Inclusive by design
Creating an organization where LGBTQ+ designers can thrive
This is the third in a multi-part series on LGBTQ+ inclusion in design. Check out the first two articles on why LGBTQ+ inclusion in design matters and how bias manifests in design organizations.
Bias is a design problem
LGBTQ+ people are disproportionately represented in design compared to the broader population. And yet, they fare unequally compared to their cisgender, heterosexual peers in compensation, advancement, and satisfaction.
Bias in the workplace—both standard variety and specific to design—shapes LGBTQ+ designers’ experience in the field. Design organizations must address this bias holistically to create a more inclusive field that will benefit not just designers from marginalized communities but also the teams that welcome them.
Bias is an attitude that is both individual and shared across the field. While it may be hard to change individual feelings about LGBTQ+ people, bias is reinforced and perpetuated by systems companies do have control over.
Why design is so queer
Understanding what brings many queer people to design can help design teams build cultures that attract and keep queer talent.
Most LGBTQ+ designers I’ve met through Queer Design Club are drawn to the field by reasons any designer can relate to: the mix of creativity and analytical thinking, the wide spectrum of career paths, the potential to improve people’s lives. But design has additional appeal for many LGBTQ+ people.
Not surprisingly, pay is a big incentive. LGBTQ+ people are more likely to have experienced poverty and homelessness and less likely to have a formal education. Design can offer financial security with fewer barriers to entry than other high-paying fields. And yet barriers, like companies requiring an advanced HCI degree for junior UX positions, continue to keep marginalized talent out of the field.
Design organizations must address this bias holistically to create a more inclusive field that will benefit not just designers from marginalized communities but also the teams that welcome them.
LGBTQ+ employees also consider health care one of the most important parts of an inclusive workplace. For trans people, queer people living with HIV, and those with domestic partners, employer health benefits are life-changing. When companies don’t offering health benefits that cover the reality of their queer employees’ lives, such as trans health services, PrEP, and domestic partners, are essentially compensating them less than your cis-het employees.
Design jobs are also concentrated in larger metropolitan areas that are more welcoming to LGBTQ+ people. Some LGBTQ+ people come to design from countries where it is not safe to be openly queer on employee-sponsored visas.
However, not every LGBTQ+ person in less welcoming areas want to leave their local community. Many have family—biological or chosen—they do not want to leave. However, the other benefits of working in design—such as health care and compensation—are vital to their independence and success. Organizations committed to inclusivity should consider remote work for roles that do not require physical presence to perform.
Becoming a designer is not just fulfilling a personal passion, it can also provide the material safety.
It’s understandable, then, that design attracts such a disproportionate percentage of LGBTQ+ people; but their experiences once they join the field don’t live up to the promises that brought them there.
Creating a less biased and more diverse, equitable, and inclusive design field will require intentional change across design organizations.
Inclusivity takes leadership
Creating the type of diverse and inclusive organization that drives satisfaction, productivity, recruitment, retention, and innovation is itself a design problem that requires thoughtfulness at all levels of the organization and every point in the employee experience.
Leadership in your organization must make a public commitment to inclusion. Leadership should also reflect the type of diversity it hopes to foster in the organization.
Seeing LGBTQ+ people in positions of influence is an important signal to queer employees that they can not only feel safe in your organization but also thrive in it. As one designer shared with me, “Not seeing LGBTQ+ leaders being out and open is why I keep my identity hidden in the workplace.”
If you aren’t able to find LGBTQ+ leaders in your organization, it may be because you haven’t created a space they feel safe being open in. A large percentage of designers are not completely out at work. You may not think you have any queer team members, but it’s possible you just have queer team members whose trust you haven’t earned. Or you may need to reconsider how you’re hiring.
Diversifying your talent pool
How you hire impacts who you hire. Bias is often baked into the recruiting and hiring process, especially in tech and design, which often rely heavily on referrals from existing networks for sourcing and “culture fit” for assessment.
Design teams should seek out designers who will add something new to the culture, making it more reflective of the world outside your office.
Design teams looking to diversify their talent can look to directories such as Queer Design Club, Blacks Who Design, Latinxs Who Design, Women Who Design, and People of Craft.
You can also share open positions to job boards dedicated to marginalized communities like Diversify Tech, but before you do, you should evaluate how inclusive your postings really are.
Job postings that use inclusive language are filled faster and attract more diverse applicants. Stop looking for “rockstars obsessed with crushing challenges.” Extreme word choices convey an aggressiveness that turns off applicants from marginalized groups.
You may not think you have any queer team members, but it’s possible you just have queer team members whose trust you haven’t earned.
Look at the pronouns in your listing. “He or she” used to be a progressive standard — how modern, you might hire a woman for the job — but those labels don’t apply to everyone. Singular they is more inclusive (and totally acceptable grammatically). Better yet, use “you.” After all, your job posting should speak to the person you hope will fill it.
Your job descriptions should also speak to your team’s values and commitment to diversity beyond the bare minimum equal opportunity statements. Marginalized designers can tell the difference between genuine enthusiasm for inclusion and the boilerplate copy your legal team makes your HR team put on Greenhouse.
It’s not just how you describe your open positions, it’s also how you require of candidates. Cut or rephrase job requirements that aren’t absolutely necessary like advanced degrees. Does your next brand designer really need an MFA? Since access to higher education isn’t equal, hard requirements like this exclude qualified people from your talent pool.
How you evaluate candidates matters, too. Consider anonymizing applicant information during the initial screening process to reduce unconscious bias. Also considering scaling back or offering alternatives to time-intensive design take homes. Better yet, cut them out entirely.
Interviewing is already an exhausting, time-consuming process for interviewees. 3–6 hours may sound like a reasonable amount of work, but candidates don’t work for you yet. They likely have another job or school to balance, family responsibilities, and, you know, lives. Many designers from marginalized communities literally can’t afford to devote that much time to speculative work. So if you insist on giving candidates design exercises, pay them their rate for the high end of your estimate.
Reaching out directly to minoritized communities, writing inclusive job descriptions, and reducing barriers to completing your application process will help you collect a diverse pool of candidates, which is the only way you can make diverse hires.
The diversity of your hiring panel matters, too. Hiring panels made up of people from different backgrounds make candidates feel more welcome, demonstrate a strong company culture, and help check unconscious bias throughout the process. Candidates are interviewing you as well. If they only meet one type of person while interviewing, they may have a harder time seeing themselves at your company.
Designing an inclusive workplace
Of course, the interview is only the beginning. Working on your recruiting and hiring practices can bring in talent from diverse backgrounds, but your culture must also grow to ensure designers from marginalized groups are able to participate fully. It doesn’t matter how diverse your team is if their daily experience sucks.
Barriers to diversity and inclusion are systemic, so your efforts must be as well. Culture is important, but culture is not just an attitude. It’s the environment created by an ecosystem of decisions in hiring, pay and benefits, HR policies, and work processes.
From interviewing to onboarding, from compensation to advancement, and in all the day-to-day dealings of the job the design organization you build determines the types of designers who are able to thrive in it.
Want learn more about LGBTQ+ diversity and inclusion? This post is inspired by content that was edited from the below InVision article for length. Check it out!
Also, shout out to Mike Monteiro who is a supporter of this community and whose book Ruined by Design inspired the post titles in this series.
