Session: Designing For The Ten Percent: How To Unbias Your Designs
Have you ever thought about how shorter people have to bring their seats so close to the steering wheel (and subsequently, the airbag) when driving? Have you noticed some people choose their phone based on what can comfortably fit in their hand and not the features? What about people who don’t fit the “societal ideal body type” and the difficulty in finding clothes? Have you noticed that websites of major companies are being sued for things like the color of text?
Our society, and the people in it, have biases. And because design is people-centric, it can also have biases. In this talk, we will be discussing what biases in design look like and what the consequences can be when someone doesn’t recognize that bias can greatly change your design process and outcome: From lack of usability to even potential harm. We will talk about how these “edge cases” or “10% restraints” mentioned above are more common than we even realize. We will also discuss what happens when designers remove those biases and what great good can be done when designing for the 1%.
Bio
Jasmine Orange is a UX designer based in Atlanta, GA with a passion for design, diversity, and creating experiences that are pleasant for all people. She is currently a UX designer for Ernst & Young on their Global Market team. Jasmine is also a teaching assistant at Georgia Tech for their UX bootcamp. She is a member of UXHelpers and IxDA, as well as other community-centric design meetups. She is also a speaker, giving talks/presentations about inclusion, design history and design thinking. In her free time, Jasmine enjoys traveling the world, rock climbing, reading, video games, spending time with her dog, Mugen and obsessing over K-Pop sensation, BTS.