Day 2- Drawing from Feminist Practice to Make Inclusive Design Operational

— I’d like to give a shout out to audience and it’s been incredible to see how engaged you are

 

— Welcome everyone, and greetings from Amsterdam
  • I will start with a story
— It began in December 2018, when I was in Bangalore for female financial inclusion project
  • As I showed prototypes to clients, I got stopped mid-presentaion
  • The clients said they had already tried my approach, and it didn’t work
— They brought out a plastic wallet and dropped it into shirt pocket
  • At that moment I looked down and failed to find breast pocket on my own shirt

 

 

— I thought of women I’d be testing with who didn’t have breast pockets
  • The man on women’s focused project had forgotten about it

 

— This is common
  • In tech: Voice-recognition software is unable to respond to words that apply to women more like ‘being hit’
  • In finance: Gender-Pension gaps up to 30%
  • In healthcare: Women are misdiagnosed and symptoms are not recognized, and medical advice is often unfit for women

 

— Hi, I’m Mansi
  • I think about the intersection of design and women or lack thereof
  • I’m curious to hear if this is bringing up something for you, especially for women, where products/services didn’t acknowledge your needs or lives
    • Throw your stories into Slack
  • I’ve spent  the last decade learning about designing with and for women, by doing projects, engaging in research, and looking at my own methodologies critically

 

— So why do we forget about women?
  • And what exactly happens when we consider women in our projects?

 

— Our design methodologies fail to consider women’s needs
  • They are prone to produce one-size fits men outcomes
  • This is proven in many fields, but here’s an example
    • Investment readiness gap between male/female founders increases between graduation, as accelerators don’t consider unique barriers women face
— Learning my own toolkit  as a designer was biased against women was hard

 

— The first step to recognize we forget about women, and we need to move to the practice of seeing via a woman’s eye
  • It’s a muscle I need to build as well
— I can say a woman-centric lens has changed how I engage with design

 

— So what is this lens? I’ll share the following spectrum:
  • Offensive
  • Impartial
  • Informed
  • Holistic
— There are examples of this over the world

 

— The first lens is ‘Offensive’
  • These are simply inappropriate solutions for women
    • Solutions are for problems that don’t exist for women (like pink plastic glove to dispose tampons, which were too big for a woman’s hand)
    • That or glorifying women’s empowerment but not meeting  their needs

 

— The next lens is ‘Impartial’
  • Rife with one-size-fits-men examples, with unintended consequences for women
    • Biological differences with women are ignored, with fitness apps that don’t acknowledge menstruation or menopause
    • Or instances where gender responsibilities are ignored— such as clearing roads for snow first, but not pavement
    • Solutions that fall into stereotypical of masculine/feminine traps
      • i.e. a contraceptive brand in India that called itself Man-Force

 

— Now, the ‘Informed’ lens
  • Here we are starting to move into a space where needs are taken into account, but these see and serve women as the majority consumer (think fashion, reproductive health)
  • They operate superficially, and within existing gender norms
    • Women are often being reduced to reproductive functions
    • Fore example, local trains have a woman only transport, but didn’t think of how train would be retrofitted for needs of women

 

—The ‘Holistic’ lens is the guiding star
  • Solutions that design for women as equal and valued users
  • Moving from serving women alone to all kinds of products/services and solutions that create new narratives that lean-out rather then lean-in
  • Also seeing where social systems intersect
    • i.e. an app in Pakistan increases economic empowerment of women by hiring female doctors

 

— To ensure we don’t forget about women, bring we need to bring these lens back to our teams/orgs/lives
  • Start with small cases and apply the framework there

 

— Next, collect products/services and place them into the framework, including your own
  • Engaging in this exercise can be valuable, as it helps us identify opportunity areas to improve products/services in terms of inclusivity

 

— Okay, you ask, but how do we get there into the holistic lens?

 

— I’ve turned to gender/feminist practice to designing with/for women

 

— These practitioners  struggle with human-centered design, which doesn’t let them go wide/deep enough
  • Design research is limited by a dominant perspective and tells an incomplete story
  • So we should be anchoring on what exists instead of what could be
    • Think of ride-sharing apps, which only launched anti-harassment features after harassment occurred

 

— So how to get to non-dominant perspectives? I went to practitioners for advice, and asked the following:
  • What you have learned about designing for women and girls?
— As I had conversations, certain topics were always present of domain, geographic, cultural context
  • So I built a list of non-negotiables

 

— Non-negotiables are themes that describe overlooked needs of women, which we can’t overlook any more
  • They are not a substitute for research, or diverse research groups, but the themes can make research wider and deeper
  • The themes feel “obvious”, but even I hadn’t actively engaged with them
  • These themes are applicable beyond women

 

— I found we can engage with systems through existing design processes to evaluate products and services and broaden lens and research and look for inspiration for ideation and redesign
  • I encourage you to think of how to evaluate these themes

 

— First there is safety: A basic human need that is taken for granted
  • Unsafe environments are huge detriment for access to products and services
  • We need to define safety of products/services for our users
  • Designers are building with this ’safety-first’ mindset and can design for safety by not taking it for granted
    • Set safety-first precedents within environments

 

— Second, there is a trust gap, often perceived as risk aversion or lack of confidence by women
  • But at one layer deeper it stems from being failed by a system such as a workspace
    • For example there’s leadership and development training for women, but it does not address women’s needs
    • This pattern is everywhere
— It’s valuable to see how systems bred mistrust with women
  • Finance for example, with its complex jargon, made women feel ill-equipped with money for years
    • So we need to work to demystify alienating language

 

 

— Third, there is a non-linear nature of women’s lives, beyond biological differences
  • Women are more likely to go in/out of work and live longer
    • How would retirement solutions take this into account
  • Also women are more likely to see higher mounds of time poverty relative to gender responsibilities
    • How might we use this to build a better experience for all?

 

— Next, there is the role of community
  • Relationships play key role for women, and place value that women like to learn together rather than be told what to do
    • Serving communities who have stigma for asking for help, by making that practice a ritual in gatherings

 

— Finally, there is the role of men
  • Men and boys are part of problem, but must be part of solution
  • Can feel intuitive think about focusing on women, but reframing it as space to share burden of leading change can build responsibility for men and boys as well

 

— So, where do I get started?
  • We can engage with these themes through our existing processes
  • Start with what resonates most, and apply to problem definition phase
  • Explore theme of “what are my knowledge gaps”, and embedding prompts in research methods
  • Look for inspiration for ideation, and beyond design and look for principles for ideation
  • Don’t forget to reflect and connect, and build own design pillars for each theme for future design cycles

 

— As we wrap up, let’s go back to beginning
  • I had two questions:
    • 1) Why do we forget about women?
    • 2) What becomes possible when we consider them?

 

— I couldn’t have imagined where this inquiry would take me today, and provide tactics for women’ centric lenses, and amplify work of gender/feminist practitioners, and how this resonates  with other disciplines

 

— I’m dreaming of world where women’s centricity is so ingrained that these frameworks are no longer necessary
  • So I’m building an open-source framework that others can carry forward

 

 

— I invite you to join me in this journey and ask “What About Women?”

 

Q&A
  1. How to operationalize gender equality in visual design?
— I recommend safety-first practitioners and language for space that feels welcoming and staying in an online experience
  • Framing question in this way lets us move from masculine spaces and stay away from stereotypical feminine spaces
  • Look at folks who are designing for trauma-first design, gender-violence survivors
  • Also avoiding human forms, which is what Adobe’s Spectrum Design System does
  1. Any resources for us to dig deeper?
— Yes, I’m working on a framework that I would love to share with you all
  • In resources there is link you can sign up for
  • Also write about this all the time and share resources all the time, and many interviews on my website
  1. Ethics and equity lacking in design space. Any frameworks in embedding these themes/frameworks?
— Would say idea of d
  • Innovative work is coming out of Global South which has focused on gender for a long time— where start-ups are designing in a different way
  1. How to adress issues with tech empowering women, when put in context of local government?
— Wish could solve this question, but can’t

 

— The hard point is to think how tech was born in first place, and idea of services being free, but selling your data
  • There is a great podcast episode on “Invisible Women” on how women’s data is sold, that digs into this
— The short answer is that we need products/services to not sell data
  • But we are used to getting services for free, so there is a tension there
— We need to think of products/services to serve women specifically as being paid, while services for all are unpaid services
  • In general though, this is a tough topic to focus on