Name: Brainstorm Design 2019: How Inclusion Shapes Design
Uploaded: 2019-03-06
Duration: 13 min 5 s
Description: Kat Holmes, author of 'Mismatch: How Inclusion Shapes Design,' and Director of UX Design for Google, presents on stage at Fortune's Brainstorm Design in Singapore.

I thought today we could do a little crash course introduction to inclusive design in real time. And maybe more specifically, how practicing inclusive design shapes us as leaders, designers, engineers as we practice it in the world. Now my own path to inclusive design was kind of unconventional and I had an opportunity to have this conversation in depth with a really broad range of companies. First building the practice while at Microsoft, and then in my own practice at my own business, consulting with many different companies from Facebook, Pinterest, Scholastic, Mattel, and more, and then most recently at Google. And along the way, the one thing is consistent is the word inclusion means may different things to many different people. And I was invited to write a book on this topic. And in doing so I had to examine whether or not I really understood what the word meant. And in doing that I looked at the root word which is [ INAUDIBLE ] which is Latin for to shut. So exclude is literally to shut out and include is to shut in. They started to wonder if maybe there was something about this mental model of being shut in and shut out that was even limiting the way that we think about inclusions and solutions associated with it. What's the goal of inclusion in this kind of a model? Is it, if you're on the out group to break inside the circle and gain access to the resources inside? Or if you're in the in- group, to open the circle up, and magnanimously invite people to come and share in those resources. Or to get rid of the circle altogether, and make it some kind of free- state utopia. I started to wonder if maybe the nature of the circle itself, and the way it shows up in our designs, was maybe one of the core problems. Which manifests in many ways in our world. One example of many overpasses outside of Manhattan that gate areas like the Long Island Expressway, and the underside of this was built in the 1930s is seven feet, seven inches high, which is just low enough that a public bus can't travel underneath it. Now at the time these were built, public transportation was a primary mode of transit for African American working class families and people of low income. So it, in fact, created a physical barrier to accessing the parks and beaches on the other side. These kinds of barriers manifest in many ways today still. Around the world over 70 % of websites don't meet basic accessibility criteria, legal criteria. And this is creating a barrier to the internet for millions of people. Now the moment this started to unlock my thinking about this shut and shut out model was when I read the World Health Organization's definition of disability, which in 2001 was dramatically redefined as a mismatch to interaction between the features of a person's body and the features of the environment in which they live. And the shift in thinking from disability as a personal health condition, to instead, as a mismatched interaction. Squarely placed the responsibility upon me and my colleagues to examine each of our choices, as we were building solutions, to see how they were either increasing or decreasing those mismatches for people. And started to think about the nature of those mismatches, and how they actually lead up, over time These building blocks of exclusion and the ways that they show up in the world. So, I wanted to understand more, how did these mismatches show up in the first place? One of the biggest culprits is what I've come to call ability biases, which is when we design or solve problems that we ourselves can see, hear, touch. It matches the way we move or learn or solve problems in the world. And what happens is solutions end up working well for people with similar abilities or preferences, but can end up excluding a much broader group of people. So, one example of this in practice, I've traveled a lot, spent a lot of time in public restaurants and airports and as an example. So, this is a toilet, with a new innovation introduced to the back is a gesture based flush mechanism that's activated by a sensor. With a nice sign on the back to let you know how to interact with this design, wave your hand over the sense of that debate. So we ask ourselves, who might experience a mismatch in interacting with this design? It might be somebody who has low vision or is blind, somebody who can't read English, somebody who maybe doesn't have a hand available the [ UNKNOWN ] You start to think about this very public, very basic human need in a place where maybe someone can even complete the interaction independently. Can be a very dehumanizing experience. Mismatches however also can be the source of innovation as a starting. So, my favorite example of inclusive design started with a mismatch is the typewriter. An Italian inventor Pellegrino Turri, and the Countess Carolina Fantoni da Fivizzano in the 1830s developed this first prototype. The Countess was blind. And the two of them were very, very close friends. And when they were apart, they wanted to correspond. But if you were blind in the 1830s, you had to dictate your Letter to someone else who would transcribe it for you, and so the two of them worked together to create the first prototype of a typewriter so the Countess could author her own letters, and that design has gone on, without saying, for generations to influence and benefit many of us in other ways. And this examples of exclusive designs like these that premirate our environment. They started with a solution to a mismatch often between two people caring deeply about each other, but they were not to benefit many many more people. So we want to know if we can make this a repeatable practice. Could we do this as an intentional way of building solutions as suppose to perhaps a happy accident? And one of the ways of thinking about this is designing a solution that works well for somebody who experiences a high degree of exclusion, let's say somebody who's born with one arm. And if we design solution that works well for someone who's is born with one arm, it will also benefit somebody who has one arm available because they have an elbow injury, maybe a temporary illness. Or, on a situational basis, they're holding a newborn child or carrying a bag of groceries. And that design will be going to benefit much broader group of people. So coming back to this model of shut in shut out, I've come to think about this more as a cycle. Maybe there is something that we can. Shift in our fixed thinking here, and think about the relationship of choices that we are constantly making, where exclusion can show up at any one of these places, but also the opportunity to shift towards more inclusive practices. So I wanted to quickly, for a moment, go through each of these and show some examples of that, and how it can play out. To start that I'd like to talk about playgrounds a lot. This is an example of the kind of the swing that I grew playing on and we asked ourselves what kind of abilities are required to use this design? Somebody might have to have two hands, two arms maybe two legs. A certain height, certain strength, a certain degree of balance. And you start to see that it becomes a design that's created for a very specific kind of human being. Now, if we were creating a playground and we filled it only with this kind of swing, the only people who would show up to play are the people who match this design, because it quite literally works for them and no one else. And we do this all the time across many different industries. one example from a contributor to the book Mismatch, John Porter, he has a wall. He does a server wall in his home, where he's mounted every video controller since the beginning of time. And he calls it his wall of exclusion. Cause every controllers require two hands to play. And John doesn't have two hands to play. He plays through speech commanding and different types of switches that fit the abilities of his body. But this controllers are very clear indicators who gaming is for and who it's not for. And so one of the ways that John is shifting this practice in his work as a designer at Microsoft. Is working with disabled gamers as code designers and close participants in the design process. To learn from the expertise of many different ways that you might interact with a controller or a game. Which led to the design of the Xbox Adaptive Controller. Which is an interface that will take a diversity of inputs and give people access to any one of the games that you can play in Xbox. Another point on the cycle of exclusion I'd like to share is a story from Tiffany Brown who is an architecural designer in Detroit, Michigan. Tiffany, the first time I met her she told me something that I would never forget, that in the history of licensed architecture in the United States, just over 400 architects have been female and African American, which is 0. 3 %. And this is important because the decisions that are made about how our cities are built what areas are torn down in which ones are rebuilt is gated Often by certain levels of profession here is Tiffany in front of the Herman Gardens housing projects that were torn down when she was 15 profoundly shaped her relationship to this. To the topic of architecture. And Detroit's an interesting place to examine this, although this is a phenomenon that happens in many areas of the world. Because the first public housing projects were developed in the 1930s in Detroit. On the left side here, the Brewster Douglas Housing Projects. Entire neighborhoods were torn down and rebuilt, and this just a couple years ago torn down again. And this practice of tearing down and rebuilding has reshaped the racial distribution of Detroit, which is the image on the right. Where the blue notes denote the African American population of the city, and the red dots denote the white and caucasian American population of the city. And this stark line between those two populations is marked by roadways, waterways, and physical barriers. So one of the ways that Tiffany Brown shifts this practice is working with young people of color to introduce them to the profession of architecture, as a professional choice. But also as an architectural designer herself. And this is an image of her returning to the outskirts of that empty lot to develop a new housing project with the community that she grew up with. And this is a picture from her grandmother's front porch. Another way of thinking about exclusion and tipping toward inclusion is through the tools that we use to develop solutions. This is an image of Wanda D �� az- Merced who's an astronomer, who grew up in Puerto Rico, And growing up she progressively lost her eyesight. And it's a very big deal as an astronomer to lose your eyesight because most of the data that's gathered is analyzed visually. So [ UNKNOWN ] applied a technique called sonification to the data that she was collecting, applying tones of sound and musical instruments so she could analyze it auditorially. So not only did this give her access to her profession, but it also became a tool for many astronomers to use in combination with the visual data they're collecting and to gather auditorium and visually getting different kinds of nuances from the data that they were collecting. And lastly, and perhaps my favorite reason, the cycle. The favorite point in the cycle is why We make and understanding how inclusion plays a role in that. This is an image of Morgan's Inspiration Island in San Antonio, Texas. And Morgan Hartman, as a child, had a combination of sensory and physical disabilities. And it made it very challenging for her to find places to play with many different children, in particular in the heat in San Antonio. So she, with her parents, developed What I think really is the first really inclusive, really deeply inclusive playground water park in the United States. And you'll see here, it's not just about a wheelchair accessible park, there's adjustable real time temperature and the water here for children has different sensory needs. The wheelchair that we see here is powered by compressed air as opposed to a battery. So children can explore any are of the park. And this example for me really underscores the definition of inclusive design that I've come to know and understand. It doesn't mean that you're designing one thing for all people. It means you're designing a diversity of ways that people can participate in the experience with a shared sense of belonging. And then this park is an example. It's really about discovering new areas, having a sense of adventure, and meeting new friends. So I think about that in all the spaces and places that we create and the businesses that we lead and the kinds of solutions that we put out in the world. And people often ask me, where do i start with inclusive design? What's the most important place to start? And I would say, pick any point on this cycle. Whatever moves you, whatever's most interesting to you. But the key is to start recognizing the different kinds of exclusion that show up in these areas of the cycle and then asking ourselves who experiences the highest degree of that exclusion and bringing them right into the heart of the design process. As people who participate in creating those solutions. And we see that, it starts with things like asking who faces the greatest degree of exclusion or who has the most to lose if we tear down one solution and build another one in it's place? Who's voice is missing from our feedback channels? If we only gather feedback in an online forum, the only people who will show up to give us feedback are people who match that design. So this is my kind of quick introduction to inclusive design and there is so much more would love to share with you. I had the opportunity to write a book on the topics called Mis- match and I will be available after this session to answer some more questions or have further conversation about this. But what I found, more than anything is, nobody has a solid set of answers. It's really about an ongoing learning process, and integrating this into whatever aspect of our business makes the most sense. And so I'm committed to building a community. I lead a business called MishMash Design, also dedicated to building the resources that that community might wanna share and consume. And so I just wanna thank you, today, for being part of that community. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Brainstorm Design 2019: How Inclusion Shapes Design

Design

Kat Holmes, author of 'Mismatch: How Inclusion Shapes Design,' and Director of UX Design for Google, presents on stage at Fortune's Brainstorm Design in Singapore.