17: Making Inclusive Product Design Real

In this episode of the How to Succeed in Product Management Podcast, marketing professor Jeff Shulman and The Product Management Center advisory board member Soumeya Benghanem welcome Mandy Bhullar (Lululemon) and Ada Lopez (Lenovo) to talk about bringing an inclusive lens on product design. When designing a product, inclusivity should be taken into consideration at the very beginning - when looking at data and conducting research, when planning and structuring, and when finding a diverse team to work on the product.

Support for How to Succeed in Product Management is brought to you by Apptentive, which enables product managers to measure shifts in customer emotion and gather actionable feedback across the mobile customer journey. To learn more, go to Apptentive.com/UW.

What to Listen For:

• 00:00 Intro
• 01:41 Diversifying inclusive product design 
• 11:02 What inclusive product design?
• 16:09 The curiosity and investigating the ways in which diverse users might experience technologies differently 
• 18:43 Inclusive thinking is everyone’s responsibility
• 19:51 There’s always opportunities to add inclusion 
• 21:21 A lot of the technological advances were designed with inclusion
• 22:41 Think who is not benefiting from a product and build for them
• 28:00 Data research tools: survey, screener, and asking the right questions
• 31:21 Having a diverse team helps in designing inclusively
• 35:10 Adaptive gaming controllers are fun inclusive designs
• 39:20 Build awareness around who to include or exclude
• 45:18 Collect different inclusive information in repository for future reference
• 47:35 Constantly search within the context of your product
• 50:35 “Develop products with inclusive design and accessibility from the beginning.” - Ada Lopez
• 51:07 “Be intentional about making inclusive decisions.” - Mandy Bhullar 
• 54:07 “Inclusion is a different way of going about product design.” -  Soumeya Benghanem