Diversity in design: what can I do as a designer, today?
As we wrap up our journey through Diversity & Design, a few points start to become clear: the actions we can take, today, to influence the direction our industry is headed and to allow for more diverse and inclusive work environments.
ac·tion: the fact or process of doing something, typically to achieve an aim; a thing done; an act.
As part of our series of stories about Diversity and Design, we have explored a number of different perspectives on how diversity can affect companies, individuals, and the work that we put out in the world.
The question now becomes: what can I do today, as a designer, to contribute to a more diverse industry and to a more inclusive work environment?
With our series coming to an end, I wanted to start a recap of all the things we have learned throughout this journey — and how to start acting on some of these things right away.
Well, here are a few suggestions from our authors.
As an individual
- Stop hiring your friends. When you refer a friend to a job opening in your company, you are encouraging your company’s leadership to hire someone who is very likely to share a similar vision, a similar way of thinking, and even a similar design process than you. What we do not realize is how this makes it harder for people outside that demographic or social circle to have access to that same position. They start the process in disadvantage.
- Welcome ideas different than your own. The creativity that comes with diversity can help you generate new ideas or improve a process already in place. It can also make work more interesting, engaging, and fun. When you hear an idea that sounds strange and different than what you are used to hearing, give it some time before deciding judging whether it is a good idea or not.
- Consider becoming a mentor. Mentorship requires a commitment of time, but represent a valuable opportunity for personal and professional development. If you choose to do so, pick someone with a very different background to mentor — from a different city, nationality, cultural background, gender, age range, race. There’s a big chance you will learn a lot from that person as well.
- Stand up if you see or experience discrimination. Don’t stay silent, and don’t let the incident slide. Remember that discrimination can happen in the most subtle comments (e.g. when someone suggests women might have more difficulty to understand a complex technology; when someone judges a person’s understanding of a topic based on their accent and pronunciation of words). Raise your hand, offer a different point of view, and invite people to think from a different angle — you don’t need to be combative when you do that.
- Point out the strengths in others. Help your co-workers appreciate how every person has a different strength and how that strength represents an opportunity to grow and be more productive. This takes very little effort and time.
- Pay attention to the diversity of each and every group. When you are joining a design conference, for example, pay attention to how balanced and diverse the audience is. Same thing in meetings, presentations, training sessions, workshops. If you feel the group is too homogeneous, talk to the organizers about shifting a few participants or inviting others; the more opinions, the more variety, and the more diversity we bring to the table, the more we can unchain our creativity.
- Connect with your team. Hear what they have to say. In his story about celebrating differences, Timothy J. Hykes tells us how his boss allows him to tell his issues in secret and executes what he’s said to him. “That’s powerful. He speaks up for me without soloing me out. That allows me to jump in to bring confirmation to the conversations.”
In your company
- Push for clear diversity goals and vision. Understand how these goals connect to the overall business objectives, and hold your leaders accountable for meeting those goals. Commit to the process by understanding how diversity impacts your role, and how your role impacts the success of the company’s diversity initiatives.
- Reduce bias from your recruitment process. In his story about the topic, @Puppybits proposes the “blind audition” model, where candidates are evaluated primarily by what they are able to produce, and not by what they look like or how they talk. Even the wording in job descriptions can deter highly qualified candidates from applying for jobs. Every single detail of your recruitment process matters.
- Create role models within your organization. “Celebrating creates heroes and role models that other people can look up to. It marks someone as the individual to beat or a goal that’s attainable.”, explains Timothy J. Hykes in his article for our series. What does your company’s leadership board look like? Do your employees have someone to look up to, that they can culturally identify with?
- Promote and hire on potential, not on proof. In her story about intentionality in diversity, Kelli Robertson describes how she was lucky enough to have a strong champion earlier in her career who saw her potential after 2 years and promoted her to Director of Strategy. “Shortly after this happened, I was told by a peer that, ‘I wouldn’t have given you that promotion. I would have told you it was yours if you worked hard for it this year.’” Kelli argues that while women are hired and promoted based on proof of performance and achievement, men are hired and promoted based on their potential.
- Involve majority-group members in minority efforts. Increasing representation is not a “women’s issue” or “person of color’s issue”. You won’t move the needle in your organization until diversity initiatives become everyone’s business. In the matter of gender equality, for example, men can play an extremely important role in enabling change.
- Implement flexible work-life policies. While many companies have flexible work policies on the books, employees are often stigmatized if they utilize such policies. Look into your company’s performance evaluation and promotion processes and make sure these flexible policies are not penalizing employees who rely on them to achieve better work-life balance.
In the work you create
- Redefine what is “normal”. We have been conditioned toward homogeneity and non-diversity over the decades by media, pop culture, and its lack of diversity in TV, movies, magazines and books. As designers, we are putting work out in the world that can better represent a “new type of normal”.
- Redefine masculine and feminine. Similarly, the work we do as designers can help redefine the role of masculine and feminine in society. Stop designing pink profile pages for women. Stop making your cooking app look delicate. Stop using bro-language on game and sports websites. Use every opportunity you have to redefine and redesign gender stereotypes.
- Build accessible experiences. Adhithya brings up a great point in his article about accessibility and inclusion: the products we work on are designed with the perceived majority of our users in mind (users who do not experience any difficulty in using a web or mobile application). In many cases, there is very little thought that is put into designing components for most products that work for almost any user — be it someone who has a broken hand, someone who’s hard of hearing, or someone who has visual impairments. Focus on meeting accessibility standards immediately means more inclusive experiences.
- Remove bias from your design process. It can all start with a post-it in your desk remembering you to question your bias in every step of your process — points out Caio Braga in his article about more inclusive design. But thinking beyond that, and in more tangible ways: does your persona need an age and gender or is it just a biased stereotype that you are reinforcing? Are you bringing people from different disciplines to your brainstorm sessions? Are you doing enough user research — and when you do so, are you bringing a diverse group of people to test your product?
- Put yourself in their shoes. Here’s Sabrina Fonseca’s suggestion in her article about gender and identity: imagine non-conformative people having to fill out a form that asks them about their gender in a binary way, forcing them to select either “masculine” or “feminine”. Maybe their attitudes and clothes don’t fit the conventions of either traditional gender distinction. They may have changed their bodies, the gender designation in their ID, their name. Their state of mind on any given day may affect their sense of gender. Maybe it’s a combination of some of the above, or something else. Your product’s signup form may be a hurtful reminder for them of how their journey is not reflected in the world.
See you in the next story.