Inclusive Design in the Playground — and Beyond
How childhood play can inspire empathy in our design process
It’s been years since I last thought about a playground. In a graduation letter to my classmates, I asked that each of us explore the world with the same curiosity and energy that we had as children. The way I saw it, our playgrounds just got bigger, and we should take every opportunity to explore them, right?
In this year’s Seattle Design Festival, Margaret Price, principal design manager at Microsoft, hosted a design workshop for people of diverse backgrounds and industries called “Empathy Building for Innovation.” She opened with a challenge to explore playgrounds differently. Audience members discussed their favorite playground games, and who might be excluded from the fun. It turns out, playgrounds are a great starting point for seeing the world of inclusion.
Build trust through our experiences
This year’s festival theme was trust and its role in bringing together diverse communities. The workshop included moments for us to reflect upon our current experiences and gain insight from each other’s unique backgrounds. By connecting through a shared experience, like a playground, we set a foundation rooted in trust for deeper conversations. Jarrod Bohn, an English teacher and yoga instructor, shared, “I tend to design sequences in yoga that speak to my strengths, so this workshop helped me consider how to make my class more accommodating. A member in my group also brought up the importance of being seen and having that be an empowering experience rather than a negative one.”
Designing with empathy means recognizing everyone’s unique backgrounds and being open to different perspectives. How do we change our conversations to include people who feel invisible?
Lean into challenges
Creating safe spaces can foster trust and help people who feel excluded become more comfortable sharing their experiences. To illustrate this, Price highlighted sliding door moments, a concept explored by psychological researcher John Gottman. These moments are tiny events where we can lean into a problem or ignore it. Choosing to lean in helps the person we’re communicating with feel visible and builds trust in the relationship. On a larger scale, these moments are opportunities to include more people and improve our design processes together. Gabby Czarniak, a product marketing manager, said, “It’s important to frame everything as a choice and an option. It means inviting people to join and participate in whatever way they want and feel comfortable.”
Account for the extremes
In common practice, personas are a combination of traits created to represent the average person. These averages often exclude more people than intended and can leave audiences hesitant to believe in a brand or process. Personas don’t account for unique situations, leaving people unseen and unheard. It’s a question Allison Roger, a creative director, often asked herself: “How can we harness the power of specific stories and make it applicable to more people in personally identifiable ways?”
Price suggested an evolution of the persona — the persona spectrum. This method accounts for extraordinary circumstances, but ultimately includes each of our experiences in its range. Including these extremes reveals a variety of situations that might lead someone to a product or feature. The persona spectrum can account for the temporary or permanent nature of a situation. For example, one person may have been born with one arm, while another may be holding a newborn, preventing use of that arm. In both instances, our customer only has use of one arm and each person can benefit from a more nuanced design process. We should meet each person, no matter their position, in their spectrum of human experience.
Choose to include others
“I think I’ll be able to apply what I’ve learned in the future, whether it’s for user research or something else,” shared student Victoria Tseng. Empathy can be used as a tool in any discipline or industry. We use empathy by creating spaces open to new perspectives. Sliding door moments happen all the time, and when they do, we should choose to lean in and listen. By leaning in, we build trust in the relationships we nurture every day. Building with empathy results in products that each of us can enjoy.
Price closed with the invention stories of ordinary products, like straws, emails, and closed captions. Each invention started as a labor of love. These simple stories were real moments when someone chose to lean in and share their world with someone else.
The toys may be bigger, but I still believe the world is our playground. It’s a playground we can build, explore, and appreciate together. After all, it’s way more fun with all of us included.
This workshop and toolkit have been used at Microsoft events and in universities around the world to train designers on using and leveraging inclusive methods. Check out our Inclusive Design toolkit today to begin designing with empathy.
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