#7: Events with the p.o.v

The role of inclusive design and what is it like to be innovating in the present for an equitable future. Is it sustainable? How do we identify and reach those in crisis?

In the past two weeks I feel fortunate to have attended a couple events where head of designs from companies that are advocates of making products more accessible are demonstrating work towards celebrating futures which are more equitable. The present day definitely does not seem celebratory, however the action and mindset feels hopeful.

The speakers provoked many ideas around the rapidly changing urban context and a call to action which indicates shifting our mindset towards purposes larger than the context one finds themselves in. I feel it resonates with the boundaries of my personal exploration topic, so I decided to write about them here.

I find that in human centered design approach of research, the peripheries are usually where we find interesting patterns and habits. Matt May, head of inclusive design at Adobe recently visited CCA for a talk about his work. He shared his journey as an Accessibility engineer to heading now a new design division which overlooks Inclusivity in Design. His point of view was that accessibility was more outcome oriented and by calling it Universal or Inclusive design, a broader audience can be addressed. He stressed upon the idea of how Inclusion is about Disabilities and its a thought around a mismatch between a person and their environment.

Some of his examples covered physical aspects, however, largely designed to appeal to web applications. He shared about his book, which he co-authored with Wendy Chisholm: Universal Design for Web Applications . This work covers much of his learnings from 1995, when he initiated learning about Accessibility guidelines to now discovering how exclusion manifests in the environment. His call to action was to "Ask questions about situations by going into the communities."

There was an interesting section about his talk about contributing to designing the Adobe product XD. He shared how experience design is very visual, and how while user testing, they realised a blind person accesses his daily requirements.

Matt shares about 10 great examples of companies working on web applications of universal design and accessibility that inspire him in his blog.

Kat Holmes, Principle Director of Inclusive design at Microsoft 2014-2017 propagates similar ideas through her work. In 2017, Holmes was named one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business. Her book and online design community called mismatch.design dedicated to advance inclusive design is another inspiring initiative.

Mdes C4 at Navigating Design Conference, Stanford, Nov 16, 2018

Sitting to converge how these ideas make sense for my exploration topic, I found myself in Navigating Design conference, held in Stanford last week, where Elizabeth Laraki, shared her journey through design and facebook using data for social good. This being on the day when media was declaring Northern California with the worst air quality in the whole world and me reassuring my worried family that I am fine while the air quality back home in India is probably worse. Leaves me with few fundamental thoughts-

The levels of chaos that a person deals with at single points of time could be extra-ordinary and simply overwhelming, how might we inspire socially relevant behaviors around times of crisis through the networks we are already using.