Stop Extracting and Start Co-creating

Steven: Let’s get into the presentation for today. And so we know inclusivity, accessibility equity are really, really important topics to us. And today we’d like to share an uplift, some organizations doing some wonderful work, some ways of rethinking maybe our design, our creative processes. And lastly, we’ll end with some additional tips for folks as you go off into your different worlds to be able to impart some of these insights into your work.

And so before we start I think we’re starting to see right across everything that exists in our ecosystem and the world that there’s a lot of gaps when it comes to the designs that we create, the perceived impact, right? How we’re collecting some information and how the information is being used, right?

And so, I think especially as we move into the future, more and more things are going to be digitized. There are gonna be interfaces on things that we’ve never imagined before. Alright? And at the same time, when we create these interfaces, we have to be really conscious in the way that we make the user experience, the ui, the typography, just all parts of it to ensure that the myriad of different experiences, the myriad of different people, beings, animals, whatever interacts with it, is in a equitable fashion.

And so, When it comes to Google, even like some things we talked about how we’re collecting certain information, right? Like why do you even need my gender as a part of checking email or to the point of certain information types that’s collected as a part of doing user research right. Documenting all this really intimate information about us, but what is it being used for, right?

I think there are many ways in which we can start to be more conscious with not just how we design, but also how we collect and aggregate data in a way that is beneficial to our communities. I also have to chat open as well, and so we will answer questions throughout the talk, and so feel free to drop your questions into the chat as we go along.

If anything peaks your interest. Before we get into nitty gritty, want to first start defining some of the terms that we’ll be using diversity, inclusion, equity. These things are really similar. But they’re also not the same . And a really easy way to describe it is in terms of this image here that you see on these two slides.

In one image, we have three people of different heights. They are quite diverse in their experiences based on their heights, but unfortunately, due to things, barriers are quite literal picket fence that divides the baseball game From the viewed vantage point, I think we can all agree that there are different experiences.

Some might be better than others who may not be able to see. Right. Inclusion on the other hand, is the way in which we invite in. The diverse perspectives to take part in our activity. And so in the image here, we see the wall is being removed, but also we see uniforms being provided to folks so that they can have a similar experience that they may feel included in.

And then lastly, equity. Equity is. Simply translated as the redistribution of power. A shift from po, a shift of power, from a place of high power to low power. And power can mean a various myriad of things. And it can be time, it could be money, it could be resourcing, it could be staffing, it could be quite literally the space that we create with one of us and all of us.

And so as we start talking about how we wanna make research, for example, diverse, inclusive, and equitable, hopefully in defining some of these terms, it helps to give us an understanding of maybe what might be the gaps with what we are doing today. Yeah. And just to reiterate again, diversity is really the quantification of difference, right?

Having a bunch of different things is very diverse. Inclusion is the way in which we are inviting in. These diverse experiences, right? And so it’s not the different and the diversity of the mix, but inclusion is the way in which diversity is invited into the space, right? And so I think, I just wanna underscore here, right?

So often we have very diverse workplaces, for example, right? But the practices within the workplaces may not be inclusive to allow people who may be less represented to have a voice, right? So then we say it’s not very inclusive, but it could be diverse. And then lastly again, equity is the way in which the practices that we instill transfer power from position of high power to a position of low power to redistribute it.

We are therefore creating an equitable playing field of different power indexes, whether it’s money, resources, . Awesome. And so as we talk a little bit more, there’s some additional terms that come up, especially within the context of disability, disability rights, advocacy and creating products for other communities.

And so some additional terms, accessible universal inclusive practices in the context of disability and disability rights, advocacy, the first and foremost term accessible. This is really the way in which we are creating, right, these accommodations. So similar word that we had talked about was inclusivity, right?

But accessibility is quite simply, it could be the physical manifestation or the digital manifestation to cross these. Bridges of disability to Ability, Universal is the way in which we have a certain single experience that is able to accommodate many different experiences, right? And so, and the images here, excuse me.

Accessibility has an image here showcasing a ramp that’s going up into a ledge. Crossing over steps, two steps, universal. This is the image of the Guggenheim Museum, which is a giant museum comprised of a slope, a slanted slope that spirals upwards. And so in this manner, there really isn’t a barrier for folks who may be able to cross from one plane into another through a flat surface.

You can then ascend many different levels of the Guggenheim. Because there are no steps. And then lastly, inclusivity as it shows up here, this is again, the way in which we’re inviting these different lived experiences. And this is an example of using different signages, for example, accessible entrance pointing to a place in which we have an accessible entrance provided for folks.

And then lastly, another sign for a priority elevator and helping to indicate via illustration who might be able to use the priority elevator, those who experience disability, those who may be elderly, or those with infants and children. As we talk about inclusive design, why it is really important, right, is because.

There’s just a lot of conversation happening. But really at the end of it there’s a few things that start to bubble up. We do some of our research on Twitter. We’re just taking a look. And one thing that somebody pointed out on Twitter they said one when I realized one the other day, that if design for one is a design strategy, then expand to many is a marketing strategy.

When we read as bifurcated statement, you read the one I that people are never actually part of the marketing strategy. And so sometimes the way in which we’re focusing on so many different aspects of design, we may or may not include folks all the way through the processes. Right. And then the second tweet, Oh, great.

No, we’ll choose. Arguing with me, my ramps are a perfect solution for access instead of an inclusive design to build up. And it points to sometimes the need instead of these accessible measures that sometimes a universal main more inclusive, accessible solution could be a way in which we are quite simply inviting people into these experiences easily.

Cool. And so one book that we’ve read as a part of our book club shout out to book club res here. And if you wanna join our upcoming book club definitely send us a memo. We are revamping a little bit of what we’re doing for 2023, where we read books on social justice and design. But we read this book called Design Justice as a part of our curriculum.

This book I highly recommend to everyone. There’s a myriad of all these design books, but definitely this will help to create the really wonderful stability of a lot of thoughts, insights, and also references and resources of just other other groups, communities, what people are doing. But really they talk a lot about.

Concept of what does inclusive design mean and how we might be more inclusive. And quite simply, they point out inclusive design is design that considers a full range of human diversity with respect to ability, language, culture, gender agent, other forms of human difference. And I think the one thing to underscore too is sometimes with our own bias and how we’ve existed, and we have lived experiences, right?

We have different. Also recognizing what does that full range look like? Who is included in that range? And sometimes we may need to have more diverse perspectives to be able to point out even some of these things that we wanna highlight on. Inclusion focuses on accessibility but also moving from good to just practices.

You can also include co-design and centering diverse perspective as a part of creating the products themselves. Right? And then lastly, thinking about what is the end impact, right? Versus the intent. And oftentimes, a big critique in the UX industry is I had all these people as a part of the research process, right?

But this product that I’ve designed and I created was not that great. And so really this is the clear difference between intent. What was the intentionality? What are our thoughts, right? Going into something versus impact, which is the outcome, the perceived outcome of what actually happened. Yeah, great points.

And so one thing that we love to have a discourse on is also this concept of design thinking. It was made popular through many different firms actually, but I actually capitalize on this the most. and some folks over there basically codified a processes of thinking about design and actually executing design called the design thinking.

But one of the biggest critiques is that it really fortifies the value of designer within the entire sphere of design and creation, and especially as we talk about inclusivity, right? Bringing other voices and perspectives into the design process. Question for you. All right. How can we be inclusive with the design if the designer decided everything?

Right? And so really that’s the biggest critique is the designers are one, figuring out the insights. Designers are one, figuring out all of the ideas that come out of it. The designer is the one that figures out all the comps and puts everything together. And design is also the one that builds it.

Right? And then at the end of the day, In the processes who really got their ideas fortified. And so we see this happening with so many digital products that are in the market right now. We see this with social media applications, financial applications, and as we look at who was centered as a part of that narrative, right?

It definitely indexes a lot on the affluent white masculine experience. And as we talk about even content moderation, for example, right? Some people will argue that content moderation still is not a rich and important product of many of our social media platforms because the people building it really had not as much to gain from content Moderat.

For them than other communities. And so this is why as a part of rethinking the design thinking process or just our creative processes, we have to figure out ways in which we as designers can take ourselves out of the process. Right. Quite that simple. Maybe not just within research, for example. Right?

But maybe it’s extrapolating insights, right? That you’re putting together. Maybe it’s the creation process, the prototyping process. Right. And bringing community members in to help us with that. Or it’s quite simply picking and making the final decisions where we bring in communities and co-designing and cos selecting in the democratic means of what directionality we can go in that is most beneficial to certain communities.

Cool. Awesome. Yeah, that really helps. Thank you, Renee. And I also believe design justice may be open source, and so if you Google search design justice, I do believe some of the chapters are up and, but they’re really long. And so I do appreciate yeah. A share of that as well. Let’s see. Shifting towards a community led design.

And so one of the things that we’re starting to see with this concept of co-design is this concept of inviting people in as a codified part of the practice, right? And so we’ll chat a little bit about what these three organizations do, but we think they’ve done some really great things in terms of codify a different way of creating designs that is more method.

Methodical. There we go. Methodical of our community members. And so we’ll first start with the National Equity Project. You can visit them@nationalequityproject.org. But what they did was they created a processes first of creating this cyclical loop, right? How do we continue design process versus just doing once and done right?

And they also added an opportunity to have a retrospective or a period in time in a project in which. Can take a step back, reflect at what had happened, and use that in a way to help inform what we’re gonna do forward. And so what you see on the left, this is the typical ID design thinking structure, right?

Empathize, divide, ideate to prototype tests where they say empathizes all these like , how my we questions, right? And defining is selecting one of the questions. And then moving forward with research on that ideating, how do we take that STEM statement and how do we create a different ideas? And then prototyping, put it into market, testing it, right?

And then ending up with a final decision. And so with the National Equity Project, What they share could be a more equitable, inclusive way of doing this work is quite simply adding a point in the middle of the processes, whether it’s at the end or it’s at all these different touch points for noticing and reflecting.

And so the two, I would say kind of the difference between notice and reflecting, notices, recognizing and taking time to reflect on power dynamics, personal biases, the context of the project, and just call forth, right, These things that we may notice that may be inequitable, not diverse, not equitable, and then reflecting.

This is the point in which we take these things that we called out, right? And then we start to ponder of how can we infuse, right? How can we make this better? So to make it quite simple, it’s just the call. Response, right? How are we calling out what is needing to be recognized, to be articulated? And then the response is, how are we actually integrating some of those insights, right?

And in this process, really the idea is and how they’ve shared a little bit about their processes. At the end of running a single cycle, you must have this period in which you reflect on a lot of these things. And also how the project went in the context of all of these things, the power dynamics, personal biases and to also then think about how can we in subsequent iterations do better, right?

Create a better product, do more inclusive research, for example.

The next organization, and we’ll share a little bit of what they do is Creative Reaction Lab. And one of the things that they have created and articulated is their practice of equity centered community design. And so what they share are a few different diagrams. The diagram on the left is really placing equity centered community design in the center.

And these three spheres, one says decision or design based problem solving. Right? And this is really the quintessential design thinking. We have another sphere which says equitable outcomes, right? How we shifting the narrative, shifting power dynamics, right? And then lastly, community development as the other sphere, which is really how we uplifting the folks around us as a part of the process.

And so as we go into the other diagram, really the idea here that I will say the takeaway is focusing on. Understanding history. Right? And there’s a lot of emphasis on understanding the context of history. There’s a scenario as well. And what I love about that is, especially in the design process, right?

Projects, you know, you could suddenly raise your hand, but how many times have you been on a design project in which came in and your prerogative was, let’s just start from scratch. Everything was awful, you know? Yeah. It was just bad, bad, bad. Like we just need something brand new. Right? And oftentimes this is really, really difficult, not just for the designer, right?

You know, creating something from scratch is so hard, right? Because you are basically throwing out a bunch of stuff and then just starting from ground zero basically. But the other part, how it’s hard for the community is there could have been some truths, there could have been some benefits. And instead of taking a humble, a size of humble pie, we instead decided to throw out, you know, the phrases, throw the baby out of the bath water.

It’s such a gruesome quote sometimes, but it’s the fact that we would rather throw out anything that’s good that’s coming out of the product that we’ve designed in forsaking anything that’s new they wanna implement. And so really the big takeaway here is context and history, right? Asking questions to understand really deeply where products came from.

Where folks came from. What are the lived experiences going in to inform what had happened before? And really understanding at a visceral level, how did we get to where we are today? And so for everyone here, I think this is a really great opportunity to reflect on projects maybe that you might be working on, whether it’s redesign or adding new features.

And just asking yourself, is there maybe an opportunity to be able to ask questions to understand the history and the context of things and what’s happened so that we don’t. And this is the hard part to come to rationalize, is to not make the same mistakes again, , that had happened before. And oftentimes history repeats itself because we lose context, we lose history, and we have new generations of people who basically take the signifiers of the immediate surrounding and then just act on it.

The one thing I’ll add here that I really love and is articulated in, I don’t know if anyone reads Robert Green, which is really around the human psyche in the world, but Robert Green basically talks about why history repeats itself and splits the time of the world into. Not immediate generations like Gen Z versus Gen X, but just four phases of generations.

Some can contain multiple generations, but in these four phases of generations, right? We have the fourth phase, the fourth generation having barely any context, right? Or connection to the first generation because everybody from that generation is nonexistent today, right? And we’re trying to be informed.

Maybe we could reach one generation back, maybe two, but it’s really hard, right? To reach that far back. What Robert Green also shares is that generation two, generation three, generation four, we solve for the issues that we see immediately in one generation before us, but we rarely see the issues that led that generation to make the decision that they made based on generations before.

Right? And so the example Robert Green gives is, , you have a war a war torn region. You have folks experiencing what it’s like to be in conflict between countries, between societies and communities. And so you have a community of people, right? Sometimes war could be a part of revolution or a difference of opinions.

I’m just fighting for liberty as well. And so but anyway, besides the point, you have ex a community of a generation, right? Experiencing that type of environment. Subsequently, you have the following generation seeing this. They may not be in the state of war. And so what they’re doing is they’re taking some of the insights from that generation saying, Actually I want something that’s more stable, more secure.

Right? And so they’ve created stability, they’ve created some normalcy around them, right? And then you go into the next generation, the next generation sees this normalcy that’s happening and they’re like, Why are you so boring? Like, where’s your individual cell? Right? And then you have this generation now taking action on the previous generation not knowing that this stability and normalcy was in reaction to, right, the generation before, which was on conflict, on instability, right?

And then now you have your fourth generation looking at the generation before that was so focused on self going what about everyone else? Right? And so then that generation, this where everybody else starts to Brew a lot of the things that go into the subsequent generation, which is a shift, right?

A revolution, a shift in ideas, and then you end up getting this whole cycle that continues. Again, so long winded context, but this is, I think, at least for me, help taught, teach me a ton about this importance of not just history and context, but intergenerational history and context that can help inform us as we move forward to really not repeat the same things that we had seen in our immediate generation.

Cool. And then lastly, this organizational project. Ink Bought does some wonderful things also for folks who might be working on your own project passion project. And I don’t know if they’re specific to New York, but if you’re in New York, definitely check ’em out. But if you’re not but you’re working on your own projects definitely check ’em out.

They’re doing a series of different incubator startups and so they are providing education and resources to folks who have a project, a passion project that you wanna go after. And they are I believe they just hosted and may be recruiting for the next season, but basically just doing some wonderful work, providing resources for folks who may want to have some time and resources to go after your own thing.

But what they do is they talk about inclusive research and articulation in a few series of steps. And I’ll just. One by one what they are and hopefully they’ll infuse a bunch of insights for you in your work. And so the first one in 10 versus impact, we had talked a little bit about this, right? Is this difference between what we wanted to do, right?

And our intentionality behind it and what actually happens. And a big part of it is understanding that when we see something and perceive something to have happened, right? That is the impact. I think we just really want to start indexing on both, but also defining right when we have downstream impact that’s not so good.

How might we make change on it earlier on instead of just being codified into the 10 phase. The next one, who is on your team and how does that play a role in perpetuating biases? They do a really wonderful exercise. Having project teams actually collate together. And what they do upon meeting is to identify all the different facets of their identity and then doing a get together of identifying gaps within their experiences, looking at what product or things that they wanna make.

And I think this is really, really important and powerful because we oftentimes forget that our immediate team really ends up being what is reflected in the product that we create. And so we’ll talk a little bit more about the various attributes of intersectional identity. But really the thing that I wanna put out there is this concept of intersectional identity, is the fact that, right, our lived experience is based on the myriad of different parts of our identity.

And as a part of it, we can bring so many things into the room, but we as individuals uniquely do not have. All of the identities of everyone else. And so why it’s important to do number three, identifying target sources of information, right? Whether this could be other designers, other folks that you want to, for example, community members that you wanna do research on.

How do you bring their insights? How do you bring their collaboration, co-design capabilities? How do you bring their decision making process into the sphere of where you make the design, design decisions so that you can have more community led design, co-design And what’s really great about this is identifying what are excluded sources, right, as a part of it.

And so totally understand, totally recognize that our research budgets are always limited, and I think it could be as simple as just documenting some of our gaps. And what could come out of maybe the documentation is subsequent researches, for example, right? You may take into consideration different target, target demographics for folks.

And so why, One thing that we will start to hire on in this presentation is a power of documentation. And so as you’re working on projects and identifying identities and maybe things that you may not have been able to work on, right? Exclusion excluded resources really codifying your writing This down helps subsequent Project processes and iterations.

And this could be like the first organization that we had talked about helping being a part of the reflection phase as a part of the project. And then lastly, the last two steps inviting it to be a part and define their own role. So this is particularly referring to the communities that we are engaging with.

The way I really love this organization, how they reframed it, is asking people, how do you wanna take part in this design work? How do you wanna be a part of this processes? And allowing people to let them inform you on how they want to help. Right. And I know this is sometimes really difficult as it gets into the complexity of projects and, and I think what we just have to think about is maybe this changes the scope, right?

Of where people start and end within certain small snippets or phases. Within the larger sphere of the project itself. Right. And so it could be quite simply when we’re doing research, right, and we’re recruiting people as a part of the research, can we just ask folks and the question, and the way they phrased it that I really loved is if we were working on this project together, right?

The project could be the larger project or it could be research, right? How can we make participating in this project a win for you, right? Asking them to basically let you know in order for this to be a successful relationship, a successful collaboration, how this might look like for them. And then lastly, how does this process continue iterative equitably.

I. The important thing to underscore here is this concept of iteration is really, really important as a process of design. I know we’ve heard this many, many times, but as a part of learning, right? This concept of continual learning and continual growth, it also is based on the fact that none of us are perfect.

None of us come into projects with all the understanding of the world. We are so, you know, aware we’ve, you know, everything, right? That is really the case. And so we have to make room for error, right? We have to make room for when the impact is not what we seek. And sometimes it takes a little bit of, you know, taking a humble pill of just saying, You know what, maybe what I create is not gonna be perfect, but as a part of this processes, we’re gonna vow to make the least amount of harm possible, right?

Which could mean when we launch something and it has a go to market strategy set up that wants, it goes to market. If something that begins to happen, there is a way in which we can recall, or there’s a way in which we can iterate on some of that feedback. Right. And then equitably again, all of these different tools and mechanics are ways in which you can really bring into the sphere of the work that you’re doing.

More inclusion, more diversity, and just frankly ways that you’re redistributing the context of power in your product that you’re assigning. Right. And I just wanna add again, this concept of equity is very diluted within the space digital design. A lot of companies, a lot of individuals, a lot of products will throw around this word.

And I think the really easiest way to measure is, for example, if a product has a certain feature, right? The question to ask ourselves is, This feature, How does this shift power dynamics within society? Right? It could be power dynamics within the context of heteronormative, right? Heteronormative. It could be the power dynamics of patriarchy.

It could be the power dynamics of racism, right? I mean, the question is what power dynamics in what system is it influencing, right? And if the feature in itself is not really doing that, but it’s just, you know, allowing people to do things easier, right? Sometimes ease ends up becoming the way in which we institutionalize and reinforce force existing power dynamics.

And so an example right, is let’s take moderation feature on social media applications as a feature in itself. Obviously we can identify equity, right? And why it’s important is the way in which we allow people to report posts, report accounts and flag them, right? Is really essential at being able to flag people, accounts, organizations, whatever it is, institutionalizing harm on others, right?

Allowing people to have that. Maybe it’s also through the guise of anonymity, right? And so, I mean, this is also hope in the future with some social media platforms that we do need a little bit of anonymity. But also you can definitely check the context of things. But what ends up happening is certain voices on social media platforms have a bigger way of making tights ripple about other voices.

But regardless of the fact, we can recognize right, that moderation features in this context is helping to redistribute power and therefore we can say content moderation features are equitable, right? But let’s say the simplicity of the simplicity of just being able to post on social media, right?

Let’s reduce the number of pages that go into posting. I mean, sure, to an extent it could be people who you know, don’t have the context or ability to be on the phone for too long, right? Or struggles with multiple pages. But again, When we just talked about the concept of ease, right? What power structures is this challenging?

How is this redistributing power? I hope this lesson can give you a really good, solid understanding of starting to be able to ask questions, right? And articulate maybe where these gaps of equity might be on the stuff that you’re working on, right? And I think the really important thing to double underscore here is the power of words, right?

And why we’ve been talking about inclusivity, equity, diversity, these things are all so different is because it gives power into the things that we wanna see, things tough, taken action on, right? But when we start lumping everything together, it becomes really hard to pinpoint exactly where these gaps.

And of course there could be gaps across diversity and inclusion and equity. But where I will recommend everyone is just the practice of being able to start to identify and articulate them individually so that your palette or your ability to identify when two are going good and one is not going good, that your ability to articulate that becomes stronger.

Right. And I think the difficult part is when we lump them all together, we sometimes think that just by doing one thing, usually this is the case of diversity, right? If diversity is going well, then all of a sudden inclusion and equity is somehow good as well in the process. And so I think this is where a lot of people create digital products, research and all that have been indexing so heavily on is just the concept of diversity.

And we know that there’s so much more to it than that than we can do. Right. Any questions so far on this? Is this resonating with folks?

Yes. Awesome. Cool. Feel free to drop comments in, ask additional questions. We’ll keep going. And one thing that we started codifying early on with our organization and for anyone here, our planning committee, we definitely need to pick this up in our org again, but it’s also this concept of creating safe spaces within design dialogue.

And so we talked a lot. How we want maybe some of these things, right? Deliverables, research and all these things to be inclusive. But we asked ourselves we have to have a safe space to be able to make that happen, right? And so one thing that we highlighted was this necessity to also think about the interpersonal relationships within the workplace that leads into how we start creating some of these products, right?

And so how are we creating safe spaces referring, deferring away from judgment? And how are we creating quite simply the emptiness for other people with voices that are underrepresented, to be able to pipe up and say this one, I think, right. And so as a part of it I think when we do work looking quite simply, just give things a moment of silence, right?

And sometimes silence allows information to seep in. Allow the water to wet the soil and plants germinate, you know, thoughts germinate. And then lastly, can we invite healthy banter, Right? In the situation when everyone’s agreeing to something and they’re like, Oh my God, this is great. Maybe this is opportunity where we invite other people to say, Hey, bring your perspective in.

Help us pull holes in it, right? So that we can really, truly go back to the table and make things a lot better and improve your experiences for things that we may not have understood when I first created something. Question. I’m curious how one would keep in mind equity when designing within different cultures like an American brand, bridging in a more diverse.

Yeah. I think it’s quite simply asking others, right? . So often as designers, we think we have to be the arbiter or the person that makes all the decisions. And at the end of the day, if we want to make something equi for somebody else, I think it first starts and also ends with asking that identifying, you know, individual based on what you’re trying to create equity for, right?

What can we do for you? How can we make this a more equitable experience? And then lastly, once we launch and do the thing, asking them, right, was this equitable for you? How did you feel about this experience? And so sometimes we forget. It’s as simple as that. And we sometimes make it so, so hard on ourselves to have to be the one to make all these decisions.

Yeah. Good. Good question. Yeah. Any other questions coming up the flows? Hopefully that helped.

Awesome. Wonderful. And one thing, again, we had talked about this concept of documentation and why it’s powerful is as we start to establish some principles, ways of working that we really want to honor, a really great place to start is by documenting it. And when we document something, how powerful is it that we can put into words when we’re feeling in our hearts, our mind, our bodies?

And by putting into words, we can allow other people to. And benefit from this experience too. What I will underscore as well is the limitation of words, right? As a part of this processes. And we understand there’s so many languages in this world and so many experiences that aren’t able to be captured in certain languages.

And so it’s one of those things that we love the power of words and the articulation capability for us to transpose one idea into the you know, mind of another, right? But one thing to also underscore is words sometimes, and this is the important part, is when we’re too smart with something, right?

Meaning we’re like, Oh, it has to like sound a certain way because it’s so super, like buttoned up, precise and articulate. Sometimes using something that’s a little bit more verb can be a more a more accessible means of digesting this information. So even documentation, we can think about how we make accessible for folks reading it.

And one challenge that I do, especially when writing, whether it’s a part of a deliverable or as a part of a presentation quite simply, I sit back and I ask, what do what, what do I really want to mean? You know, what am I really trying to say? And I’ll ask myself that in my mind. And I will first just write out whatever is coming in my mind.

And even if it’s just a, you know, a mumbo jumbo, just like a bunch of stuff, it helps to just get to the core of what I’m trying to say. And sometimes in trying to be so smart and trying to be so articulate and trying to be this character right, of this perfect designer or UX designer, sometimes the way in which we talk about things becomes so austere, so superficial, So in a way that isn’t.

Really how people, right. People who aren’t experiencing design may also experience it. And so that’s one thing to also think about is just even with the words and the way we articulate not just going beyond our deliverables, but it’s just the way in which we hold space, right? Father designers around us.

So a few projects that I will share that was shared by some of the other organizations I talked about earlier was this concept of co-design and where we bring in the community as a part of creating these projects, right? And so a few projects around Table Project, it was a way in which we were inviting folks of different experiences to just have a meal together, sit down, have a conversation.

And it could quite simply be that, right? Why have our focus group be a situation in which we’re in this really damp, dark room, right? , it’s like an interrogation room. And sometimes when we conduct research, I’m like, this is literally an interrogation room. Flipping the script, right? What are ways in which we can make it more comfortable and we get more inviting for folks, especially if they’re giving us feedback to put themselves in a situation that they.

Feel most comfortable in to be able to go into a place to be able to provide us thoughts that are important to that. Right. Middle ground is a channel on YouTube that had done a project series where they brought all these different perspectives together to talk about controversial topics. Now, of course, like this stuff is really hard.

You’re like, Oh, just tell me everything you hate about my design. But sometimes it’s necessary. And what I loved about this project is creating space for impact, Right. We talked about versus is impact creating space for that impact that we sometimes shy away from. Right. And what I will say is the best, the best tool in a designer’s tool belt, your whole collection is the ability to the, the bad way to say is not to think personally, but the better way I will say is to suspend.

This definition of yourself and how you hold space for yourself, right. Differently from the project and project outcomes. As long as we are continuously dedicated to improving learning and trying our best where we come from, sometimes that’s all we can do. And what’s, yeah, really difficult for some designers is to come to grips with maybe what they have produced and develop just didn’t work.

You know, and we see this happening with test scripts and stimuli that people are putting into uxr UX research studies, right? Where the questions that are set up are asking about the things that the designer works so hard on, right? But then the things that they’re like, Oh yeah, yeah. You know, like, I, like I didn’t spend a lot of time like why even test, right?

But why that’s really important is because maybe there’s other parts of the experience I could have informed exactly in which how somebody’s engagement with a certain part of our experience so. To sum up the middle ground importance is can we create space for that hard conversation with our work?

Right? And then lastly, I’ve switched, this was a art and solution in which it invited people to come. And this was community members from across the board to just give feedback of just who they were and how they identified on a wall. And so this is a really wonderful project in which you see people, right, articulating the actual final deliverable together as a community.

And this is a great example of how we might bring in people to really help shape what we’re launching rather than, again, designer, developer, product manager, whomever, spearheading all of it, right? And we’ll talk a little bit more about maybe how we can distribute some of these roles to bring in more so we.

In our organization have been going to different conferences and talks. And one thing that we’ve shared that has resonated a ton is this concept of identifying our own myriad of lived experiences. And so feel free to take a picture of the flower here. And if you go to the url, it’s just the same thing.

But we’ll also put this video on YouTube in a bit. But it’s really this context that maybe it starts with a point of self-reflection. Maybe it’s just recognizing where we’re coming from so that we can start to identify where maybe our biases are or maybe where we leading indexing a little too much or too little on.

Right? And so basically what you would do in this workshop is you take the flower on the right and then you would identify how on the line with a dot, with a line coming out. How you identify based on this context, right? Ethnicity, race, sex, assign at birth going through religion, immigration status, education, whole me of things.

Again, this is a, the full gamut of all the different identity and lived experiences, right? But this is a way in which we put to articulation, right? Using our words, what and how we identify with. And then the second part is identify where we sit within the structure, right? That identity is a part of. So for example, in the context of race, right?

Does that identity sit within power and privilege or marginalized oppression? And so as we talked about equity and as we talked about power, it could mean very different things, right? It could mean we have access to resources, access to time, access to money, right? Access to people, access to a myriad of things, right?

But the context of power In this little sliver, this little pedal, this leaf, right? Do we come from a position of power or do we come from a position of lacking power? Right? And so what’s really surprising too is especially as we go into the tech sector, we see a lot of people, right? Coming from visible positions of having less power and privilege, right?

Bipo communities when we see as we go into the parts that are inized, right? Somebody’s socioeconomic background, right? Where they came from, their education, right? We have less of a opportunity to be more diverse with that because it’s so hard to see right from the outside in. And so the workshop that we ran that was actually like, whoa, really insightful for many design leaders was asking them, after you’ve filled this out, Reflecting on the team that they had created, right?

How similar is your team to the flower that you create? And so this is a way in which we start to see unconscious bias playing a role in the way in which we’re starting to curate slash having these affinities of different personalities that we work with. You know, quite fascinating, and I think it’s a really great opportunity.

And if you want a little journaling exercise, I highly recommend maybe just doing this and then some questions that I will share with you all. As you do this exercise, right, what’s coming up for you? What stands out most to you? What stands out least to you? Right? And as you reflect on maybe the spaces that you’re in, you can also do this assessment based on the spaces that you’re in.

And it’s more of like an averaging out of like, okay, like this index more on like white people, for example, right? And then you. Label that, and then compare that and contrast that with your identities. And maybe an insight will come up where maybe the differences between the two flowers help to show you maybe where the gaps are with how you may be connecting.

Right. And it’s not to say your flowers are inaccurate , Right. But it’s quite helping to show you and articulate potential ways that I would say in this exercise identifying maybe some of our unconscious biases that went into play. Yeah. Fascinating. Right. Cool. Any questions here? And then we’ll get into handful more slides.

Yeah. And feel free to take this and do some workshops maybe in your workplace too. What I will underscore is this stuff, as you do it sometimes it unearths a lot of things for people. And just to be really honest with everyone in this space here is that we see people who come from a visible position of privilege, Right?

Really struggle sometimes with this exercise because when we had run this exercise, there was a few design leaders who actually came from a position of power across every single pedal, and they were just really visibly frustrated. Some got really angry. And it’s just one of those things that one we wanna protect and want to ensure everyone is in a safe space especially for the people who are conducting these things, right?

And so If, if you are interested to facilitate handle some of these things I would say maybe it’s one of those things that you don’t do by yourself, right? You, you bring on other teammates to help facilitate these things. And then also under this is just to learn more about ourselves, right?

And then just to learn about what we can do , how we can move forward together. Yeah. And so lastly, we’ll end our session today with a handful more slides on just how we can be more equitable with various points within our research time, right? And our research timeline is broken up by education, right?

How are we being informed with the different tools and methodologies, insights that we go into doing the work, right? The next part is how are we actually conducting the research? The next part is how are we actually leveraging the research into artifacts within the design process, right? Personas, journeys, et cetera.

And then the next phase is how are we turning that into actual outcome impact, right? And so these are just some thought starters for you all just to think about. Again, this isn’t to answer it by any means here, but the idea is just put a couple seats into your garden and just seeing what germinates and maybe hopefully the, the phrasing or the articulation of these bunch of words just jumbled together, right?

All of a sudden gives us a point of inquiry. And so as a part of the education and as a part of reading stuff that feeds us different tools and techniques of what we want to institutionalize within our design processes is our education, right? Coming from diverse perspectives, who’s teaching us the stuff that we’re reading, right?

And a big part of it is also thinking about the actual work that we’re implementing, who. Education has that been informed by Right. And a big part of the exercise that we’ve been doing is in, in the books we’re putting together for our organization in the quotes that we’re pulling, we are trying really hard to just be more intentional with it.

And so a big part of that is just being more diverse with where we’re getting our insights and education from. Next are insights accredited properly. So this is really fascinating where it helps to at least cut through the, of some authors, right? You read the book and there’s zero accreditation of, you know, what informs maybe a lot of their decision making models.

Right. And I think this, it’s a, it’s. What is it, What do you call it? If there’s like something that is like kind of a red herring or something like that. But it’s basically the sign, at least for myself of going, Oh, I don’t think this person necessarily as equitable as I would’ve hoped that they were.

Right? And so the important part of this is as we are starting to do work, implement work and helping to propagate teachings when we share, where we gain insights from, right? And again, a lot of this is through many of the organization that we shared earlier and then the book Design Justice that we shared earlier.

And then a lot of this is also from my own personal lived experiences as well, right? How we accredit. Where we are getting insights from in a way that we can celebrate, right? Other people, their work. And I think it’s time that we sunset office language time that we sunset this notion that when we accredit people, it somehow devalues the work.

I actually, I think it’s been really empowering to think about accreditation as a way that we are empowering the work and empowering others in doing the work, right? So people get the credit empowering them, whether it’s their portfolio or just quite simply just boosting themselves or maybe it’s boosting their community when the space that we’re inviting in.

Right? And then lastly, who benefits the molds from this education? So with the education that we are reading, taking in what are we actually doing with it, right? Who is it impacting and who is benefiting the most and what we’re doing?

When it comes to user research. So these are more tactical things that you could take upon your work itself. And I’m sure this was a big reason of why you came today, was we wanna bring in our community right into the design process. What are ways that we can think about to be more succinct with just equity all around?

Right? And so some questions upon her. First and foremost, who again, like we talked about the organization pointing out the people in which you are working with these really end up being a part of your unconscious biases or ways that you are building. Gaps, right? Within certain lived experiences translating into the product, right?

But what’s really great is documenting who is working and also who is not working, right? Documenting who is excluded as a part of the processes, right? And documenting. This will be so simple for you to then recruit for the people, right? That you need their help and can benefit from their help as a part of creating the product.

Where are they in the process of design, right? Do you only have the community co-creating with you at the very beginning of research and then all of a sudden you or another design leader, right? Gets to be the one to decide? That, that insight’s awful. We can’t do anything with it. We’ll get this inside.

This is so much more important. Right. And this is where layers of that exclusion end up turning into digital products that are harm in the community. Right? Again, why I go back to social media again is as social media, right? Was exploding and it was on the forefront of, on the frontier of doing this amazing stuff, right?

We had a man of really amazing, diverse folks billing some of these platforms, but unfortunately, especially as we think about tech leadership, we had a ton of their insights and what they wanted to do diluted because they weren’t in leadership positions to advocate for some of these changes. And so what we ended up was we institutionalized in these organizations and these products, some things that aren’t representative, Right.

Of even people working there. Yeah. As we continue with the questions, how diverse is our recruiting? So in terms of bringing in the mead perspectives, how diverse, quite simply, are the people responding that we’re bringing in on board to actually help us co-create how inclusive is our interview itself?

Right? So thinking about the way in which we engage with the people, inclusivity is really important because sometimes when we come to usability testing for example, I, I’ve done so many where you have test subjects just tell you exactly what you wanna hear, right? Because their focus was a few things.

Not wanting to take a lot of time to maybe needing the money that comes with it. Right. And not wanting to put a facade of, or, or not wanting to put maybe an identity of an individual that doesn’t get invited back. Right. Or just this concept of being long and not wanting to be wrong. Right? So how do you maybe allow the inclusivity to permeate into those aspects so that users or humans, people as they give us insights, if they give us knowledge that they feel supported, Right.

In doing so. Next, this question of how are compensating people for their time? I think this is really important aspect of it. But also the form of compensation. I won’t underscore, it’s not always a concept of money again, it’s usually the concept of if we zoom out one level is this. Concept of power, right?

That we had talked about. Equity is the shift in power dynamics. So is there a different way of measuring power that’s valued by different people, right? That can be a way that you’re compensating people, right? And sometimes a great opportunity is allowing people to define what is their role, and then sometimes giving like a myriad of options for people to choose from and what they wanna do, right?

Allowing people to have a decision and feeling empowered to make a decision in the process of design. Next, how are we crediting insights? So this is really, really important that we sometimes forget to underscore. And oftentimes when we create and design products, we do all this research, we take all this information and.

One thing leads to another. This cis straight white male is getting awards, right? It, it’s just so crazy it how like this happens as a part of many design processes. And a big part of that is quite simply expanding the range and advocating for accreditation across all points. And so potentially maybe there is a way, right?

Where you have a running list of all the names of all the people, right? That’s been a part of the project and it’s like the end credits of a movie. Can we start to have that as a part of the project itself? Right? And again, right, asking for permission first before you do that, before you start using people’s names really.

But really I think being able to give people a decision right, in whether or not they want to be a creditor or not, I think is way better than. Just making a decision for them. One, but also two ending up just not getting accreditation at all. And then we’ll also talk a little bit lastly about just how do you integrate some of these beings into your businesses, right?

And your companies. Cause I know a lot of this it might sound good. It’s definitely a little hard. Right. Next one is, what is our relationship between giving and extracting? And so as we go into different communities, especially underrepresented, marginalized communities, historically marginalized communities, we have to reflect on whether we are going in and we are extracting more than we are giving.

Right? And so, again, the analogy, or I didn’t share this yet, but the analogy I like to provide is communities, people, they are like plants, right? And you can prune plants to an extent. Where you prune so much that it just doesn’t grow anymore, right? You’ve killed the plant. And so humans, communities are so resilient in the sense that you can extract, right?

But you have to give back a certain extent. You have to give back nutrients, water, sunlight, right? And so with communities and with individuals, while you can extract in one sense, I think it always pays to just think about and also ask, how can you give back into this space? Right? And oftentimes, non-profit organizations and so many for good initiatives and organizations are rarely asked by vendors or by institutions just how to support and how to help.

And I think as you reach out to different spaces quite simply, You’d be so surprised with how willing people are able to help just even by asking and giving people the option. Especially for folks who are really interested to communicate and reach out and work with underrepresented communities.

I’ll give you a few tips on just how to integrate into research quite simply. One, there are myriad of organizations already working with certain underserved, underrepresented, historically marginalized communities. QTBIPOC design focus on queer bipo creatives. You have a and tech focusing on queer folks and creatives, right?

You have glad that focuses mostly on the larger dipo of LGBTQ folks, right? Non heteronormative. And so there’s already so many organizations that are working with a myriad of identities that you can quite simply reach out and just say, Hey, you know, I would love to get these insights as a part of this.

Again, be super transparent. I think what will help your conversation is asking the question of, Hey, we want this, but we also want to ask how can we help support in exchange for this thing that we want, Right? Whether it’s research user testing, whatever it is. And you’ll be so surprised at how people are much more willing to work with you just by inviting in and allowing people to.

Let you know how you can best support them. Yeah. And then again, you can have a conversation based off of that, how you wanna move forward. This quote, I love and I saw it on a Medium post. It’s by Cat Holmes, author of Mismatch Inclusion Shapes Design. Another really great book on accessibility that our book club highly recommends was talking about this notion of identifying areas that we can be more inclusive on, but identifying exclusion.

So we had talked about, right, the, when we have certain identities in the room and doing design work that it ends up excluding, right, in one way, shape or another, certain identities that’s just not in the room. Right? And why this is really important is it helps us identify where we can do the most work with inclusion, right?

And so, quite simply, it’s. All in front of us already. It’s a matter of just documenting what’s in and what’s out Sometimes.

Equitable deliverables. And there’s just two more slides and then we are done and we’ll have open q and a with folks. For this one is just talking about our deliverables that we’re creating as a part of our design artifacts and thinking about how we can be more equitable, right? And more conscious with what we are creating.

Asking ourselves, are we making assumptions? Are we reinforcing stereotypes as a part of what we are creating? Right? And these aren’t the best examples, but oftentimes, for example, personas, right? They’re so stereotypical and they start to dive and like just so many things. And the question to kind of cut through that noise is, where’s that data from, right?

This lady that has, you know, nine cats and all this, like, where was that data from? How do you know that this is the person using your product, right? And. Just doubling down on that. How can you be more inclusive, right, with the data that is being collective and aggregated in articulating some of these things with a persona thing.

What I’ve appreciated with some of deliverables is thinking about how we create persona spectrums, for example, right? So a spectrum of like age ranges within a single persona. I think it helps to move past this certain archetype that we’re designing for, but really this part of this myriad of people, right?

This shared experience that we are identifying for, and then the spectrum and the values of the spectrums are quite simply identifying maybe how these deviations right across these different other parts of the intersection identity that we’re trying to create for. Yeah, I think is a really a more equitable slash interesting slash insightful way to.

Personas, right? For example. Is there a way in which we can iterate on some of these things as we create it, as we validate it? Maybe through recruiting. Can you find the person right who’s doing this? Maybe there’s room for iteration, right? Adjusting for some of it. And then lastly, this is super important.

Who is deciding, right? Who is making the final decision of what’s going in and out? And I think this is really, really important as we talk about decision makers. And it’s not, you know, it’s not here to harp on folks, you know, in leadership positions and being like, Ah, you can’t make the decision. But it’s quite simply maybe observing where we sit right at the intersection of the decision that we can make, right?

Are we institutionalizing our own biases that we have? Aria, I can also find that personas can trap early career designers in a way that’s not. Always explain where information come from. Found out when I was starting out, we were making them up due to lack of queer and influence how they’re creating for space, at least in my experience.

Yeah. Do you wanna share anything more about that Aria? I think that’s a great point. Yeah, sure. Can, Can you hear me okay? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I just I just find that when I was first learning it, I didn’t, I didn’t really, I never felt clear on what personas actually were. Like they would explain it, how to create them based on research, but when it really came down to putting them together, it just felt really random and I was kind of like, it didn’t really feel right.

It didn’t really feel like so, That felt like it wasn’t actually informing my design decisions, it just was like arbitrary and something you were doing just because it was a deliverable to check off the list. And I just always had a discomfort around them in general for that reason. And it, it, it kind of goes beyond like just personas with just like parts of the design process that we feel like it, we’re just checking boxes to show that we did this thing but not really examining why we’re doing this thing.

So that’s just something that’s always been a concern for me personally. Mm. I think that’s a great point. And I think the hard part is also recognizing, right, historical context, going back into the value of personas. I think again, why as UX designers. You should also be historians of asking question of why are we even doing this in the first place?

Right. And to Karina’s point field personas are really only for stakeholders, less for designers. Do you wanna expand on that?

Sure. I guess what I feel whenever, even trying to design a persona, it really just comes down to a way for either the client or the stakeholder to kind of use it in like presentations in order to gain more funding. Like if they can like get to sell the idea of like, Oh yes, this is the client we’re designing for, but for an actual designer, the designers know.

By just the research alone and just looking over the notes, what users want. We don’t need a very generic or super generalized persona because in reality there could be 1,000,001 personas. There is a multitude of different experiences one can go about using a product and to just generalize it to down to like one or two or three is just so little and kind of just almost like, how do I explain it?

It, it just like takes away the uniqueness of like an individual going through a product. Hmm. I think that’s a great point. Yeah, you’re absolutely right. Sometimes when we reinforce assumptions, reinforce stereotypes, we lose the myriad of diversity and life experiences. Right? And again, I think it’s, for us, the other important part is redefining what these deliverables are, right?

That we can, My suggestion is how do you just push the boundaries, you know, just one tiny bit rather than trying to move mountains. Cuz sometimes we also hold unconscious biases of what is the final best answer, right? And so, again, in the honoring an iterative format, in honoring context, and also honoring this notion of building up right from the past.

I think it’s just about how do we take one part of maybe a processes or deliverable or something that we don’t necessarily eye to eye with. And then shifting it a little bit and seeing what resonates. In the past heard another researchers say that they only found persona use for edge cases, but not dictating inside design because it reinforces stereotypes.

Yeah, that’s a great point. Do you wanna add anything to that, Ross?

I guess like so I don’t wanna like misrepresent what they said, so that’s why I was kind of like general, but like . Yeah. But from what I understand, for example, like if you made like a persona just specifically like what if a person who like this persona I don’t know, like has a vision impairment, for example, like, and there’s this very specific like user flow that, you know, you’d have to like, examine from their perspective.

That’s how I understood it would be like applied. But making these like. Very generic personas that kind of like reinforced, like, it just felt like, you know, very stereotyping and like, cuz in past experiences, like past classes, it’s like, oh, like this persona is I remember someone saying like, Oh, this persona is like a woman.

So like, obviously she’ll be like X, Y, Z and I’m just like not necessarily. I don’t know. But yeah. But for, for specific edge cases, I guess it’s more applicable than dictating the entire thing. That’s great point Ross. And that’s a great way to see deliverables, right? As artifacts, as documentation, right.

That we use so that we can be more informed. I, I love just asking. Again, the question is like, what is it real? Just like if you were to distill into something simple, it’s documentation that we use to inform the process of design, right? So rather than just going through and right musing through, like it needs a bio, it needs a blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Right?

I think the thing to ask is what about these people, right? That we need to save and document so that we can better understand them later on down in the design processes, I think is a really great way to ship that narrative. But again, right, we’re very limited to our own biases, but also when we have very closed recruitment criteria, we end up forming stereotypes and we just have to make sure we always underscore.

What we learn from one person also does not speak for everyone . Right. And sometimes making the assumptions across the board is not great, not conducive. And also I think hampers innovation for us. Yeah. And sometimes where I see this and it’s like, meaning, but though, you know, you’ll, you’ll see people going to, certain folks who experience disability, right?

Certain type of disability, maybe like blindness, right? And observe how they’re interacting with a product and all of a sudden take everything, everything this individual is saying all under the, you know, the sun as this is how blind folks, right. Navigate everything. This is what they like about apps, right?

And really the concept of diversity and intersectional identity. We can keep. Slicing it into many, many small divots. And I think the one thing I will leave with is totally, again, understand our design budgets are not infinite. I think what we can do right, is, again, what does that wiggle room look like to you?

Steven Wakabayashi: And if I urge everyone, right, if you had a plus one right, you can just add one little thing, one little small thing of just inclusion equity into your next project, your next deliverable. Just one little small thing, right? And why I think this is important is not something big because it’s too big people who aren’t familiar with the process, like, ah, what’d you do?

Right? But this one little thing can potentially cascade as you keep working from project to project, to project different things that we end up reinforcing and plant for. Yeah. Cool. And then lastly, equitable outcomes. How are we delivering products into this world? Some things to think about as we launch products.

What is being measured, right? What are our KPIs, our key performance metrics, right? How is success being identified and validated? Who is validating it? Right? And at the end of the day, who benefits from the success of that, right? I think will go to show you exactly who benefits the most, right? Who it’s selectively identifying, right?

As a part of the people that has to perform a certain way. And asking based on this iterative processes, is a community still involved, Right? As a part of continuing to do work. Is there a longer term relationship that you start building with certain communities, certain organizations as you integrate more of those insights into your work?

And then lastly, when we do launch, not just holding on so tightly, right, our intent, but can you make room for impact? Can you make room for pivoting some of the impact that you’ve done so that you can reduce harm, right? Overall from the community you share things with and create products for. And so this is our very last slide of our presentation, and then we’ll do short q and a and we’ve a few announcements.

We understand integrating all of this into your workflow, into your business, into your organization is so, so hard. And so a few points of advice, really the context too of maybe why some projects and what some processes are not perfect to your liking is because sometimes we are juggling. Time, effort, resources in everyone’s own unique way, right?

And folks are trying their best based on the context that they’re given. And sometimes it might not be perfect for you, right? And instead of coming into it with this need to bring everything down to then in instill something brand new again, in the effort of co-creation, co collaborative design, that builds up, right?

How do we plus one up the things that exist with the insights that we’ve learned, right? What is that one thing that we can add, right? How do we, we start small. How do we start with these granular things that can then maybe snowball into something larger, right? Also, and why starting small is really powerful is because it allows others to be invited in to learn alongside us, right?

And sometimes it’s really hard because we’re like, Oh, we’re here. We, we know all these things. We read all these things, right? But we’re like, But no one’s here. Right? And sometimes it could be like that and just the social justice, right? Like, oh my gosh, where’s everyone? Right? And I think the importance of it is also just finding where we have the capacity to have a little bit of wiggle room with that, right?

And when we can make advocates of others, that’s when we start seeing our artifact starting to compound, right? So while I have started small, now you brought on all these other people right now advocating for this one small thing, and all of a sudden it’s organizational, right? And another one is how do we check our performant activism and ego at the door?

Especially when we wanna do this work. Right? And so we sometimes see designers, companies, products, postulating trying to sell their product, sell more of their product by saying, Oh, we are so inclusive. Right? Or maybe when we’re doing the work, we want to be more inclusive. We’re like, ah, I don’t want time to do it, so I’m just gonna goop up.

Right? I think one thing to recognize is, especially in the context of the world that we live in, right? Where it is strife with competition, it’s strife with winner take all it has narratives around, you know, who’s the best, right? And sometimes in our effort to be more inclusive, equitable, and diverse with our work, if we don’t check some of those things right at the door, whether it’s competition, whether it’s ego, wanting to, you know, Look and appear somewhat better, we end up causing more harm, right?

Because what we are trying to do and institutionalized was really not for the community, but was more for us, right? Which is really sometimes a hard thing to grapple. And when we can’t come from genuinely ourselves, then we can have a heart centered on what the community really needs, right? And then lastly or two things.

Asking community versus making assumptions. So asking questions rather than starting to make assumptions and make decisions on behalf of individuals like community. And then lastly, document, right? The power of documentation. The power of giving to voice, maybe some of the gaps on where they are and putting it somewhere, right?

So that in future subsequent iterations and versions of things that you can come back to. Things as it came up. Yeah. I heard people are using archetypes more than personas. Yeah. I, I would say they’re very different. Just terminologies, some people call it persona spectrums, as we had talked about, is an archetype.

But sometimes people will define archetype as just like person, like a part of a personality that you build within. But it’s just one of those things that again, I recognize that the English D is very limited and what I usually don’t, and I’ve moved away from this need to just be so precise with certain terms in lingo, is because what some people learn is like, you know, archetype and persona may come from a different lived experience that had informed what they think some of these things are.

Yeah. Yeah. So that’s it for our presentation. Hopefully you got out of this some tools, some thought starters, some insights, inspiration as a part of holding space for research project.