In this hands on course, explore how designing and co-creating inclusive products not only improves user experience, but ultimately benefits the business and long term viability of a business.
Design guides how we navigate and interact with the world around us. Yet much of today’s design infrastructure is still based on fairly narrow assumptions about race, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, language, socioeconomic status (to name a few)—often reflecting the perspectives of the people who originally built it. Through inclusive design practices, we have an opportunity to learn new perspectives from people—including LGBTQ, BIPOC, and other marginalised communities—who have redefined that infrastructure on their own terms. This course offers an opportunity to consider unfamiliar perspectives, see how they interact with design practice, and learn how to apply them to design challenges in order to arrive at more inclusive solutions.
Prerequisites
No specific prerequisites are needed, but a willingness to ask and answer difficult questions about identity will be crucial.
How you’ll learn
The course is designed to provide a background in the history of design, identity, gender studies and more, while exposing them to new perspectives and frameworks. We will discuss ways to foster inclusivity by challenging the status quo of design today, giving tools for students to develop critical thinking about it and defining techniques for community design, and developing an inclusive design toolkit. We will hear perspectives from multiple designers across various industries about how identity, ethics, and the design process are intrinsically linked. Students will also be asked to consider their own unique perspective from the point of view of intersectionality, and how we might reconsider the design process to create a more inclusive future.
What you’ll learn
What to bring
Minnie is a Principal & Creative Director at Pinterest leading design & product strategy initiatives that span the entire product, with an emphasis on wellbeing, safety, and inclusion, ensuring Pinterest stays a safe and positive corner of the Internet. Prior to Pinterest, she founded Big Wonder, a venture-backed edtech product focused on helping teens find purpose in the heart of the mental health crisis.
In past roles, she was a design leader at IDEO and Frog Design. She has spent most of her career designing programs focused on youth, mental health, and education such as a multi-national reproductive health program for teens, a digital coaching platform to help first-generation college students succeed in higher education, and a program to help transitional-aged youth involved in the justice system learn about their rights to help prevent recidivism.
With 18 years of industry experience, she has been featured as a keynote speaker at the World Bank, SXSW, United Nations, TEDx and the World Design Summit, and her work has been published by TIME, WSJ, Bloomberg, and Fast Company, to name a few. She is currently working on her first book about the science of inspiration.
Márcio is an Experience Designer and Design Researcher with a background in human-centred design and creative leadership. He began his career working with international organisations like the United Nations in New York and later moved to South America to lead sustainable projects with socially and economically vulnerable communities. He has worked on the ground designing new neighbourhoods for resettled families, developed housing solutions for low-income populations and lived for extended periods in the Amazon forest, where he worked directly with small river communities on environmental and social resilience.
As a designer, Márcio has partnered across sectors to help teams create more thoughtful, inclusive experiences. More recently, at H&M Group in Sweden, he led a team of design researchers looking at the future of fashion through sustainability, circular economy and equity-driven design.
Today, Márcio works at the intersection of experience design, luxury and fashion, collaborating with brands and creative groups across the industry to imagine more meaningful customer experiences.
Community remains at the centre of his work. Wherever he goes, Márcio finds ways to support and collaborate with LGBTQIA+ communities — starting in New York at Pride and now in Milan, where he currently lives.
Minnie is a Product Director at IDEO, where she leads The Purpose Project—a program helping young people build agency and self-direction. She also runs workshops and project on design, inclusion, and equity through her organization, Studio Bredouw. In addition, she currently serves as a professor of design and innovation at California College of the Arts and Copenhagen Institute of DesignShe has worked with clients such the World Bank, Nike Foundation, United Nations, US AID, Google, Change.org, and TED, to name a few. She has lead initiatives that range from designing a multi-national reproductive health program for teens, to a digital coaching platform to help first generation college students succeed in higher education.Prior to her current roles, she has served as a creative lead at global design companies such as ideo.org, and frog design. With over a decade of creative consulting under her belt, her work has won awards from Webby, IDSA, Core 77, and an Edison Prize, and been featured in the World Economic Forum, TED, Bloomberg, and Fast Company, to name a few. Minnie is passionate about empowering others through the design process, and in her spare time, she writes and teaches on this topic.
