As one of Inklusiiv’s partners, we at Frantic felt it was only natural to team up and share our thoughts on some of the different aspects of inclusivity when it comes to designing products and services for the masses.
We loved every minute of the journey of creating this event, from planning during the summer to writing our talks to finally broadcasting to an online audience, and we hope it shows through.
The online event was hosted by our Service Design Lead Liisa Benmergui, with a series of lightning talks from Director of Strategy Michael Dlugosch, Design Director Emma Laiho, and Content Lead Piia Jalonen.
After our speakers shared their perspectives, the second half of the event was a lively panel Q&A with great questions supplied by our engaged audience.
The full event recording is available on YouTube: https://youtu.be/rMG-aF0hHy8
We’ve added timestamps to the description of the video, so you can navigate to the parts you’re most interested in.
Here is a round-up of the thoughts shared by our speakers with respective links to their talks.
Reframing inclusivity problems
We started the day off with Michael Dlugosch’s talk that actually reversed things as he looked at the mechanics of exclusion. When we think about inclusive designs, we tend to think about invariants, like identities or personas. When we instead focus on the mechanics of exclusion, we get a more nuanced approach that can produce better design results for everyone.
See Michael’s talk here: https://youtu.be/rMG-aF0hHy8?t=615
Bias in user research
With a primer on how to reframe challenges through the exclusion lens, we moved on to confronting our own biases. Emma Laiho took a look at how to keep our biases at bay with her talk on user research and its influence on inclusivity in the design process. Emma’s central point hinged upon the fact that there is no such thing as neutral design. The designer always brings her own bias to the table. The only way to step out of our own experience is through user research, but even that has some pitfalls.
Skip to Emma’s talk: https://youtu.be/rMG-aF0hHy8?t=1237
Designing with words
And finally, before we had our great Q&A session with the audience, we rounded off our trio of talks with Piia Jalonen exploring language and the power that a designer can wield with the words that they choose to use. In her talk on language awareness and the power of words in designs, Piia asks how can we keep our audience in mind when writing for user interfaces, and ensure our content isn’t shutting anyone out?
See Piia’s talk: https://youtu.be/rMG-aF0hHy8?t=1981
And finally, check out the Q&A session: https://youtu.be/rMG-aF0hHy8?t=2625
Stay tuned for more
Inspired by the event and the insightful questions from the audience, we will be publishing a series of blog posts on the theme of inclusivity, opening up the day’s topics in more detail.
If you’re interested in some of our previous live event recordings on user research, UX writing, and more, you can find those on our Webinar series page.
And finally, if you want to talk more about inclusivity in the design of digital services and products in the context of your own organization, drop us a message and we’re happy to continue the talks!
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