delivering a message, it’s also important to avoid bias in the language. Here are some watch-outs:

Avoid sexist language, including gender biased use of pronouns (he, she, etc) and nouns (use firefighter instead of fireman)

Challenge ageist labels, use “older adult” rather than “senior citizen”, or simply say “people”

Give gender-neutral names to virtual assistants (Siri and Alexa reinforce gender bias)

Offer choices when it comes to select voices for virtual assistants (e.g. Google Assistant is a gender-neutral name, but the default voice is female)

Use gender-neutral phrases in virtual assistants’ responses, including chatbots. Unless the gender is specified

The Department of Diversity Initiatives at The University of South Carolina has a practical guide on areas to focus on and be aware of when writing/speaking.

5. Make Diversity & Inclusion part of all design critique criteria

To ensure that D&I is included in the product development lifecycle in a sustainable way, we should begin adding D&I to business requirements, design critique criteria, and quality assurance (QA) testing. When a design language system exists, consider adding inclusivity as one of the design principles, to encourage practicing D&I in design.

Start giving feedback against D&I during design reviews, and make sure people of diverse backgrounds are in the room when discussing it. Be open and respectful of each other’s opinion both as the provider or recipient of feedback. Create an environment that encourages quiet individuals to share their opinions. Our designs will become more inclusive only when we start to critique and come up with ideas to improve them together.

Paciello Group drafted some amazing Inclusive Design Principles that can be used as the baseline to give constructive feedback regarding D&I. In short, those principles are:

Provide comparable experience

Consider situation

Be consistent

Give control

Offer choice

Prioritize content

Add value

Another helpful resource is the project Empathy Prompts. It generates prompts for digital creators to consider when building products for others to use.

6. Question assumptions and fight bias

We are not our users. This is a mindset that we need to keep reinforcing.

It’s human nature to make assumptions in order to move things forward. And we tend to rationalize the assumptions, expecting them to be true. However, those assumptions may not always make sense.

As designers, I think we do a good job of commenting on user behaviors — for example, we usually ask if users need to see all the information displayed on the dashboard. But we rarely question a familiar design pattern that could be interpreted differently due to culture or background differences.

When designing an education grading tool, don’t assume everyone will understand a checkmark means correct, because it actually means “incorrect” in Japanese culture. It may be that we don’t have enough knowledge to ask these types of questions, but that is all the more reason why we need a diverse team in the first place.

“We can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness” — Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, fast & slow

Danieel Kahneman, psychologist and corecipient of the Nobel Prize for Economics, tells us that cognitive illusion, or a thinking trap is not easy to overcome, and neither is bias. That’s how our brain is designed to operate. It automatically generates this illusion as a result of our understanding and assumptions of the world.

If I were to ask you to draw a scientist, what would that person look like?

Sketch from a Draw-a-scientist study (Vasila Christidou)

The famous Draw-a-Scientist test tells us only 0.6% of the kids who were asked to draw a scientist drew a female scientist in the original study published in 1983. The number looks better from the 1980s onwards, 28% on average. This is just one of the gender biases we have to continue to fight.

We should keep challenging our assumptions throughout the design process and fight against the cognitive bias, unconscious bias in particular, that causes us to make irrational judgments and decisions. Alicia Salvino argues that we can overcome and take advantage of cognitive bias by first understanding what bias does and then controlling the context to ensure the bias’ effect is well-contained.

7. Design for accessibility

“Accessibility is the measurable implementation of inclusive design”, writes Jessica Ivins, UX Designer & Educator. To achieve inclusive design, we create accessible content through different techniques and tools.

We should think about color contrast, font size, keyboard and so many other facets of creating accessible content. The IBM Equal Access Toolkit provides thorough guidelines — from planning, to designing, to developing for accessibility. I once spent an intense week fixing accessibility issues in an application because of potential lawsuits, so it’s very encouraging that this topic is now a priority, rather than a nice-to-have item, in many organizations.

When designing for digital products, in particular, we should go beyond just enabling people who have hearing, visual, motor, or cognitive impairments to access. As Mozilla defines it, we should also think about other groups such as those using mobile devices, or those with slow network connections.

“Solve for one, extend to many” — Microsoft Inclusive Design Manual

8. Ensure visual assets represent diversity

Artwork should be free spirited, created without any boundaries. However, when creating visual assets for products that serve people, inclusivity should be a given.

Representation matters. I’m sure many girls are considering possibilities in politics as a result of Kamala Harris becoming vice president-elect this November. Back to the Draw-a-Scientist test mentioned in the Question Assumptions section, children’s stereotypes associating science with men have weakened over time in the US, consistent with increases in women’s representation in science.