Annie Jean Baptiste: Google's approach to inclusive design
Dec 8, 2020
auto_awesome
Annie Jean Baptiste, Head of Product Inclusion at Google, discusses her book about inclusive design, the ABCs of Product Inclusion, hiring practices for inclusive teams, and strategies for building inclusivity into your own team.
Product inclusion should focus on 12 dimensions of diversity and consider intersectionality.
Building inclusive products and services is not only ethically important but also provides significant business opportunities.
Deep dives
The Role of Product Inclusion at Google
Annie Jean-Baptiste, the Head of Product Inclusion at Google, discusses the importance of product inclusion and bringing an inclusive lens to the entire product design process at Google. She emphasizes the need to build products for everyone and highlights key points in the design process where diverse voices need to be included. Annie also mentions the role of inclusion champions, who volunteer to support the product inclusion efforts. These champions help with inclusive product testing and participate in various phases of the design process, ensuring a more comprehensive and diverse perspective.
Dimensions of Diversity and Intersectionality
Annie explains that in product inclusion, they focus on 12 dimensions of diversity and the intersections between them. These dimensions include race, ethnicity, age, ability, sexual orientation, religion, gender, geography, culture, and socioeconomic status. Annie highlights the importance of thinking holistically about users and the multiple facets that make up their identities. She also emphasizes the need to consider intersectionality in order to better understand and accommodate diverse users' experiences and needs.
The Business Case for Product Inclusion
Annie discusses the business case for product inclusion, pointing out that addressing the needs of underrepresented groups is not only the right thing to do ethically but also makes business sense. She explains that there are significant purchasing power and market opportunities associated with various underrepresented groups. Annie emphasizes the importance of building inclusive products and services in order to meet the expectations of consumers and reach the next billion users worldwide.
Strategies for Inclusive Design and Continuous Testing
Annie shares strategies and tools for inclusive design, emphasizing the importance of continuously testing and iterating products. She discusses the four key points in the product design process where inclusive practices can have a significant impact: ideation, user research and design, user testing, and marketing. Annie also highlights the value of deep research with a wide range of constituents from underrepresented communities, ensuring the design process considers diverse perspectives and dimensions of diversity.
Show notes: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/annie-jean-baptiste
As designers and design leaders, most of us understand the ethical importance of making our products accessible and inclusive for all the people who use them. But we don’t always understand the best way to go about doing this, or the business case for making it a priority.
That’s why we were excited to speak with Annie Jean Baptiste, Head of Product Inclusion at Google. Our recent guest John Maeda said, "If there is one voice in tech to listen to right now, it is Annie's on the material impact of inclusion in business today and in the future."
Annie recently wrote a book called Building For Everyone: Expand Your Market With Design Practices From Google's Product Inclusion Team. We ask her about what spurred her to write the book, along with some of the strategies she uses for researching, designing, and shipping inclusive products.
We hope you come away from this conversation with some ideas you can bring back to your own team, to make better products for everyone. Thanks for listening.
Takeaways:
Learn about the "ABCs of Product Inclusion" which Annie writes about in her book
Hear about hiring practices to build inclusive teams
Get guidance on how to build this role into your own team.
Get the Snipd podcast app
Unlock the knowledge in podcasts with the podcast player of the future.
AI-powered podcast player
Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features
Discover highlights
Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode
Save any moment
Hear something you like? Tap your headphones to save it with AI-generated key takeaways
Share & Export
Send highlights to Twitter, WhatsApp or export them to Notion, Readwise & more
AI-powered podcast player
Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features
Discover highlights
Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode