Inclusion and Diversity

Why this matters

We, designers, make hundreds of small decisions every day: which word to put on a button, which pronoun to use in an automated email, whether the form offers “other”, which skin tone to pick in an illustration, which symbol means emergency. Each of those choices includes or excludes someone.

When these decisions go right, no one notices, that’s the goal. When they go wrong, there’s always someone who feels the product wasn’t built with them in mind. This page is a practical guide to make more decisions consciously, and fewer by default.

The talk this is based on was given at Talkdesk: it covers communication, working relationships, and design. Here I consolidate it as a pillar and open it up into the posts where I go deeper.

The three pillars

When I worked on the Unified Communications team at Talkdesk, we organised the topic into three circles that still hold up:

1. Communication. How we talk to users, customers, external stakeholders. It’s what shows up in emails, interviews, copy.
2. Working relationships. How we treat each other internally. Pronouns, room to disagree, knowledge sharing.
3. Design. The decisions we make in the product itself. Colours, fonts, forms, symbols, language.

The three circle each other. A team that communicates externally with care but internally with indifference won’t accidentally produce inclusive design. And vice versa.

Inclusive communication

The most useful rule I’ve learned: when in doubt, ask. Especially about names, pronouns, pronunciations.

There’s a simple test for whether a question is worth asking: imagine you’re talking to a stranger you just met. Would you ask that? If not, probably not worth asking here either. If yes, then ask, no preamble.

The language we use externally with users, in emails, interview scripts, product copy, matters as much as what we say to each other. Covered in Inclusive language in design and Inclusive forms: asking without excluding.

Working relationships

Small decisions change the tone of a team:

• Show pronouns in Slack, in meetings, in software. Not as a statement, but to normalise the gesture. When everyone shows them, no one has to do it alone.
• Treat each person the way they want to be treated. At Talkdesk, I prefer to be called by my last name, Ferrão, instead of my first. It wasn’t automatic, it was asked. And it was respected.
• Room to mess up and correct. Everyone will mess up pronouns, will say something clumsy. What matters is the culture around it: if the mistake is punished with shame, no one learns. If it’s corrected without drama, everyone moves forward.
• Book club or weekly sharing slot. Group learning on topics no one is expert in (dyslexia, neurodiversity, design for grief). It’s cheap and it works.
• Use “we” instead of “I”. Small change, shifts the axis of a conversation.

I go deeper in Inclusive design teams: from pronouns to belonging.

Inclusive design

This is where the designer’s instinct kicks in. The three most immediate areas:

Accessibility. Goes beyond colour contrast and font sizes. Includes cognitive accessibility, especially dyslexia (more spacing, lower contrast), auditory perception, and screen readers. Covered in Accessibility beyond contrast.

Cultural sensitivity. Symbols aren’t universal. A red cross, a symbol of emergency in many cultures, can offend in others (Muslim culture, for example, where the cross has other connotations). At Talkdesk, while designing a feature for emergency-services calling, we caught this in time and switched to plain text (“9/11”). These moments are rare, but critical. More in Cultural sensitivity in product design.

Inclusive forms. Maybe the area where design has the most impact and the least attention. Asking gender with radio buttons “Male/Female” excludes anyone who doesn’t see themselves in either. The fix isn’t just to add “Other”: it’s to rethink whether the question is needed, and when it is, to offer “prefer not to say” and self-describe. In Inclusive forms.

Language: small substitutions

Practical list for the day-to-day. Works in emails, in product copy, in interviews, in presentations:

• “boyfriend / girlfriend / wife / husband” → “partner” or “spouse”
• “he / him / she / her” → “they / them” when you don’t know
• “manpower” → “people power”, “staff”, “workforce”
• “salesman” → “salesperson”
• “chairman” → “chair” or “chairperson”
• “guys” (mixed group) → “everyone”, “folks”, “people”

It’s not about policing. It’s about a more inclusive default. Anyone who prefers another form says so, and it’s respected.

Cognitive biases: the hidden side

Many of the inclusion problems we see in products don’t come from bad faith. They come from automatic processes in our brain: cognitive biases. There are around 188 catalogued, and the ones that most affect design decisions include:

• Confirmation bias: looking for evidence that confirms what we already think.
• Group attribution error: judging an entire group based on one person’s impression.
• Halo effect: the first impression colours everything that follows.
• Misinformation effect: how the question changes the memory of the answer.
• Bystander effect: no one acts because everyone assumes someone else will.
• Gender bias: assuming characteristics based on gender (medical studies show pain is treated differently in men and women without scientific basis).

I go deeper in Cognitive biases explained (the expanded list with practical mitigation lives there).

Where to start this week

Three concrete steps:

1. Audit a form in your product. How many questions are actually needed? How many have “prefer not to say”? How many force a binary gender choice?
2. Add pronouns to your Slack or email profile. You don’t need to explain. Just do it.
3. Pick a symbol you use in the product and ask someone from another culture how they read it. It’s a 30-second test, and it sometimes saves you from a bad decision.

FAQ

What is inclusion in product design?

Ensuring products, teams and processes welcome people in their full variety. Covers communication, working relationships, and design decisions (language, forms, symbols, colours).

How do you apply inclusive language?

Pick a neutral default: “they” instead of “he/she”, “partner” instead of “husband/wife”, person-first language. Not policing words, but choosing a more inclusive default and letting whoever prefers another form ask. More in Inclusive language in design.

What is an inclusive form?

Asks only what’s necessary, offers “prefer not to say” on sensitive fields, allows self-describe, accepts Unicode names of any length, gives helpful error messages without losing the filled state. Deeper in Inclusive forms: asking without excluding.

How do you handle cultural sensitivity?

Research the connotations of symbols, colours and dates across at least 5 cultures relevant to the product. Review with people from other cultures. Conservative defaults when in doubt. Real case in Cultural sensitivity in product design.

How do cognitive biases affect design?

Halo Effect, Confirmation Bias, Group Attribution Error and others operate in cascade during hiring, research, copywriting. Mitigation needs external viewpoints, challenge of your own assumptions, and never deciding under pressure. Detail in Cognitive biases explained.

To close

Inclusion isn’t a project that ends. It’s a practice you keep up. If something here stuck, write.