Practical design guide to gender inclusion. Part 2: Designing conscious e-commerce
Content written by @manviaggarwal_
Opportunities for businesses through gender inclusion
With an evermore changing conversation around gender, there is a radical reshaping of gender identity underway, which will reshape our future. Gender manifests itself across businesses, products, marketing, and processes in ways that have not yet been thought about but have the potential to turn off customers. A growing body of consumers that don’t buy into binary definitions and classifications of gender gives businesses a chance to branch out into the niches of products and experiences for them.
The growing buying power of millennials and Gen Z makes it imperative for businesses to step in appeal to their wants and needs. Many brands with intentions to go gender-neutral and broaden their customer base often don’t know where to start. Many articles can guide a designer to make a gender-inclusive product, but it does not discuss inclusivity as a mindset. Making some tweaks in the interface does not resolve the problem of gender exclusion at its core.
The need of a cultural shift
Acknowledging these gaps and employing various research methods led us to conclude that the first step in adopting inclusive design methodology for any business is to start with their mindset around the dimensions of human diversity they are addressing. This change in mindset supplements the second requirement, a new value adoption at the brand or retailer or business level. Acknowledging the need for gender inclusivity isn’t enough; businesses need to incorporate inclusivity in every action they take.
Following this, a reform in the information architecture of e-commerce platforms is required as gendering tends to start at foundation levels and need to be made inclusive from right this step. Another critical part that we need to account for is the content copy of that e-commerce platform and how UX writing can guide the business towards using inclusive language. It’s essential to keep in mind that the achievable inclusivity through content is subjective to the language in question. The next step requires a comprehensive evaluation of the platform’s and the products’ visual elements to lessen, if not mitigate, and then redesign the possible binary-ideology inspired pieces.
Ecommerce, gender inclusion and how to get there
In the context of e-commerce platforms, this series of articles focus on single-brand websites and multi-brand websites. For both types of e-commerce websites, the first area to zoom in for gender inclusivity is understanding businesses’ mindset on this topic and their knowledge of the gender spectrum. The second area is their work practices and how inclusive those are in terms of gender. The third differs for the two types. For Single-brand websites, the design and production processes of tangible and intangible products and services are the third area to explore. Whereas for Multi-brand websites, it’s the curation of products/services from inclusive brands. This is followed by the fourth area, which is the same for both types, the digital experience, which has three parts based on a typical customer journey; pre-purchase, purchasing, and post-purchase.
The suggestive prompts shared a little further on in this article focus on the digital experience of the non-cisgender community and how to bring inclusivity for them on e-commerce platforms. The reason being, touch-points involved in the digital experience are the ones that directly impact this user community. To streamline the process of gender inclusion, we worked out the points of exclusion associated with gender on an e-commerce platform and created prompting questions on the digital experience of existing e-commerce platforms.
The aggregation of insights and observations from several qualitative and quantitative methods helped the researcher gather the points of exclusion for gender on e-commerce platforms. Each question corresponds to a category of problem/gap of the exclusion points identified through research. Exploration of the points of exclusions like addressing a person — name, preferred name, pronouns; content, customer service, form and function, etc, revealed that the identified problems areas equally affect the lives of those on the gender spectrum outside the bounds of e-commerce. These questions can help designers and businesses to analyse their products/services for high-level frictions.
Questions to ask and their relevant points of exclusion in the braces
- Whenever your product addresses your user, is it based on what they chose to be addressed as or is it based on societal generalisations? (Addressing a person, content, customer service)
- Whenever a non-cis-gender user is browsing through your product, can they find a category within the product system that resonates with them and their needs? (Category, form & function, content)
- After browsing through your product, is a user left feeling that everything is either pink or blue and not their preferred colour? (Form, colours)
- Who is representing your product, is the showcase only about the binary? (images, representation, illustrations)
- Your product has excellent branding and generates revenue for you, but is there a chance that the words used could negatively affect a user’s journey? (UX writing, addressing a person, content)
- Are you aware of instances where users have to look for sizing in a cross-category because of their gender expression? If yes, then what can be done to make their journey better? (Sizing)
It is important to note that the above questions have the goal of normalising gender diversity. Some existing platforms advocate non-cis people, which is an entirely fair thing to do. Still, this research found pieces of evidence wherein some non-cis people said that it sometimes seems aggressive and come off as a bit “too much” of an effort for gender inclusion. The idea is to remove the boxes of different genders and create experiences where everyone uses a platform as a person.
