A designer’s takeaways from SXSW 2022 Pt.1

Published in

Bootcamp

5 min readMar 28, 2022

After going virtual for several years, this year SXSW is coming back with online & offline events. It was also my first time to attend SXSW and experience this multi-day frenzy and dazzling celebration, with conferences, screenings, interactive exhibitions and art installations. While there are a lot of hypes over Metaverse, NFTs, web3, I would like to share what echos with me, a product designer, the most.

I’m dividing the takeaways into 4 parts, with one topic per each part, so you can pick the ones you’re interested in from below. All topics are things I learnt from the sessions I attended, and it doesn’t represent the whole SXSW experience. In the end of each topic, you will also find resources and the speakers info.

Pt.1 Responsible & Inclusive Design

Pt.2 Design for Emotion and Storytelling

Pt.3 Speculative & Design Innovation (upcoming)

Pt.4 XR and Ethics in Metaverse (upcoming)

🌍 Pt.1 Responsible & Inclusive Design

The topic is nothing new. As designers, we are all about problem solving, about “human-centered design”, about “making the world a better place”. But how many of us really think about pushing the design beyond checking the accessibility box (color contrast, sizes)? How many really think about the intention and possible impact on individual people, the community, and society? As the Director of Design Impact for AIGA Minnesota, Andy Vitale puts it: “Did we learn anything from all past mistakes we made? Of course not!”

Intention matters

Alan Cooper said: “The individuals who create some of the most oppressive digital systems are mostly good people.” Yes, most of us are good people. We do good work. We have good intentions. We don’t design things to screw people up. But somehow, the products we create can turn against us, without fully understanding the consequences.

According to an article published by Spotify design about ethical design, there are three types of harms:

Physical harm. E.g Parallax scrolling can harm people who have vertigo.
Emotional harm. E.g When Facebook chose a small subset of people to show them negative news without their consent, just to see how it affects people’s emotions. Another example, when people try to deactivate their Facebook account, Facebook show a page with their connections and how “They’re gonna miss you”, to make them guilty, and thus manipulate users.
Societal harm. E.g Political polarization from algorithm biases, which we’ve seen too much from the last election.

As designers, we have to understand and predict the potential consequences of our designs. And we need governance to build responsible products, just like we need design systems. We need to be intentional about what to build, what not to build. E.g Slack rolled out a feature about enabling DM to anyone on Slack, not just someone in your workspace or someone you know. And Slack users had to plea to roll back the feature because of the potential spams of messages they receive. However, that feature still exists today.

Be intentional with language use as well. Airbnb User Researcher Nanako Era shared a story when they were recruiting participants for inclusive research they were conducting, they changed the wording from “xx min walk” to “xx min drive”, but the word “drive” is still not inclusive enough since it indicates a human ability. So the ending of the story is they changed the wording again, only this time they dropped any word might suggest an ability but with more objective distance. The lesson? Say what you mean. Don’t leave room for interpretation because it leads to exclusion. Work with your legal team on how to collect data, since it is usually sensitive with people that have disabilities.

Design Ethics / Universal Design / Inclusive Design

Design ethics definition: Design ethics guide how designers work with clients, colleagues, and the end users or products, how they conduct the design process, how they determine the features of products, and how they assess the ethical significance or moral worth of the products that result from the activity of designing.

When we’re designing for the products today, we need to zoom out from today, and think about designing the products for our future self — what if we are a bit older, what if we lost some capabilities, like vision, hearing, etc. We need to future proof whatever we do to produce a sustainable design.

Universal design definition: The design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design.

Andy Vitale gave some good universal design examples:

Sidewalk curb ramp — for people in wheelchair, people with luggages, strollers, joggers, etc.

2. Automatic doors to prevent “pull” “push” confusion.

Of course there are also many bad examples:

Soap dispenser that can’t distinguish dark skin tone

2. Google photos algorithms, Microsoft and Xbox Connect had the same issue

3. This one actually comes from my friend not the speaker: One of my friend’s last name was marked “Invalid Last Name” in a form field from a major app, because her last name only has two letters (that’s a common case with Chinese last names).

To grow awareness and uncover experience gaps, you can ask questions like:

Who is doing more work (with this product)? What are competing products?
What assumptions does this product make about people?
Where do you fit into this product space? Who are you similar to?
What questions can we ask to close knowledge gaps?

Design With, not Design For

Embrace participatory design to make our design process more collaborative and inclusive. As responsible designers, we should avoid excuses as “I didn’t know” “I didn’t mean to”. It is our obligation to minimize unintended consequences from happening, so we need to know how the product is intended to be used, v.s how is it actually used by people.

Where to start inclusive design and research? Well, start small, start now. Ask questions. Reach out to experts. Have a growth mindset. Be inclusive when recruiting participants. Make sure they have a diverse background. Be intentional about who’s included in your panel. Get consent for participation, and provide accommodation as much as possible. E.g use phone call instead of video call to accommodate low internet bandwidth.

Think about what’s the worst that can happen to people that use your product, think about people who are the opposite of you, how they might be experiencing your product. Think about different levels of abilities and tolerance, and then use your design superpower to really design to accommodate those different needs.