Designing for Trans and Gender Non-Conforming Folks Panel Recap
Co-presented by Madelena Mak (She / Her), Max Masure (They / Them), Jess Mons (They / Them), and Sabrina Fonseca (She / Her / They / Them)
Designers, product owners, and public interest entities have a long way to go to make products, services, interfaces, and experiences more inclusive to Trans and Gender Non-Conforming (TGNC) users.
We have the power and responsibility to include, delight, and protect them, or to upset, marginalize, and even endanger these individuals.
On Trans Visibility Day, a panel of four designers and researchers addressed key questions about this topic, including:
- What unique challenges do TGNC folks face, in life and dealing with government?
- How can we design experiences that make them feel included and safe?
- How can research help?
The panel was originally offered as a breakout session for this year’s Code for America summit, which was canceled due to COVID-19. In lieu of an in-person panel, the group decided to organize independently to share their experiences, insights, and advice through a remote webcast. Their goal was to provide industry colleagues and those who are interested in evolving government design to be more inclusive, and therefore more ethical.
Meet the Panelists
From left to right:
Madelena Mak (She / Her) — Senior National Director at StartupBus
Max Masure (They / Them) — Senior Product Designer & Inclusion Consultant
Jess Mons (They / Them) — Director of Business Intelligence at dscout
Sabrina Fonseca (She / Her / They / Them) — Principal Design Strategist at Coforma
Mapping a Transition Journey
To begin the panel conversation, Madelena Mak described her transition journey, which she had mapped to document its progress through several stages:
- Realization
- Exploration
- Socialization
- Actualization and beyond
The journey map she shared during the webcast panel revealed a range of positive, negative, and neutral personal impact as her journey progressed through key life experiences, including attending a boys school, using the internet, consuming mass media, confronting bathroom laws and drug regulations, and accessing healthcare. At each of these junctures, Madelena’s journey map outlines the challenges and opportunities that were unique to her journey.
Her journey map makes clear that there are many opportunities for services, products, laws, and cultural practices to evolve to improve the impact on trans and GNC individuals.
Gender and ID
One specific area where vast improvements could be made through intentionally inclusive design is the intersection of gender and government identification. Max Masure’s panel presentation focused on their experience with changing their name. They jumped through seemingly endless hoops, including having to obtain letters from their family members, asking permission from their ex-spouse, in pursuit of a government-issued identification that aligned with their personal identity. Throughout Max’s talk, challenges with the process are revealed as opportunities for improvement through ethical, inclusive design of forms and policies that ease the burden on trans and GNC folks.
As a Product Designer, this process was even more painful for Max as they work to solve user experiences for government agencies and social justice companies. Their experience reminds us that everything seems impossible until we do it.
Case Study
Jess Mons goes another step further by presenting research that their research agency, dscout, conducted on gender data collection on forms. Jess says that the research was prompted by the realization that dscout’s app required people to fill out a profile and specify gender in order to apply for their studies — and for a long time, the only gender options were male and female. That meant that anyone who wanted to participate had to identify as man or woman, even if that wasn’t right for them. That also meant that their app was actively erasing their users’ identities and populating data with incorrect information.
“If our mission is to accurately capture context, but participants are forced to incorrectly identify themselves, not only are we creating a negative experience for our user, but we’re also generating data that are incorrect. We want to create a space where our participants have the power to identify (or not) exactly how they want.”
Jess goes on to explain that dscout wanted to be a positive experience for all users and explain how they evolved to ensure no identities would be erased or inaccurate.
Design Best Practices
Finally, Sabrina Fonseca, whose experience on the topic of designing forms to be more gender inclusive was discussed in this Medium post, provides a list of best practices that designers and researchers can bring to their work to help change the way products and services impact trans and GNC people’s daily experiences.
Here’s the TL;DR:
- Don’t ask about gender.
- Have a good reason for asking, treat it like sensitive information.
- Make it optional.
- Ask for pronouns instead, if gender information is needed for communication purposes.
- Be ready for a complex answer.
- Consider the ramifications.
In general, all the panelists recommended avoiding assumptions based on gender. Designing for gender diversity results in better design for all.
Pledge to Make a Change
What will you do to increase inclusivity of gender? Our panelists asked each individual who attended the webcast panel to answer that question with something specific and actionable to join in the ongoing work to make design more inclusive. Here are a few examples:
- Test our features with a persona that uses they/them pronouns
- Revise our forms for gender options and legal name
- Consult with members of diverse communities to improve our design
We invite you, too, reader, to make this pledge and share your pledge on Twitter, where we can continue educating one another and working together to make a difference. Download the image below, and fill in the blank with one of the pledges above, or one of your own choosing. Use the hashtag #InclusiveDesign and tag us at @coformaco so we can circulate your commitment and inspire others to join us in this critical work.
Watch the Full Webcast Panel
Want More on This Topic?
Three of our panelists mapped their gender journeys so that the impact of their different experiences could be easily seen and understood. We’ll be posting these beautifully designed stories here when they’re ready to share and explore. Sign up here if you want to have your trans or GNC journey mapped!
