We all want a world where everyone has equal access to digital information, just as we want all online experiences to be equitable. UX has a critical role in making that future possible. Many in the UX space reiterate that “knowing your audience” is paramount to developing great user experience, and that empathy is the cornerstone of UX. But in a world where profits often matter more than people, how can we personally build a nuanced understanding of inclusive design and get our teams to commit to it?
Join Bronwen Rees, Author and Lead Product Designer at Xero, for a conversation that digs deeper than the recycled buzzwords. This session will cover:
• What inclusive design is, and why it's important
• What biases are and how to avoid them
• Ways to practice inclusivity within design
• What you can do on both an individual level and a community level to promote inclusion
How Product Managers Can Shape Inclusive Futures with UX
1. By Bronwen Rees | bronwenrees.com
How product management
can shape inclusive futures
with UX?
Strategies for rolling out inclusive
design initiatives within your
organisation
2. By Bronwen Rees | bronwenrees.com
Lead Product Designer (Mobile), Xero
Designer and speaker for digital
inclusion and accessibility
3. By Bronwen Rees | bronwenrees.com
The product design process is a bit f***ed.
Most of us want a world where everyone has equal access
to digital information and the experiences to be equitable.
But in a world where money often matters more than people,
how do we get our teams, our stakeholders or our organisations
to commit to inclusive design practices?
4. By Bronwen Rees | bronwenrees.com
Why now?
Because we are diverse!
Of the global
population is
neurodiverse
20% Americans have
a disability of
some kind
1/5 Of all marriages
are interracial
in the US
19%
5. By Bronwen Rees | bronwenrees.com
But… Inclusive design is not about designing
one product to address all needs.
Instead…
• Develop multiple products or solutions.
• Reducing the level of ability required
to use each experience.
25%
Severe di
ffi
culties
35%
Mild di
ffi
culties
16%
Minimal di
ffi
culties
21%
No di
ffi
culties
We can no longer design for what we consider
the ‘majority’ we should design for all.
6. By Bronwen Rees | bronwenrees.com
Definition of inclusive design
Inclusive design focuses on the diversity of people
and the impact of this on design.
Inclusive design ensures that places and experiences
are open to all people, regardless of their age, ability
and background.
7. By Bronwen Rees | bronwenrees.com
However, you may hear (or think)...
• Inclusive design takes time and is expensive.
• Inclusive design doesn’t bene
fi
t enough people.
• Inclusive design isn’t about me.
• Inclusive design prevents creativity.
• The Inclusive design process is too hard.
8. By Bronwen Rees | bronwenrees.com
Inclusive design has
everything to do with
you and your biases.
9. By Bronwen Rees | bronwenrees.com
Bias is disproportionate weight in favour for or against a thing,
person, or group compared with another, usually in a way
considered to be unfair.
Self correction against unconscious bias takes a lot of work
But learning about bias in order to recognise them in your
day-to-day is a great
fi
rst step.
10. By Bronwen Rees | bronwenrees.com
Con
fi
rmation Bias
Is a cognitive bias where a person consciously or subconsciously collects evidence
in order to support their hypothesis.
In product this can happen when there is pressure to do quick research, under
pressure we unconsciously give more weight to data that a
ffi
rms our existing
beliefs.
Or we minimise
fi
ndings that are contradictory to our beliefs, because
it’s easier to work o
ff
what we already know.
How to mitigate it:
• Research with a diverse set of participants.
• Avoid asking leading questions.
• Set yourself a goal to invalidate your hypotheses
• Recognise when ego is in
fl
uencing your work.
11. By Bronwen Rees | bronwenrees.com
Optimistic Bias
This is the tendency to minimise the possibility of negative outcomes. As a result
of optimistic bias, teams often skip user engagement, ignore accessibility, disregard
inclusive language, reinforce stereotypes, and launch products that don't adequately
represent the users.
We optimistically think that overlooking socially responsible design measures will not
adversely e
ff
ect the customer experience.
How to mitigate it:
• Play the role of the dissenter - what could go wrong?
• Make sure user research, accessibility and content design is part of your
de
fi
ntion of done
12. By Bronwen Rees | bronwenrees.com
False-consensus Bias
Is the assumption that other people think and behave the same as us. Jakob Nielsen
coined the phrase, "you are not the user," which is derived from this bias.
False-consensus bias can lead us to believe that we can rely on our own experiences
and preferences when making decisions. The reality is though, most of our users are
not like us.
How to mitigate it:
• Consider intersectionality* at every step of the process.
*Intersectionality highlights that humans have a varied mix of identities which uniquely changes our experiences.
13. By Bronwen Rees | bronwenrees.com
Perception Bias
This bias gets in the way of being objective about others. Perception bias occurs when
we depend on stereotypes and assumptions we have about various people or groups.
How to mitigate it:
• Contextual user interviews provides true insight into our user’s lives.
• Interview a diverse pool of users
• Recruit a diverse team that represents your users
14. By Bronwen Rees | bronwenrees.com
Status Quo Bias
This refers to the tendency to prefer how things are and resist change. We perceive
familiar practices as ideal and consider any deterrence from that as a loss, even if
change would result in better outcomes.
When we hear the phrase, "people don't like change," this is the bias at play.
Change is viewed as a risk, as it requires us to leave our comfort zone.
How to mitigate it:
• Get input from diverse perspectives for opportunities to be innovative.
• Interrogate what segments of the audience might designs be excluding
and how much reliance on stereotypes there is in decisions.
15. By Bronwen Rees | bronwenrees.com
Inclusive design
is good for product
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Once you understand your biases, the next step in in
fl
uencing
a change a process and to do this we need to understand
why inclusive design is important.
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Inclusive design sparks innovation
The more we’re pushed to think outside of the box, the more
innovative we can be.
Designing for inclusion means asking questions in an e
ff
ort to push
the boundaries and pave the way for a future where no user gets
left behind.
Diversity and inclusion has always been
the core of innovation. If innovation is
about taking two ideas that are different
and overlaying them...
...the more you do that, the more
opportunities there are for innovation
and the more creativity there is.
By Benjamin Evans, Airbnb
18. By Bronwen Rees | bronwenrees.com
How to… leave no user behind
Assess a product’s innovation and inclusivity against The Universal Score.
Test your product against mental wellbeing, belonging, physical needs,
neurodiversity and putting people
fi
rst… and discover new ideas.
19. By Bronwen Rees | bronwenrees.com
Inclusive design saves time and money
Businesses waste time and money trying to retro
fi
t the inclusive
design process or it’s simply seen as a tick of a box at the end
of a project.
As a result, there is often a need to redesign or rebuild because
due to new undiscovered needs.
By implementing inclusive design practices at the start and
throughout the process you ensure you’re meeting all user
needs from the very beginning.
Inclusive design can drive your pro
fi
ts
up by nearly 50%. When educating your
team about inclusivity and accessibility,
you’re not just giving them new skills to
raise productivity, you’re optimising their
work
fl
ow for the long run and fostering
a healthier team culture.
By Tech Crunch (July 2021)
20. By Bronwen Rees | bronwenrees.com
How to… implement inclusive design processes
Continue to use proven UX approaches or inclusive design frameworks,
like conducting research, utilising relevant personas, empathy mapping,
outlining use cases, and iterative testing.
Enlist outside help. Bring in expertise or use outside
services for accessibility evaluations, code reviews,
or user testing.
21. By Bronwen Rees | bronwenrees.com
Inclusive design is good for people and business.
By understanding, and addressing the diversity of your users, the more
satis
fi
ed they will be and the more likely to return.
By not thinking about inclusion, organisations consciously exclude
customers. Exclusion customers leads to reduced market share.
Meeting more user needs leads to a broader appeal and addresses
more markets.
Five million Australians are unable to
access products and services because
of poor design, yet they possess over
$40 billion in annual disposable income.
The Bene
fi
t of Designing for Everyone
by Centre of Inclusive Design
22. By Bronwen Rees | bronwenrees.com
How to… address diverse user needs
Recruit, collaborate and test with diverse users to better understand
the challenges and opportunities.
Build diversi
fi
ed teams whose di
ff
erent identities, perspectives,
and experiences will in
fl
uence designs.
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Inclusive design
can’t be done alone
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Finally you can be the advocate but you can’t do it alone.
Once you understand the value inclusive design can bring,
work with others and make your voice heard.
25. By Bronwen Rees | bronwenrees.com
Make it part of the roadmap
Inclusive design needs be part of the product roadmap, and
elevated.
It can be hard to bring in at a roadmap level so pair it with accessibility.
However inclusive design speaks to earlier phases of a project,
like discovery whereas accessibility is often an outcome of inclusive
design, pitch it that way.
26. By Bronwen Rees | bronwenrees.com
Getting executive buy in
A successful inclusive design process is almost impossible
to create without executive buy in.
How to get buy in:
• Connect inclusive design to the company’s strategy
• Connect inclusive design to the company’s culture
• Communicate the business case clearly
• Draw from research to prove it worth
• Show how you will measure success
• Bring in an expert
Trying to run an inclusive
design process without
executive support is the
de
fi
nition of an exercise
in futility.
By Sheri Byrne-Haber, CPACC
27. By Bronwen Rees | bronwenrees.com
Ownership and governance
There needs to be level of ownership, it can sit with a few teams
but work out what is best for you organisation.
That team should also be given governance, someone needs to
have the authority to stop a release from going public if they feel
the project does not meet the need of a diverse user base.
28. By Bronwen Rees | bronwenrees.com
Make it part of the organisation
Inclusive design and inclusion needs to be considered in all
parts of the organisational journey. It’s not enough to be
just implementing inclusive design within a product.
• Social media
• Corporate websites
• Internal tools/comms
• Hiring processes (let’s stop hiring our friends)
• Team and organisation values
When the walls of exclusion
come tumbling down,
everyone bene
fi
ts.
By Angela Glover Blackwell
29. By Bronwen Rees | bronwenrees.com
Empower the team with training
Train and keep inclusive design skills current. Invest in your team
and give them adequate training and the con
fi
dence to practice
their skills.
Provide them with tools to make them successful
• Access to diverse testers
• Inclusive personas
• Inclusive design product frameworks
• Training speci
fi
cally on inclusive facilitation
30. By Bronwen Rees | bronwenrees.com
Conclusion
• Inclusive design focuses on the diversity of people and the impact of this on design.
• Start by recognising bias and how to avoid them
• Inclusive design has many bene
fi
ts both for product and people
• Inclusive design can’t be done alone, get a team of diverse people to support your mission
31. By Bronwen Rees | bronwenrees.com
Any questions or enquiries reach out
to me at bronwen.rees@gmail.com
Thank you