3 Amazing resources to help you design for diversity and inclusion
As the father of two black boys I’m acutely aware that design decisions often exclude people of color. When I put a Bandaid on a boo boo, it’s the color of a white person. When I put sunblock on my boys, the zinc in it turns their dark skin purple. When we watch movies, read books, or play video games we see white protagonists. If you’re a person of color, a lifetime of rarely seeing your reflection in pop culture creates a damaging narrative: you’re on the outside. You’re unseen.
All of these products have exclusion built in. Someone made a design decision to not ask the essential question: Who are we leaving out? These design decisions are hurtful, not just to those who feel unseen, but for the businesses who make them as they’re only addressing a fraction of the total addressable market.
Designing for diversity and inclusion isn’t that hard. First, we need to see the that bias slips into our design decisions. Then we can bring frameworks and tools into the design process that will help us see where we can be more inclusive.
The following resources will help you tune in and design inclusively.
A framework for designing for diversity from Project Inkblot
Jahan Mantin and Boyuan Gao, co-founders of Project Inkblot, have created a practical framework for designing for diversity with 4 key questions you and your team can ask to draw attention to where your process is falling short.
The first question, “What’s the worst-case scenario, and on whom?”, is an important one as it helps us see potential gaps between good intentions and the actual impact on people and communities.
“One way to slow down your process, and break through the first layer of bias, is to ask the brainstorming question: what’s the worst case scenario, and on whom?
This exercise begins to illuminate who and what we may not be thinking about, as it relates to the impact of your work. We cannot predict the future, but using this question is a great way to start expanding your thinking. Building a cadence of returning to this core question at different stages of a project is important, because it helps you get in the habit of proactively analyzing the potential impact of your work, and over time, realigns your brain to a different way of thinking.”
Mantin and Gao point out that most people think of their impact as their intention, but these two things are very different. Here’s how:
Intention is personal to you and your team, and what you hope to achieve.
Impact is how what you make is lived and experienced in the real world in actual communities.
Matter-mind Studio: A toolkit for emotion-centered design
Matter-mind studio, a research collective that investigates people’s emotional needs, have created a collection of thoughtful research methodologies that can help teams better understand the emotional state of customers. While their framework can be applied to a wide variety of emotional situations, it can be helpful when trying to better understand the perspectives of any under represented group. As we see into the emotions of others, we start to gain perspective on how to serve their needs and think inclusively.
Read matter-mind studio's lookbook for emotion-centered design
Microsoft: Inclusive design toolkit
Microsoft have created an amazing set of guides that draw our attention to the full range of human diversity. It helps us see from many perspectives related to abilities, identities, and situations.
Their guides show us that designing for inclusivity not only opens up our products and services to more people, it also reflects how people really are. All humans grow and adapt to the world around them and our designs should reflect that.
I love how their toolkit puts people in the center from the very start of the design process, and those fresh, diverse perspectives we get become the key to true insight.
“Exclusion happens when we solve problems using our own biases. As Microsoft designers, we seek out those exclusions, and use them as opportunities to create new ideas and inclusive designs.”
What resources are missing from this list? Let me know.
Interested in learning more about designing for inclusion and diversity? Check out the new edition of my book Designing for Emotion from A Book Apart.