What should you consider when creating an equity-focused product?

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Equity focused design

There are many user design frameworks and all the frameworks face user centred design. These design frameworks accommodate users’ needs, putting users front and Center while creating and building designs.

Frameworks of Design

We discuss equity Focus design, we need to know other aspects of design frameworks. The first two would give an in-depth knowledge of what it is about. The universal design involves creating or building one product for a wide range of abilities and situations, so that one solution is proposed for all users. This method had its own problems. A lot of users were not included , many problems were left without solutions and people’s needs were not met.

The second framework is inclusive design. This particular framework puts in consideration ability, race, economic status, language, and gender while making design choices, thereby including people who have been traditionally excluded or marginalized in the society. This design framework solves for one user and extends its advantages and solution to many other users.

Learning about the previous gives us insights as to what equity focused design is about. Equity focused design provides design solutions for groups that have been historically underrepresented and ignored while building products. it’s goals are specifically centred on creating solutions for individuals in these groups alone. This means they are not only included while building these products for users, but these products are specifically built for them.

What is Equity focused design

It is reasonable to understand the difference between Equity and Equality before diving into this concept. Though they look similar, they are quite different. Equality means giving the same opportunity to all segments of individuals in the society while equity refers to providing a different yet fair amount of opportunity to everyone to achieve fair outcomes. Creating a pictorial illustration in our minds, if Mr A, Mr B and Mr C need help to complete their tuition fee of $50 and each have $10,$20, $30 respectively. A philanthropist appears to offer support of $50 for the three, it is only fair they shared the money to cover each person’s definitely instead of sharing the money equally. Here, equity is applied.

Equity is reached or exists when an outcome is no longer predicted by any aspect of an individual’s identity. Equity focused design is one of the important concepts to consider during the design process. Learning about accessibility will also help a designer Understand equity focused design better.

Equity focused design is the newest concept of design framework. It doesn’t just build products for people who have been ignored or underrepresented, the main goal for equity focus design is for community development, realised by reaching out and concentrating on communities that have been neglected overtime. An example with gender as criteria, a lot of women have been absent from the internet. Many because they have been stopped from using it by their spouses, frowned at by society in many countries while some others have been bullied into hiding from it because of hateful speech or being photoshopped into pornography. Recently, more women are coming back to the internet. Concentrating on products that will encourage more women to stay online is a way of implementing equity focused design.

Principles that can guide designers though Equity focused design.

To address equity things in between lines/gaps are considered. There are 3 guides to have in mind while working on equity focused design.

Honor: it is crucial honour these individuals listen to the challenges they face, capture their various strengths and spectra of experience. While designers carry out their research, they need to understand that they matter.

2. Heal: Designers should understand that they are not only solving problems but oftentimes, healing. This is because many times this group of excluded or ignored might be traumatized, so during the research process, designers should listen and empathize while these groups tell their stories.

3. Keep an open mind: it is not always easy to come to terms with things you don’t fully understand. Designers should keep an open mind while they learn new things about these individuals, they should prepare to understand even if they’re hearing it for the first time.

It is important to bear in mind that equity focused design doesn’t solve all problems just like the other two previously mentioned. However, it provides solutions for the specific individuals considered while building the products.

Sources

Foundations of User Experience (UX) Design

https://www.coursera.org/learn/foundations-user-experience-design

https://youtu.be/16xBZm1IAN8

This are my notes from Google UX professional certificate

Here we’ll talk about three more ways to put the user first in our designs.

When designers began considering how to include an even broader range of people in their designs, they called it universal design.

Universal design is the process of creating one product for users with the widest range of abilities and in the widest range of situations.

Designers propose one solution for everyone. The problem is that when you focus on creating one solution for everyone, the designs lose their effectiveness. It’s often difficult to achieve any goals with your product when you have so many intended users.

Even though it had the intention of being inclusive, it excluded a lot of people. It turns out one-size-fits-all isn’t a great solution. As UX designers realized that universal design didn’t meet the needs of every user, the approach to including people began to change. Designers started thinking about the concept of inclusive design, which focuses on finding solutions to meet different needs.

Inclusive design means making design choices that take into account personal identifiers like ability, race, economic status, language, age, and gender.

Inclusive design includes researchers and designers from traditionally excluded populations in the process, so they can provide their unique perspectives during all phases of the design process.

If universal design is a one-size-fits-all solution, then inclusive design can be described as solve for one, extend to many. With inclusive design, you solve for one type of user, and the benefit of that solution can extend to many other types of users.

Our goal as designers is to build experiences that are accessible to users with the widest range of abilities. In other words, no one should be excluded from using a product that we built because we didn’t consider their needs when building it. In inclusive design, there’s no such thing as normal. There’s no average person or target audience that we should design for.

ccessibility is the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities.

Accessibility is just one aspect of inclusive design.But keep in mind that the idea of “solve for one, extend to many,” only benefits the group the design was created for and existing users. Many groups are still left out. Over time UX designers realized that inclusive design wasn’t always enough, and that’s where we find ourselves today as equity-focused design becomes a new industry goal.

Equity-focused design asks designers to focus on designing for groups that have been historically underrepresented or ignored when building products.

The goal of equity-focused design is to uplift groups that have been excluded historically. In order to design with equity as a goal, we first need to know the difference between equality and equity.

quality means providing the same amount of opportunity and support to all segments of society. In other words, everyone gets the same thing.

quity means providing different levels of opportunity and support for each person in order to achieve fair outcomes.

Instead of building products for groups of people who are currently being excluded, which is the goal of inclusive design, equity-focused design seeks to build products that meet the needs of specific individuals in groups who have been excluded in the past. So what does this look like in the real world?

Start by identifying a product you want to build. Then, think about the groups that have not been served by this type of product in the past. Finally, build your design while keeping the groups who identified as underrepresented front and center. It’s important to keep in mind that equity-focused design doesn’t solve all problems, just like inclusive design and universal design don’t either. The key point is that these are all different approaches to solving issues of underrepresentation and designing for a more equitable future.

Often, schools and companies consider accessibility, inclusive design, and equity-focused design as methods to consider during the design process, but not as a requirement.