World Interaction Design Day — NYC Edition
This year, I was fortunate enough to be a part of the World Interaction Design Day, where designers across the world come together as a united global community with a single shared purpose: to prove how interaction design improves the human condition.
The theme of this year was Diversity and Inclusion in Design. The panel presentation started with John Anderson, the Technology Director from Smart Design, talking about Designing for One. Anderson presented his case study in helping a 66-year old woman with multiple sclerosis for over 20 years. The team went through rounds of iterative experimentation, prototyping and designing to figure out how this person might navigate voice technology to suit her needs. Within 4 weeks, the team delivered a personalized voice assistance device that improves her daily life. Anderson thinks that the designing for one approach generates a profound sense of empathy, fosters creativity through constraints, which he interprets as the foundation of inclusive design.
The presentation proceeded with Marie van Driessche, the Interaction Designer from ABN AMRO Bank, presenting on Designing for Deaf People. As a person who was born deaf, she thinks sign language is a different kind of language that reflects deaf people’s identity because they are visual, spatial, and has no written form. Marie introduced the foundation of web accessibility as a way to design for the deaf, as well as for everyone. She concluded that it is important for us to see the deaf community not as a disabled community, but rather a cultural and linguistic minority.
The final speaker, Elisabeth Fosslisen, the Creative Director from Parliament, Inc., spoke about the sense belongingness at the work. Modern work requires an ability to effectively harness emotion whenever we feel agitated at work. Elisabeth used a few examples of how an individual could access his/her emotional tendencies at work, such as celebrating the emotions and actions you value, creating structures for feedback, and asking in-depth questions. To her, the definition of diversity and inclusion is: diversity is having a seat at the table, inclusion is having a voice, and belonging is having that voice be heard.
At the end of the panel presentation, someone asked how can we address diversity and inclusion to the public. This question reminded me of the process of delivering products I’ve been tackling at work. Being an in-house designer regularly puts you in a tough position, especially when working with multiple groups of people and aligning a common consensus in business goals, design, and development. Due to the nature of my current work, the product development process itself is a continuous iterative journey. As a designer, I am still finding ways to improve this process so we can be more diversified when it comes to accepting opinions from others, and be more inclusive when prioritizing features after rounds of research and testing. In the end, it’s all about redefining the meaning of our work and improving the process of how we can work effectively in this society.
So, what is your definition of diversity and inclusion?
