Focus Forward: An Executive Function Podcast Ep 34: How Microsoft is Supporting Neurodiversity & Mental Health Through Inclusive Design
A few months ago, I was in Ithaca for a family event and met Doug Kim, who shared that he works for Microsoft as a principal design manager in their inclusive design team. Once he told me that his team develops technology in a way that supports neurodiversity and mental health, I knew I had to get Doug on Focus Forward.
For anyone who doesn’t know about inclusive design, let me give you a little primer. Microsoft is a leader in the field and much of what I am sharing I learned from their Inclusive Design Toolkit, (which you’ll hear more about later!) Inclusive design is a methodology that enables and draws on the full range of human diversity. Most importantly, this means including and learning from people with a range of perspectives. This explanation, which I just said, is the current, widely accepted definition, which was written by the inclusive design team at Microsoft. The concept of inclusive design was originally used for developing digital products but can, and should be used when designing anything that many people will use. It’s more than just making a product accessible, it’s about discovering and learning the variety of ways people might use a product from the people who will use it. Another thing I learned from the toolkit that helped me understand inclusive design more deeply is that “An important distinction between accessibility and inclusive design is that accessibility is an attribute, while inclusive design is a method. While practicing inclusive design should make a product more accessible, it’s not a process for meeting all accessibility standards. Ideally, accessibility and inclusive design work together to make experiences that are not only compliant with standards but truly usable and open to all.”
Something else you’ll hear my guests talk about is the collaborative and iterative nature of inclusive design. It involves continuous learning and adaptation based on user feedback. It’s a dynamic process aimed at creating products that truly meet the diverse needs of users. This aspect of inclusive design really resonated with me as an Executive Function coach and I hope it resonates with you, too!
Microsoft's Resources
Further Reading:
Mismatch: How Inclusion Shapes Design by Kat Holmes
Inclusive Design Toolkit and resources from University of Cambridge, UK
Inclusively - Support for employers and employees
History of Inclusive Design - Institute for Human Centered Design
Inclusive Design LinkedIn Learning Course with Christina Mallon
Contact Us!
Reach out to us at podcast@beyondbooksmart.com
IG/FB/TikTok @beyondbooksmartcoaching
Transcript
Hannah Choi 00:04
Hi everyone and welcome to Focus Forward, an executive function Podcast where we explore the challenges and celebrate the wins you'll experience as you change your life through working on improving your executive function skills. I'm your host, Hannah Choi. Oh my goodness, it has been a month since we last dropped an episode. With Thanksgiving and the ADHD conference and all the other stuff that just goes on at work. We decided to skip one this past month. And before I get to this episode's topic, I wanted to share a little mini report on our experience attending the ADHD conference, which was held in Baltimore from November 29 to December 2, and I'm recording this a few days after returning home and I am still filled with excitement. It was so great. Sean Potts and Justice Abbott from our marketing team and Wendy Craven, who is one of our outreach specialists joined me at the conference. And it was truly an incredible experience for us all. We met some brilliant and interesting people who stopped by our booth in the exhibit hall and shared their stories with us. And we worked really hard to make our booth a fun place to stop by people lined up to spin our colorful prize wheel and learn about ADHD symptoms and some tools that you can use to manage the challenges that come along with those symptoms. And our ADHD Beyond BookSmart squishy brains in our teal blue company color were a major hit. And our you're not lazy bracelets and stickers resonated with many people. We also had a secret notes project where people could anonymously share their thoughts about their ADHD, and a community art wall that everyone could contribute to. We are all so grateful we were able to attend. And next year's conference is in Anaheim in southern Southern Cal in sunny Southern California. And it is absolutely an event worth attending. So start saving those pennies.
Okay, so let's get into today's episode. Back in June, I was in Ithaca for a family event. And I met Doug Kim, who is a friend of my husband's cousin, Doug shared that he works for Microsoft as a principal design manager. And part of his job includes collaborating with the inclusive design team at Microsoft, and working on developing a guide for Inclusive Design for neurodiversity. And as soon as I heard those words come out of his mouth, I knew I had to get Doug on Focus Forward. And of course, because he's wonderful, he wholeheartedly said yes, and then came through with an even better offer, and brought two of his colleagues who are the leaders of inclusive design at Microsoft, Christina Mallon and Margaret Price. And for anyone who doesn't know about inclusive design, let me give you a little primer. Microsoft is a leader in the field and much of what I'm sharing I learned from their inclusive design Toolkit, which you're going to hear more about later. And inclusive design is a methodology that enables and draws on the full range of human diversity. Most importantly, this means including and learning from people with a range of perspectives. This explanation that I just said is the current widely accepted definition. And it was written by the inclusive design team at Microsoft. The concept of inclusive design was originally used for developing digital products, but can and should be used when designing anything that will be used by many people. It's more than just making a product accessible. It's about discovering and learning the variety of ways people might use a product from the people who will actually use it. An additional thing that I learned from the toolkit, and that helped me understand inclusive design more deeply is that an important distinction between accessibility and inclusive design is that accessibility is an attribute. Well, inclusive design is a method. While practicing inclusive designs should make a product more accessible. It's not a process for meeting all accessibility standards. Ideally, accessibility and inclusive design work together to make experiences that are not only compliant with standards, but truly usable, and open to all. And something else you'll hear my guests talk about is the collaborative and iterative nature of inclusive design. It involves continuous learning, and adaptation based on user feedback. It's a dynamic process, and it's aimed at creating products that truly meet the diverse needs of users. And this aspect of inclusive design really resonates with me as an executive function coach. As coaches we also collaborate with our clients to carefully and thoughtfully over time. Figure out the best way of using a tool to create a larger system that works to support the EF challenges the client experiences Okay, enough of me talking about this, let's get on to the show.
Oh, and by the way, you get to hear Exhausted Hannah today, I tried to record Focus Forward episodes in the mornings when my attention and my brain are at their best. But due to some scheduling limitations, a couple of my guests are on the West Coast. I recorded this conversation after a long day of work. And apparently speaking coherently, in complete sentences was not my strong point at that time that day, so please have patience with me. As you wait for me to get my thoughts out of my head. Oh, boy. Okay, here we go.
Hannah Choi 05:41
All right. Well, hello, Microsoft people. Thank you so much for joining me on Focus Forward. Would you go around the room and introduce yourselves? Doug, do you want to start since you're the one that kind of connected us all?
Doug Kim 06:01
Sure, yeah. Well, my name is Doug Kim, and I'm a design manager at Microsoft. Part of my charter is to help support inclusive design. And a strong collaborator with Margaret. And Christina, were also on the podcast today. And we've been talking and working quite a bit over the, over the past couple of years on developing our developing our inclusive design toolkit, and especially developing better practices for designing for neurodiversity.
Hannah Choi 06:34
And Christina,
Christina Mallon 06:37
so I am Christina Mallon, I lead inclusive design at Microsoft, I joined about two years ago. I have dual paralysis and ADHD. So really excited to bring my lived experience into the conversation today.
Hannah Choi 06:53
Yeah, thank you. And Margaret. And last but not least,
Margaret Price 06:57
Hi, my name is Margaret. I joined Microsoft in 2014, as one of the founders of the inclusive design practice. I'm a strategist, I have ADHD, and I'm on the spectrum. And so this is a topic that is near and dear to me.
Hannah Choi 07:13
So can you just tell me the story about how you, you know, got to where you are today, and, and you know, how this inclusive design became what it is, and just kind of how you got here.
Margaret Price 07:28
Back in 2014, the number of product groups at Microsoft were asking some pretty big, bold questions like, What is the future of interaction design? And what's missing from various design thinking methods today? And how can we think about embracing the full range of human diversity as we think about product making, from how we frame problems to how we solve them. And so a small team of people got together and created this practice called inclusive design at Microsoft, which is grounded in three principles of recognizing where there's exclusion today. Learning from diversity, and scaling, for figuring out how you can think about disability through the lens of permanent temporary and situational abilities. And recognizing that there's so much opportunity to learn from somebody who may be experiencing a permanent disability or anyone who's experienced a large range of exclusion. You might think about exclusion through the lens of disability, but also through the lens of socioeconomic status, gender identity and a number of other dimensions. And how do you bring people into the process who've been excluded. And what that means in product making is, of course, having diverse teams of people and championing that, but also thinking about how you recruit folks to come into the process as CO designers to actually bring equity into the process because, of course, what we make as a byproduct of how we make and so we started as a very small and scrappy team of people and ended up building education and capability for all of Microsoft and scaling that we wanted free, accessible resources for the world. So we actually ended up creating curricula that's now in over 60 universities around the world. And a number of companies have been inspired by the work that we've done to create their own inclusive design departments. And we've worked hard to, you know, create a number of experts there are incredible brilliant people all around Microsoft, who are experts in the space now who apply the inclusive design method into their own product groups. And so it's been, it's been a journey of trial and error and learning and testing from a number of diverse communities in Microsoft and outside of Microsoft. And it's certainly a subject that is near and dear to my heart and Doug's and Christina's.
Hannah Choi 10:17
That's great. Yeah, I love I love how that conversations are being had with people who, who truly know, the experience from because it's a lived experience, there's not, you know, there's not really sort of assumptions being made. Can you tell me a little bit about how you work with your co-creators and how you make that whole process? happen? And it sounds like it's pretty fantastic and successful.
Christina Mallon 10:52
Yeah, I mean, I'm happy to cover that. And Doug, let me know if you want to add on. So we believe and as Margaret just mentioned, it is integral that there is equity within product making. So our goal that Microsoft is to ensure that we are creating with people from marginalized communities, at the beginning of ideation, all the way to releasing for, you know, general release, and how we work with them is through either ERGs within our company, that has individuals from marginalized communities as a part of that erg and an erg as an employee resource group, or we work with teams or individuals with different lived experiences from being a part of a marginalized community outside and we pay them to ensure that they can provide feedback at multiple times within the product development process. And feel free to really join in as I know, we've been working hand in hand on this specifically in Azure.
Doug Kim 12:04
Yeah, you know, we're always looking for ways that we can collaborate with people who have experience and always always looking for ways to improve that and always ways to like, help, you know, the people on the inside, who are creating these products really, really, like, learn to empathize with what people are experiencing with their products, which is not easy. And it's, it's, it's not an easy process. And like, there were a lot of mistakes, I think, there were made, like, in the early days, people were just sort of building awareness about disability and accessibility, you know, people would try to just like, whatever, try to use a screen reader or something and say, oh, okay, I got it, right? Well, you know, you don't, right, because if you have the luxury of turning off the screen reader after 15 minutes, then you have no idea what it's like to not be able to do that. And so this is a lesson that we try to like, you know, drill into all the folks that we work with, in terms of like bringing them along on this process. You know, there's this, this is kind of like widely adopted phrase principle, you know, nothing for us without us. And so we really try to stick to that principle, like, involve people very deeply in the design process, who represent the audiences we're trying to expand our capabilities to include, and Sen. And we just really feel like you cannot practice inclusive design. Without that step. You know, you can't make assumptions because, you know, I guarantee if you're making assumptions without that input, they're going to be wrong. Yeah.
Christina Mallon 13:40
Yeah. And then Microsoft, we only consider products that are inclusive are ones that are co designed with communities. Because, you know, we believe that it is key to product success,
Hannah Choi 13:54
Right. So is, which would you say that, that like, how, how much does the idea of inclusive design come up in across to Microsoft as a whole? Like, is it it, would you say it's a conversation and and a viewpoint that the entire company has or is it is it more specific to certain products?
Christina Mallon 14:26
Yeah, I mean, our mission is to create you know, tools, so that every single customer and enterprise customer and person on this earth can use it to reach their dreams and the company is bought into inclusive design. There are, you know, certain parts of the company where I feel like it was a design is used more. I definitely you know, if you have champions like Margaret, and Doug and they are specific In organizations, we see a lot of inclusive design. There are others where there isn't a strong champ of inclusive design, that less inclusive design happens.
Hannah Choi 15:12
And I suppose that's found, I mean, it's huge company.
Christina Mallon 15:14
So over 200,000 people, yeah.
Doug Kim 15:19
You know, it doesn't matter you can, you can be in a company of 200,000, or a company have like three things, you're trying to change behavior, it's always interesting what you have to, like, think about, right and plan for and strategize. So I think our situation is different. Obviously, we're at one of the biggest companies in the world. But like, you could be at a company of six and face like a similar set of challenges, and convincing people to work this way, developing expertise, you know, that's what the toolkit is about, just because we want to be able to like, like, empower the whole ecosystem, and give folks like yourself, like a set of tools that kind of like, normalizes the idea of inclusivity, it doesn't make it like an oddball thing that you only do, or think about, you know, once in a while, when you have the times like
Hannah Choi 16:12
that one person or something.
Christina Mallon 16:14
First original toolkit, over 2 million people have downloaded and used, we just launched the inclusive design for cognition, which we like to call Inclusive Design for Brain Stuff. And that launched it and we've seen a massive amount of users using it. But really, the Inclusive Design original toolkit is what led the way.
Hannah Choi 16:38
Yeah, I really love that. Something that I am, one of the goals of this podcast is to increase conversations about, you know, like, neurodivergent brains and how, and how, like, Let's break the stigma. And so I really love that you guys addressed that. saw that as a as a separate, not a separate, I don't want to say separate but like sight as its as its own area that needed attention. And that, and that needed that recognition and guidance for people who might not know what, you know, what people are experiencing. So I really love that that is that that is out? Are you seeing more and more people?
Christina Mallon 17:28
Now we're definitely a huge demand, Margaret, and Doug, get some original work around cognition. And as I took in the new role about, you know, two years ago, and change, we said, Okay, this work is so amazing. How do we get this in a more formalized toolkit? Because there is such a demand, I'm constantly getting LinkedIn messages, emails and say, Hey, how are you designing for people who have trouble focusing or making decisions or communicating? And that's why I reached out to both Doug and Margaret, when I joined to say, hey, can we build upon this work, and they really were, let's do it and signed up. And I really appreciate the partnership, because, you know, we're seeing a lot of usage of the toolkit, and also seeing it reflected and used by product makers at Microsoft and externally.
Hannah Choi 18:25
And I really love how the way that you created, it makes it I felt like, as I read it as a I don't, you know, I don't create products, but I do create, I do help my clients create, you know, systems that work well for them. And I really loved how it, I felt like it really encourages the reader from whatever viewpoint they're coming from, to consider what they need, and, and to consider how to ask for what they need. And here are some possible ideas and it just the way that you presented it is just really accessible. And it's kind of fun. And, you know, like the graphics are really fun. And I know that's just kind of like little stuff, but as a consumer, it made a difference for me when I was engaging with it. So anyone listening who hasn't checked out the Inclusive Design toolkits from Microsoft, I really highly recommend checking them out a lot of really good stuff in there
Doug Kim 19:35
Inclusive dot Microsoft dot design, that's the website that they're on. Thank you, we promote and that's where like the original toolkit is there's a bunch of videos and guidance PDFs of what the new stuff on there and you know examples of how you know we've we've built these into products is these concepts.
Hannah Choi 19:58
So when you were creating them, how do you do come up with and kind of incorporate the five types of, of cognitive demands? Which for me are executive function skills, learning focus, decision making recall and communication. So I was just wondering like, how did you decide on those? Well,
Doug Kim 20:23
were you talking to Margaret? Oh, it's okay. Go ahead. No, you start.
Margaret Price 20:29
So it started with a pretty comprehensive, lit review. So looking at a lot of existing information from different fields of study, from psychology to cognitive science, to think about help us think about how do we frame this space? This is a really complex space. So how should we think about it? So we started with a lit review, then conducted hundreds of interviews with folks all around the world over a span of maybe two and a half years and 2015 2016. A lot of folks in academia to really deeply understand how can we think about perception, I can think about sensing and thinking, what are all of the different ways we could frame this? What are all the possibilities, and then we apply the inclusive design method to it, we brought in a lot of CO creators, we mapped a number of ways we could think about it, we started mapping the various dimensions. And actually, there's many, many, many more than our initial few. We prioritize these few based on the business opportunity for Microsoft, the opportunity for the world to have stronger impact on the need that we saw from people. And so all of this is grounded in evidence based research. And was prioritized based on where we saw the largest need in our communities.
Doug Kim 21:59
Yeah, and so like, I work on Azure, which is our, you know, enterprise oriented cloud services offering. And we did a lot of studies for how Azure works, or does not work for neurodivergent users. And so a lot of the things that we pulled out of those studies kind of found its way into the guidance that there's there in the toolkit, like decision making in Azure is, is kind of a huge deal like and you have to retain a lot of information to be able to effectively make effective decisions you have like dozens or hundreds of options to choose from to get a particular result that you're looking for. And so we wanted to kind of like abstract out some of these to the like, the cognitive types of functions that are at play here, and how we do or do not support them. So I think a lot of the some of the impetus to choose these came from, you know, the research that Margaret was referencing, but also kind of the experience of our users who are saying, like, this is where if I make the wrong move, I could be in big trouble. You know, you could write $1,000, as opposed to nothing. Yeah. So you hear that? And you go, Oh, okay, I get it. That's a tough call. Yeah.
Hannah Choi 23:27
Yeah. And if you can't confidently make those decisions, then you're going to be more stressed, which is going to impact your ability to use your executive function skills. Well, which is going to set you up for making more mistakes. So yeah, and that just shows you how important it is to consider these things for people who do not have a, you know, you know, that like don't have ADHD or don't, you know, have mental health struggles or whatever, you know, is impacting someone's someone at work, it's so important to consider that. And I love how you think about that scalability. I have how, you know, like, this thing, yes, it addresses a need here that everybody can actually use it and benefit from it.
Doug Kim 24:19
So I'm curious like for you, okay, so you're an executive functioning coach, very fascinating to learn how this kind of affects your work. Like one of the issues that came up for us was just consequences. Right? Am I aware when I'm going through a given experience, what the consequences of my decisions are? And if not, how do I move forward? So is that something that comes up for you like what, what are your clients telling you about consequences and the stuff that they need to be able to, like understand and move forward make decisions? You know, when the consequences are ambiguous?
Hannah Choi 24:55
Yeah, it's huge. And so much so much that comes out is confidence, the confidence to make any decision that they're making? And many of the people that I've worked with, have have spent their life feeling like they've been doing it wrong all along. And, and so to come to a space where question like, you know, like, I'm asking them questions like, what does work for you? What doesn't work for you? What have been the consequences of your actions in the past? And, you know, and and what do you kind of envision for yourself in the future? It's? Yeah, not really sure where I'm going with this. You're really, really, really, so much of what I do just real, I can really relate to the work that you guys have done in addressing. Yeah, the potential consequences that other people have to have in their life and the business decisions that they're making or whatever.
Doug Kim 25:58
Yeah, yeah, I think it goes back to sort of like, basically understand, like, what the, one of the one of the key concepts in the toolkit is trying to try to understand what the cognitive load is, like, how much demand are you putting on the on the user? And why and where does it come into your experience? Right? And so these are, the aspects of the dimension is how much you're asking them to remember how much you are you expecting them to project in terms of the the consequences of their decisions, I want you you're expecting them to be able to act on their own versus in collaboration with their teammates, or co workers. And I think these are normally things that we don't really discuss in depth, we're just sort of like build products, assuming that a person is acting alone, acting independently, and has all the tools that they need to be able to say, make an informed decision. And so, I mean, that's not totally true. I'm being a little bit. I'm exaggerating a little bit, just to make the point. But I think that one of the points of the toolkit is to say, don't make assumptions here, options about what your customer does or doesn't know or what they're expecting, as they're moving through an experience. Build it in a way so you understand what you're asking of your customers, you and understand the level of demand that you're placing on them to do anything, because every experience does that. Right. There's something that it's going to ask of you, right to say, like, if you jump into a car, like there's a presumption that you understand how to operate it, because you've passed the test, at some point, we're seeing all that stuff, the minute you turn on the ignition, right, there's an assumption that you know that when you press the brake, that the car is going to stop. So every, every experience does that to a certain extent. But not all product traders measure that, and weigh that and say, what actually, where are we assuming before somebody even, you know, starts the car?
Margaret Price 28:10
Well, I love what you're saying. And to build on it, I think it's a really great set of points that leads to the recognition. You know, there's a lot I mentioned, at the beginning of the call, I have ADHD, and I'm on the spectrum, and there's a lot of self-blame that can happen. What's wrong with me? Why can I use those sorts of thoughts? And I think that's where, you know, the worlds colliding and unlikely between what we do and a lot of what you do, which is, you know, as Doug mentioned, asking, what are the cognitive demands? And where are the mismatches between what's needed from the person and what the product is providing? And recognizing that it's not your fault. It's this product’s fault. Yeah, this is not built in a way that's going to serve you. Well. And this is not about you. This is about the product not being built. Good enough.
Hannah Choi 29:03
Yes. Yes. And that yeah, that's, that's many conversations that I have with my clients is being like, there's nothing wrong with you. This is how your brain works. And this and unfortunately, it is not the system, the world that we are in is not, you know, necessarily designed for that.
Doug Kim 29:25
Well, I think that's especially true with like, well, I don't know, I don't want to get into kind of a waiting thing. But like, you see, that was neurodivergent. Conditions like so commonly, like I think societally, like in this is true, I think, pretty much across the globe, we're like conditioned to say, put the onus on the person with that condition to adapt. Yep. It's an experience that wasn't built for them. And, you know, that's sort of like one of the key premises of the toolkit and this extension of the toolkit. deals with cognition, which is that no, like, that's, it's not you, it's us. It's not, it's not you, like, if it doesn't work for you, then that's a problem with a product, right? It's a problem with the environment or the world that were created, never expecting you to participate in. Like, if it doesn't work for you, then we need to adapt it, we need to come up with systems that normalize you to an extent that allows you to function as effectively or better than anybody else who's using a product. And, like, puts the onus on us as periodic creators, to, to adapt to you as opposed to the other way around. And the fact that our systems up until, you know, very recently, and like without this sort of understanding of how things work could work potentially a lot better for our interviewers. And folks. It's, it's, you know, it just hasn't been built that way. And, you know, I think our mission, like the three of us together, and now you and everybody else who's like involved in this inclusive design process, is is to upend that expectation, and say, it's the onus on people who are creating products. You know, I mean, you create a product, this podcast is a product, right. And it could be applied to anything that anybody, you know, makes,
Christina Mallon 31:25
I think, people are starting to see this, you see the World Health Organization, how they define disability as a mismatch between a person and a design. And I think that is really key because, again, as a disabled person, I'm told, okay, you need to figure out how to do this or fix this solution. Yeah, and it's really taxing. And this is something that's common in marginalized communities.
Hannah Choi 31:54
Yes. Yes. Yeah, I was just doing some research on, on advocating for yourself at work. And, and many of the articles that I read, said, unfortunately, it is on you, it will, in most situations, it will be on you to educate your employer, on what how to, you know, meet your needs. And so, it's, and that's, that's with any marginalized community, marginalized community, right. It's it, unfortunately, at this point, it is, it is on that group to educate everyone else. This inclusive design, the fact that Microsoft is embracing this so much shows us that that, like, that's a good role model. Do you think that within I mean, I guess you guys can only speak for the departments with it to work. But would you say that within it, or in your experience? Like, Christina, if you need something? Do you feel like you're, it is easy for you to advocate for yourself? Do you feel like that inclusive design concept spreads to the advocacy part? And for Costco? Yes,
Christina Mallon 33:14
I'm definitely empowered to implement inclusive design, and that the entire company has a pretty good understanding the importance of it. But the current state of the economy, with our focus on AI, there's definitely more begging that needs to get done for resources around it. And I think, you know, that's why people in positions of power really need to advocate for this. And that's why when I started, Doug, and Margaret, could empathize with me. And were able to provide, you know, their resources to help create the inclusive design for cognition toolkit.
Hannah Choi 33:58
And, and Doug and Margaret would like, where did where did your strength in, in, in your knowledge come from? Was that just from your experiencing your experience of creating this inclusive design? Or is that something that you have naturally already felt before you got into that?
Doug Kim 34:19
Everything I know comes from Margaret.
Hannah Choi 34:24
Margaret, you're amazing.
Margaret Price 34:28
You're all amazing. Yeah,
Christina Mallon 34:30
we're all amazing
Margaret Price 34:32
lots of listening and learning. And I as a generalist strategist, I like to learn there's so many brilliant leaders in this space outside of Microsoft, who pioneered inclusive design long before Microsoft got in the business. And so a lot of listening and learning to brilliant folks. And we can, you know, give you links For show notes too. Yeah,
Hannah Choi 34:58
Thank you, I was just gonna say that
Margaret Price 35:01
A lot of listening, a lot of learning a lot of synthesizing just a ton of information. And wanting to communicate it in ways, as you mentioned earlier that are simple for anybody to understand. And connecting dots that might seem not connectable, I have a background in research as well. And so I love listening and learning and connecting dots that might seem like they can't connect. And I think, you know, to your question earlier about advocating for ourselves in the workplace, I think, for me, a lot of it came from not as much inclusive design as the work on myself. And I think you do a lot of this with folks that you coach, probably, but really becoming, you know, keenly self aware about my needs, and how to communicate them and boundaries and how to communicate them. And recognizing that communicating well. And communicating in a way that's going to serve me is the absolute best thing that I can do, rather than ignoring or suppressing what I need.
Hannah Choi 36:07
Yeah, and so much of advice, like going back to the idea of how you have to, you know, it is on you as a person to advocate for yourself, and you might end up having to educate your employer. But a big part of that self advocacy is, you know, like, knowing yourself, and knowing what your boundaries are and right, like you said, like learning how to, how to ask for that. And yeah, that is, it's a lot of what I do. Yeah. And it's so funny, because I just, just over the past year, went through the whole ADHD diagnosis and answered all these life questions that I've had about myself for a very long time. And, and, you know, working at beyond booksmart, it was, it was like, not a thing, and not a big deal. It was, you know, it wasn't like I had to decide whether I was going to disclose and, and, you know, there were already so many systems built into, you know, built into how we do things at beyond booksmart. Because, because we are in the business of supporting people with executive function challenges. So I feel very lucky that I work at a company where I am just automatically supported, and that there are lots of people within the company who, you know, also, like, have shared needs or similar needs, or even different needs. And so a lot of our training materials are presented in many different formats. And, you know, there's, there's many different ways to interact and many different choices that you can make whatever works the best for you. And I know, that's not how it is that many places. And so I, I really hope that these kinds of conversations continue to happen that companies like Microsoft, and other I mean, you guys almost have like a, an I don't know, if you feel this way, but as a very large company, like you have a really big opportunity to, you know, to be a voice for this. I, you know, I like I kind of feel that way, there's a podcast host of like, well, I don't really have a lot of power, but I have a little bit of power, and I'm going to try to use it. So do you. Do you feel that? Do you feel like that responsibility?
Christina Mallon 38:18
Yeah, I mean, I took my job six months pregnant with my first child, which is kind of crazy. But I knew the power that Microsoft has to empower people like be to be able to achieve their dreams. And I already knew that the foundation has been set by people like Doug and Margaret. So it would come into a very inclusive company.
Doug Kim 38:48
Well, I would say that, you know, something that, like kind of struck me as you were talking when I was was like the, the idea that you have power, and I think everybody has power. And a lot of us have this tendency to like even regardless of what position we're in, to kind of under estimate what that what that power is. And so I think if you're in this, you care about this space, which if you made it this far into this episode, you obviously do. You can exercise your power on one on one, right, you can help shape conversation and you can help normalize things. If you're more of like from representing the ally ship side of things, you can learn more, you can reduce the burden on your colleagues or whoever it is to have to advocate for themselves. You can absorb information like our toolkit, but any of the other like, you know, amazing resources that are that there are out there to help, you know, again, create this expectation. ation of inclusion as a as a regular and standard practice. So there we're constantly stretching ourselves to be more inclusive and to include more audiences that haven't been included to this point. So it could be a one person company, it could be two people working together to see, you know, examine how they operate, could be a soccer club could be whatever a classroom. I don't think that work ever ends. But it's like, I think we found that it's joyful work, you know, it's inspiring work. Learn more about human human capability, and what you can do to enable and empower that. So, you know, it's also fun.
Hannah Choi 40:48
What creative work, problem solving, and something that you said in the beginning, just connected me back to what you were just saying. And you said, I think Margaret, it might have been you, you said, you asked people a lot of questions, the CO creators that you worked with. And then Doug, you said, you made a lot of mistakes in the beginning, I can't remember exactly who said what, but but I think that's part of that power is not being afraid to ask the questions, and not being afraid to make the mistakes. And, and that is so scary for people, especially when you're asking questions about something that you don't really know a lot about.
Doug Kim 41:29
So yeah, you know, sort of, you're bringing into mind this, or like, you know, that era that Margaret was referring to earlier, back 2014, 2015. You know, I just started, like, getting used to interviewing people with disabilities. And I was interviewing this woman who has a low vision person who used like, an extreme amount of magnification, and a third party tool to be able to magnify her, um, screens to something like 400 person, and I was watching her work and just kind of like, making little comments. And at one point, the, the screen magnification tool she was using just crashed and quit. And, you know, I was looking at her and I said, and I just kind of chalk. Well, I said, oh, shoot, like, it's a crash. Let's, let's reboot that out. And she just looks at me, she goes, Why are you laughing? And I said, Oh, well, it's just the like, a little glitchy thing. And she just said, you know, it's not a glitch. When this happens. It is so hard for me to get this back. And my livelihood, because she was an independent business person, right, who worked on her own. She said, You know, my livelihood could be drastically affected. Like every time this happens, and you know, Margaret's done a lot of research, too with customers who have said a lot of the same things around things like, you know, improperly coated, or created notifications and interruptions. There's a lot of science around that, too. But at the time, I was like, oh, boy, I just got a big lesson. Yeah. And understanding, you know, how to empathize with what people are experiencing. Yeah, so I view that as kind of, like, you know, a mistake on my part, in terms of how I reacted to what she was experiencing at the time. But something that has, like, continued to, like, help me understand how to move forward, and how to understand how to work with folks with disabilities, or with anybody really, anybody? Yeah, developing more like tools for empathy and understanding and how to keep you know, going deeper into this work. So those are, those are really helpful. Actually, I still pretty much think that, you know, like, if she remembers that at all, it's quite some time. Now, she probably didn't think much of me. But yeah, she's been enormously helpful. Just that one episode, to you know, whatever progress I've made my journey along this path.
Hannah Choi 44:05
Yeah, and going back to that power, I mean, that shows like the power of, of experiences for people, we, you know, we never know the impact that we might have on somebody. And so you guys probably don't even see the the impact that your work has, has had on, on everybody.
Christina Mallon 44:25
We get some nice notes here and there. But I think having people with disabilities within the company is super important. Because you're able to do these really quick empathy sessions and you can actually see oh man, this really does affect when the small design changes made. When we look at power and power dynamics, most people that are making decisions sit in an area where they have lots of power, they are white, they are male, they're educated. They speak English, upper middle class live in, you know, the states or the UK. And it is so important to have diversity within the company so they can influence these power makers or become one of the power people. And Microsoft does a good job of that, and really looking at hiring and trying to increase the exposure to people with disabilities. But you know, here's the thing, everyone's gonna make a mistake, I make mistakes about disability, and I'm disabled myself. So it's always a learning experience. And if people treat it as a learning experience, and don't get scared to even interact with someone that disability, life will be better. Yes,
Hannah Choi 45:42
I worked for a few years in the, in the students in the, like Disability Resource Center at a community college. And, and I just loved it, that diversity of employees within that, within that office, and then the students that came in, it was, it was I made a ton of mistakes, I made a ton of mistakes. And I learned so much. And it was, it was just such an amazing experience. So grateful for it. Yeah, I we're actually, I'm right in the middle of preparing for a webinar, we do these community education webinars, and we have one coming up a week from today. And it's about, it's about how to manage like perceived failure. And, and we're talking a lot about how, like, exactly that what you said, Doug, like that, that felt like a mistake, but you are still learning from it years later. And how how when you can change your viewpoint from seeing it as a mistake, and something to trip you up and stop you and switch it to see us something as that we can learn from and grow from. And you can separate a little bit separate, like your ego from it and and then become more, you know, just more aware and more understanding.
Doug Kim 47:10
Well, you know, yeah, and I think that, like, if you're coming from a position of ally ship, again, that you should expect to encounter a road where you have setbacks and you take on risks, you know, in, in your journey to like, you know, help serve that community or even understand more about that community, you you're part of the goal, I think of ally ship is to alleviate risk from other people and put it on yourself. And some of that risk is, you know, involved in in making mistakes. I mean, if I look at whatever the embarrassment that I felt in that moment that I was talking about, it's not much compared to what the person that I was trying to understand from past experience every day, every time that you know, magnifier crashes. And so like, if a second if I can take one second to have an embarrassing moment, and help, you know, ultimately create a better system for her, then that's really not much of a risk. But it is, it is, like a lot of people like think about, like a potential misstep like that as a huge risk. In some ways it is. It's embarrassing. It's not fun. But it's what you're doing is you're you're you're taking some like emotional discomfort, you know, or the possibility of emotional discomfort, you know, off somebody else's plate and putting it onto yours. That's a very that's, that's an expected and also a that's an outcome. You know, you should you should expect to have.
Hannah Choi 48:54
My favorite quote, ever is by Susan David, who's a psychologist, and she said, discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life. And I just love that so much.
Margaret Price 49:08
Oh, that's beautiful. I love Susan David.
Hannah Choi 49:10
I know I love her. She's so great.
Margaret Price 51:21
Delightful. Well, thank you so much for having us on. Because yeah, speaking of executive executive functioning skills, flexibility is part of that and my, and my rigid schedule, I am gonna have to hop. But really, it was such a delight. Meeting you, Hannah, and speaking with you, and of course, talking with two people that I just adore, Christina and Doug. So thank you for having us on and for discussing this important topic.
Hannah Choi 51:52
And that's our show for today. Thanks so much for taking time out of your day to listen and learn about inclusive design and for having some patience with me. You can find links to lots of inclusive design resources in the show notes, and please share this episode with your family or your friends who might help it find it useful. If you have questions or topic suggestions, you can reach out to me at podcast at beyond booksmart.com and please subscribe to focus forward on Apple podcast Spotify or wherever else you get your podcasts. If you listen on Apple or Spotify, you can give us a boost by giving us a five star rating. Sign up for our newsletter at beyond booksmart.com/podcast. We'll let you know when new episodes drop, and we'll share information related to the topic. Our very patient editor and producer is Sean Potts. Our thoughtful and creative content marketer is justice Abbott extra special thanks to Doug who brought Christina and Margaret onto the show with me and a million thank yous to the people at beyond booksmart who helped make our attendance at the ADHD conference possible. Thanks for listening