By Stefano Virgilli — Things are changing in the world of design. In the race of grabbing users’ attention and rising above their growing expectations, design leaders initiate changes in areas that influence the creative note inside designer teams.
John Maeda envisions diversity as a primary step towards successful projects and the development of a greater understanding of inclusive design. Among the need of diversity, in his “Design in Tech Report 2017”, the designer also talks about designs, market relevance and meaningful results and how adopting an inclusive design approach expands a tech product’s total addressable market.
When last year John Maeda joined Automattic, the parent company of WordPress.com, Jetpack, WooCommerce and others, he stepped into the position of global head of computational design and inclusion.
On his new role, Maeda said, “I believe that creativity and inclusion are two sides of the same coin. They’re necessary things. If you care about design, you have to care about inclusion.”
As a concept, inclusive design has been accepted by company giants including Google and Microsoft, whose aim is creating a product that will fulfil the needs of the broadest range of consumers possible, especially the ones in underserved demographics. Creating an improved product that will appeal to everyone is the essential goal of inclusive design.
Particularly on this topic, Maeda says, “Design culture isn’t the priority — it’s to make a working product.”
“My goal really as the head of computational design and inclusion is to help the community to unlock its own ability to understand what design is, and become better designers in the process,” he adds.
He plans on using the power of computing to make Wordpress.com a platform for an even wider network of people.
“It’s the design executive’s view of design and inclusion,” he adds. “I can ask questions about any content, any product, any way we try to create a better outcome — who’s here? Who are we missing? How can we make sure we’re not missing anyone?”
According to the design expert, all of this can be achieved by engaging with a variety of people while expanding the company’s influence to designers of other countries and cultures.
Lately, companies started reconsidering their employee choices. Recognizing the power of diversity in design teams is just a step forward in the process of creating real changes. This means a greater chance for designers of different races, different gender and disabilities levels. Creating diverse teams as part of the design process is a needed approach for progress and improvement in this field.
And although Automatic’s head of HR, Lori McLeese thinks there is “a ton of room to improve”, they “strongly believe that diverse teams create the best results.” Acknowledging this obstacle should prepare the company for the challenge as there are only 14 female programmers out of the total number of 200 employees.
However, in reality, things are quite different. Companies in general, often tend to disregard the need of including people from different cultures, gender and race in their companies which results in social inequalities. This sensitive field has been marked by a couple of incidents.
For instance, Apple’s emojis were recently under attack for being racist. After the reaction, the company offered to change the colour of the emojis. However, changing the colour did not solve the problem, as some people found it even more racist, saying that including colour emojis only meant identifying people on social media through the colour of their skin.
Being a part of Automattic, Maeda plans on making an impact in the area of human resources. His understanding of issues concerning diversity in tech companies is just a beginning of the changes in the dynamic world of design.
Besides adopting inclusive design approach to expand tech product’s market, and how design is also about market relevance and meaningful results and not only beauty, in his “2017 Design in Tech Report,” Maeda explains the power of words in terms of design.
Words communicate with the users adding value to the creative app. Therefore, Maeda lists writing as the second “unicorn skill” for designers right after coding. In his report, he writes, “A lot of times designers don’t know that words are important”.
The importance of copywriting as a skill for designers translates through the current trends among customer’s demands. Learning copywriting allows designers to create a better experience for the user. It allows them to tell the story and the artwork of the product.
Many companies incorporate copywriters as a part of their design teams, which brings user experience to another level. Companies that understand the power of words start to utilize it to their advantage and change the mindset of their customers, incite action and grow their revenue.
Maeda puts a light on fundamental issues designs schools are missing and are crucial in shaping future designers. Namely, schools do not provide the top three skills for designers in practice, such as data, business, and leaderships skills. These skills are not available in most basic course work, which results in producing students with a lack of key skills in this fast changing industry.
— vs.voxlab.net@gmail.com
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