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Is diversity a problem in the design industry?

Fabricio Teixeira
UX Collective
Published in
7 min readApr 5, 2017

This post is part of the journey of the team at uxdesign.cc on learning more about Diversity and Design — and sharing what they learn along the way.

rep·re·sen·ta·ti·ve·ness: the level of how well or how accurately something reflects upon a sample; the state or quality of being accurately representative of something.

Look around you while you read this: do you honestly think your team is as diverse as it could be, or do you sometimes feel like you work in a bubble?

Finding the root of the problem

“The truth of the matter is that graphic design can be a fairly expensive profession to break into, and many minorities may be priced out of entering into this industry based on that fact. The hardware and software cost are staggering, even more so if you want to leverage the credibility of being a graphic designer who uses Mac hardware.”

You are part of the problem, too

When you refer a friend to a job position — someone you went to school with, or someone from the same social circle as you — you are contributing to the lack of diversity in your team.

We still have work to do

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Responses (6)

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The topic concerning diversity and inclusion, in my opinion, goes beyond ethnicity.
Introverts vs. extroverts. Culturally westernized vs. not westernized. Talks in a certain way vs. does not talk in that certain way. Loves VR for reasons vs. not so…

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It is a reality and it is such a complex problem: it includes socio-economics, ethnicity, location, language, school status, protectionism, cultural background and even your name.
Having worked in many cities around North America and recently having…

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Just curious, what are the diversity numbers at R/GA?

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