Episode 1

Jutta Treviranus

Matt kicks off the series with an interview with his mentor and advisor, Jutta Treviranus. Jutta is the director of the Inclusive Design Research Centre and a professor in the Faculty of Design at OCAD University.

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Transcript
Matt May:

This is InEx, a show about inclusive design.

Matt May:

I'm your host, Matt May.

Matt May:

In this episode:

Jutta Treviranus:

It's such hubris to think that we can ever know

Jutta Treviranus:

exactly what somebody else is feeling and how they're going to react.

Jutta Treviranus:

And anything that we do to persuade ourselves that's the

Jutta Treviranus:

case I think is really dangerous.

Jutta Treviranus:

We need to come at this with humility, with a recognition that

Jutta Treviranus:

the only person that has expertise about their own experience is the

Jutta Treviranus:

person that's experiencing it.

Matt May:

A conversation with Jutta Treviranus.

Matt May:

Welcome to InEx.

Matt May:

I'd like to start by introducing myself and what this is all about.

Matt May:

A little over two years ago, I applied to the master's program in

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inclusive design at OCAD University.

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The reason I made this decision to go back to school is my first guest,

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my mentor of two decades, and my master's advisor, Jutta Treviranus.

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Without her guidance and support, I would never have made my way to OCAD,

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where I've had the chance to approach inclusive design from the side of

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academia, to compliment my experience working in accessibility and inclusive

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design in the technology field.

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And, full disclosure.

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In 2017, I started the inclusive design practice at Adobe, where I've

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been working for the last 15 years.

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But this podcast is not sponsored, endorsed, reviewed, or edited by Adobe.

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And I do my best not to talk about my work life during these interviews.

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This podcast is my major research project, in partial completion of

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the Master of Design in Inclusive Design at OCAD University.

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I've chosen a podcast is my format for a series of interviews with people I respect

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in and around the field of inclusion.

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I named this series InEx, because it's made up of interviews with

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experts about inclusion and exclusion.

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I've worked to make these interviews as inclusive as possible for my

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interviewees and for you, the audience.

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If you prefer to read your podcasts rather than listen to them, full

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transcripts are available at inex.show.

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That's I-N-E-X dot show.

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I worked with my interviewees to make the interviews available under

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the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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So you're free to share this podcast in any way you like.

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Please credit InEx and the guest, if you do.

Matt May:

Now, let me introduce you to Jutta.

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It is my great pleasure to get to sit down with my friend and my

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mentor of 20 years, Jutta Treviranus.

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Jutta is the director of the Inclusive Design Research Centre and professor in

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the faculty of design at OCAD University.

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Jutta established the IDRC in 1993, as the nexus of a global growing community

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that proactively works to ensure that our digitally transformed and globally

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connected society is designed inclusively.

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Dr.

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Treviranus has also founded an innovative graduate program in inclusive

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design at OCAD University where I am a student and Jutta is my advisor.

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Jutta is credited with developing an inclusive design methodology that

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has been adopted by large enterprise companies, as well as public sector

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organizations internationally.

Matt May:

And thank you, Jutta, for coming and joining me for this interview.

Jutta Treviranus:

Oh, it's a pleasure.

Matt May:

First I want to start with the land acknowledgement: OCAD University

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acknowledges the ancestral and traditional territories of the Mississaugas of

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the Credit, the Haudenosaunee, the Anishinaabe, and the Huron-Wendat, and

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I am presently on the ancestral and traditional territories of the Duwamish

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and Coast Salish Peoples, who are the original owners and custodians of the

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land on which we stand and create.

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So apart from the bio introduction, I want to get a little bit more

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into sort of how this came to you.

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How your career unfolded, if you will.

Jutta Treviranus:

How did I get into this?

Jutta Treviranus:

And I've told a number of different introductions to that.

Jutta Treviranus:

And I keep reflecting on, when did this all start?

Jutta Treviranus:

And every time I tell it, I go further back.

Jutta Treviranus:

But...

Matt May:

I have the same problem, actually.

Jutta Treviranus:

Because there's so many different original commitments

Jutta Treviranus:

to ideas that are somewhat counter to what is happening at the moment.

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Periods where I think, oh my goodness, this isn't right.

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And we have to do something about it or is this really how we want to proceed?

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And isn't there a better way.

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And then also, oh my, I look at the opportunity or the

Jutta Treviranus:

possibility that this brings about.

Jutta Treviranus:

So I think I've been always enthralled with the opportunity about that

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difference brings, and diversity.

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And variety and flux and change.

Jutta Treviranus:

I have a farmer background.

Jutta Treviranus:

My father was a horticulturalist.

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I have within my family someone that first coined the term botany.

Jutta Treviranus:

And so our entire family has always thought about just how wonderful

Jutta Treviranus:

diversity is and what a differentiation and the serendipity and dynamic

Jutta Treviranus:

resilience within diversity.

Jutta Treviranus:

But at what point did this become part of my career, and a very different part

Jutta Treviranus:

of my career than my dad or, my great grandparents, et cetera, was, I guess

Jutta Treviranus:

when I first graduated from my undergrad and I was working with, or had the

Jutta Treviranus:

opportunity to work with 12 people who had various constraints and disabilities

Jutta Treviranus:

that would make it difficult to participate in post-secondary education.

Jutta Treviranus:

And I was told, figure out how these 12 students could participate

Jutta Treviranus:

in post-secondary education.

Jutta Treviranus:

And by coincidence, it happened to be also the emergence of personal computers.

Jutta Treviranus:

So this was late seventies, early eighties, and there had been these massive

Jutta Treviranus:

things, but all of a sudden computers were things that could be personal.

Jutta Treviranus:

That could be about you, that could be devices that you would use yourself.

Jutta Treviranus:

And so I saw them as an amazing translation device.

Jutta Treviranus:

What look at how we could use these things to take something that's visual, turn it

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into auditory, take an action that you can control and turn it into a whole range of

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things that you need to control something.

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Take something that is in audio and turn it into visual, et cetera.

Jutta Treviranus:

And so I started to play with these personal computers and it was a very

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sort of skunkworks time because you could basically just unplug the motherboard,

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the display, you could unplug the keyboard and you could mess with it.

Jutta Treviranus:

And we did things that even to this day, I don't think have been replicated.

Jutta Treviranus:

And in that is the story of how this excitement and opportunity became

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also an understanding of the risk and how things go the wrong way.

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And don't turn out the way that you wanted.

Jutta Treviranus:

So that's been the story since that time is just, wow.

Jutta Treviranus:

Look at the amazing possibilities and opportunities that the stuff brings.

Jutta Treviranus:

And then also, oh my, look at the risks and, oh dear, look at how it's

Jutta Treviranus:

completely gone off course, and we haven't taken it where we want to take

Jutta Treviranus:

it, or we think it should be taken.

Matt May:

We're going to get into where it's going later on.

Matt May:

I think that's going to be fascinating, but I want to talk

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about the formation of the IDRC.

Matt May:

I think it was the ATRC, what it started in the University of Toronto.

Matt May:

And I think that connects with what you were talking about with the

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capabilities of the technology evolving.

Jutta Treviranus:

Yeah.

Jutta Treviranus:

So I was recruited to the University of Toronto and what I was asked to do,

Jutta Treviranus:

or the job that I took was supposed to create a accessible computer lab

Jutta Treviranus:

and they had dozens of computer labs.

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And so they wanted one accessible one, which, and this was in 1993

Jutta Treviranus:

and I thought this is all wrong.

Jutta Treviranus:

So I took the job, but then I went to the VP of academic computing or

Jutta Treviranus:

computing at the time, and said, no, this is not what I want to do.

Jutta Treviranus:

I want to create a research lab that would ensure that all labs

Jutta Treviranus:

are going to be accessible.

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I don't want the students within U of T to have to come to one place just because

Jutta Treviranus:

they require an alternative access system.

Jutta Treviranus:

But the right at the beginning, I wanted to call it the Inclusive Design

Jutta Treviranus:

Research Centre, but because the university had already come up with the

Jutta Treviranus:

name, the Adaptive Technology Resource Centre, because it was intended to

Jutta Treviranus:

be a resource center, not a research center, we had to stick with that

Jutta Treviranus:

name, but we right from the beginning, were calling it inclusive design.

Jutta Treviranus:

But under the name of the center, the ATRC.

Matt May:

And so this is actually where our paths cross, because at the time

Matt May:

you're working at U of T, I had just gotten a job at the World Wide Web

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Consortium, in the Web Accessibility Initiative as a specialist there.

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And I was the staff contact for your working group.

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So we were working on the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines, and

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you had already done the 1.0 version.

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And so anyway, I come to Toronto for my first trip as I don't

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even remember how young I was.

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It was in my twenties.

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And we just start talking about the task at hand, and then you, one day took me

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over to Ryerson University and showed me a demo of PEBBLES, I think it was.

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It was a robot that was for tele learning or distance learning.

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So if you had a student that couldn't physically attend class, they could

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have an avatar presence, like a rolling robot with a picture of their face.

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And it just, it stuns me because here we are 20 years later and it actually

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is happening, that there's this idea of remote presence, not just Zoom

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meetings, but of there being a physical presence for people in the room.

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And so what that taught me is that these things actually do

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happen, but they do take time.

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What else do you think that you've seen over the last 20 years in just terms of

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the evolution of inclusive design, and maybe going from it being an engineering

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driven thing to a design driven thing.

Jutta Treviranus:

Yeah.

Jutta Treviranus:

And I've always been somewhat troubled by the thought of applying engineering

Jutta Treviranus:

here because engineering is so much about complicated systems and

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this idea of building blocks, which you stack one on top of the other.

Jutta Treviranus:

It's very, it's a very linear thinking process.

Jutta Treviranus:

I've been much more enamored of an organic process, where you

Jutta Treviranus:

can't predict the whole thing, you can't make it happen and build it.

Jutta Treviranus:

You are basically growing it to some extent, but the other

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thing to your point about things happening, taking time to happen.

Jutta Treviranus:

I've seen things go in waves.

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Not only did we have that early exploration and tele presence and it's

Jutta Treviranus:

a technology we were working with.

Jutta Treviranus:

This was pre-internet video conferencing right before internet audio.

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We were dealing with these crazy difficult clunky networks that took

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so much more fiddling and working with and were not ubiquitous.

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So the explorations, it wasn't the field wasn't ready yet at the time,

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but certainly the ideas stuck.

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And we had, I think, in that pre time when the reality isn't yet

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there, you can imagine more, you're not as constrained by the reality.

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That there is a fresh field.

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So we thought about a whole range of things that, although the field has

Jutta Treviranus:

advanced so tremendously and so many more things are possible, we played with

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things like actually navigating your avatar or your physical robot through

Jutta Treviranus:

the environment raising your hand and physically within the representative

Jutta Treviranus:

of your presence within the classroom actually having an embodiment of yourself.

Jutta Treviranus:

Yeah.

Jutta Treviranus:

And in the remote space and how you would project your identity and

Jutta Treviranus:

your character upon that embodiment.

Jutta Treviranus:

We also.

Jutta Treviranus:

We're really cognizant of the diversity of representations that you would want,

Jutta Treviranus:

so that the robot for the kids, that it was this yellow blob, this cute yellow

Jutta Treviranus:

blob, the same height as the kids.

Jutta Treviranus:

For the high school students, it was a hanger that you could hang your clothes

Jutta Treviranus:

on and that you could move your face.

Jutta Treviranus:

We were really concerned about eye contact.

Jutta Treviranus:

How do you create that sense of eye contact, and that still

Jutta Treviranus:

hasn't really been addressed.

Jutta Treviranus:

But we're not concerned with that anymore for some reason, but I still think it's

Jutta Treviranus:

a really critical piece of actually feeling like you're next to somebody

Jutta Treviranus:

and you're actually talking to somebody.

Jutta Treviranus:

So that was telepresence, but similarly, we played with early versions of AR, VR.

Jutta Treviranus:

And I wrote a very naive, very sort of optimistic article for MIT telepresence

Jutta Treviranus:

way back then, where I imagined all sorts of things in AR and VR.

Jutta Treviranus:

And then we had this project called "Adding feeling, touch and equal

Jutta Treviranus:

access to distance education", where we created a haptic experience, a

Jutta Treviranus:

haptic audio speech experience that really hasn't been replicated either.

Jutta Treviranus:

We took a grade 4 geography text, and we added haptic artifacts,

Jutta Treviranus:

all sorts of haptic effects.

Jutta Treviranus:

Real world sounds, three-dimensional real world sounds, and then speech audio to

Jutta Treviranus:

provide the information that you would get in a grade 4 text, if you could see it.

Jutta Treviranus:

And we had things like latitude and longitude lines were

Jutta Treviranus:

elastics, felt like elastics.

Jutta Treviranus:

Cities had a particular artifact that you could feel.

Jutta Treviranus:

And as you got closer to them, the sound, the ambient sound

Jutta Treviranus:

of a city would increase.

Jutta Treviranus:

When you got to it, there would be a gravity well around these artifacts.

Jutta Treviranus:

When you got to it, you could hit a key and find out the population

Jutta Treviranus:

and a whole bunch of other things.

Jutta Treviranus:

You could feel the direction of the river by the waves.

Jutta Treviranus:

We played with all sorts of possibilities.

Jutta Treviranus:

And it's funny to think that haptics is actually one of the last things, now that

Jutta Treviranus:

we're at a place where AR, VR, XR are so prevalent and so much more possible, that

Jutta Treviranus:

it's not something that's being explored.

Matt May:

Or if it is really the same territory, dredged back up again.

Matt May:

And probably the classic example of that is the sign language gloves.

Jutta Treviranus:

Right?

Matt May:

And the evolution of that thing where the, there, it used to

Matt May:

be, I think the first example that I saw was an old Nintendo Power

Matt May:

Glove, like something built in 1985.

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And there was this idea of that doing this let you do finger spelling.

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It's always fresh territory for somebody that discovers this, that

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they're convinced that they're the first people that have ever done it.

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And then comes the BuzzFeed or the Now This story about it.

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And everybody that's been working in this space for all of this time,

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including, especially deaf activists, deaf designers that have been in this

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space, are like, this has been done.

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This doesn't meet our needs at all.

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It's just an annoyance, and it draws so much attention for this.

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And then it becomes called inclusive design, right?

Jutta Treviranus:

Yeah, or the exoskeleton.

Jutta Treviranus:

And this is going to, that walking, some sort of semblance of walking

Jutta Treviranus:

is really what you want rather than getting from place to place.

Jutta Treviranus:

Or the other one that is every PhD in engineering.

Jutta Treviranus:

I don't know how many hours the EEG, the, we're going to read your brainwaves and

Jutta Treviranus:

that's how well, if you can't communicate this, how you're going to communicate.

Jutta Treviranus:

Yeah.

Matt May:

We talked about this demo that I saw at a CSUN many years ago,

Matt May:

the CSUN conference, a big accessibility industry conference, where there was a

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demo where you put pads on your forehead and then tried to make a ball bounce up.

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And they made a game about that called Mind Flex.

Matt May:

It's the same idea.

Matt May:

But like you keep coming back to these ideas of, if we could only do this.

Jutta Treviranus:

Yeah.

Matt May:

If we could make exoskeletons or wheelchairs that

Matt May:

can climb stairs or whatever, that suddenly the world would open up.

Jutta Treviranus:

Yeah.

Jutta Treviranus:

And the myth behind that, the craziness behind that, is that if we could fix

Jutta Treviranus:

the person then this whole thing, and which is why I insist that inclusive

Jutta Treviranus:

design is not about fixing the person.

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It's about fixing the environment.

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And in fact, that diversity that we find amongst people is actually

Jutta Treviranus:

really valuable and something that we shouldn't get rid of.

Jutta Treviranus:

Because there, going down that path, we end up in monocultures.

Jutta Treviranus:

We end up with the designer baby.

Jutta Treviranus:

We end up with all the scary things that is going to be our demise

Jutta Treviranus:

as a society, as a human species.

Matt May:

Yeah, and it, there are so many threads to tug at here.

Matt May:

So I actually want to take a break here and then we can get back into this in

Matt May:

the next segment, because there are so many ideas with this terminology that

Matt May:

I want to unpack a little bit so that people really understand what it is that

Matt May:

the IDRC, that OCAD U talks about when they're talking about inclusive design.

Matt May:

So we'll take a short break and we'll come back with Jutta Treviranus.

Jutta Treviranus:

Great.

Matt May:

InEx is a major research project by me, Matt May, as part of the

Matt May:

master of design degree program at OCAD University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Matt May:

Episodes and transcripts of this podcast can be found at inex.show.

Matt May:

That's I-N-E-X dot show.

Matt May:

Follow InEx on Twitter at @inexpodcast.

Matt May:

And we're back with Jutta Treviranus.

Matt May:

And I wanted to get into sort of the defining concepts, if not terms behind

Matt May:

inclusive design and the capital I capital letter inclusive design, and and

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I think now we'll be going to just use it to call as a term of art inclusive

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design has this as this definition.

Matt May:

First, I want to talk about universal design.

Matt May:

So there's this, this movement that came out of architecture.

Matt May:

Ron Mace was a professor at North Carolina State had this concept with seven

Matt May:

principles of universal design that was applied in the field of architecture,

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and was adapted, has evolved out of that.

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I wrote a book with Wendy Chisholm called Universal Design for Web Applications

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that tried to associate the two concepts.

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And I've distanced myself a little bit from universal design, but I want

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you to, I want you to talk about your perceptions about this and we can see

Matt May:

where these two concepts differ or how they contrast against one another.

Jutta Treviranus:

Sure.

Jutta Treviranus:

So I'm very much in support of the concepts of universal design.

Jutta Treviranus:

It came out of architecture and it came out of industrial design.

Jutta Treviranus:

And so I, when digital systems and networks and less static structures

Jutta Treviranus:

came about, I thought, oh, here's an opportunity to go further.

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Because the thing that troubled me about universal design was this need

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for a one size fits all approach.

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Within architecture, within industrial design, there are constraints that make

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it very difficult to address the real diversity and difference that we have and

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the variability within the person as well.

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So I thought, oh, with digital systems, with networks, with the resource pooling

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that we have, here's an opportunity to actually create one size fits one, not

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to deny our diversity, not to create compromises for people that are not

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addressed or who can't be addressed with a one size fits all design.

Jutta Treviranus:

The other thing that always worried me was that universal design, if we

Jutta Treviranus:

have to find a system, or if we have to land upon a single design, then

Jutta Treviranus:

who's going to make the compromises?

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It's the people that are in the minority that are the outliers.

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Because there's so many rational reasons why someone will say does

Jutta Treviranus:

this deserve the cost investment?

Jutta Treviranus:

Does this deserve the time that we take?

Jutta Treviranus:

If you do it this way, then what about all these other people

Jutta Treviranus:

who needed a different way?

Jutta Treviranus:

That is why I was so optimistic about digital systems.

Matt May:

And still, one of the problems that, that evolved with me about it, about

Matt May:

universal design as a term, what ended up happening was that there was this race

Matt May:

to the singularity, that there was this one thing that everybody is going to use.

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And one of the things that we talk about in the program was

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the bell curve, of here's this distribution standard distribution

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of human capability, if you will.

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And that we're only really focused on this level and up.

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And so therefore, if you need to adapt, then you like, this is

Matt May:

something that's bestowed upon you.

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Be grateful that this is something that was made for you, rather than

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there being a dialogue between somebody who's being left out and what they

Matt May:

consider quote unquote, the core user.

Matt May:

And that inclusive design kind of flips that around, right?

Matt May:

It requires the participation and the consent of the people

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that are most marginalized.

Matt May:

It centers the needs of the people, instead of just assuming that everyone

Matt May:

is by default accommodated and anybody else is quote unquote extra work.

Jutta Treviranus:

Yeah.

Jutta Treviranus:

And you talk about the bell curve, but the bell curve is such a

Jutta Treviranus:

flattening of requirements and its primary use is within education.

Jutta Treviranus:

And what it seems to promote is this notion as well, that

Jutta Treviranus:

everything is on the same scale.

Jutta Treviranus:

So in my use of data, I've been more looking at it in three dimensions as

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the normal distribution and what I call the human starburst, because there

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are so many facets in which we differ and so many facets that need to be

Jutta Treviranus:

considered when we consider a design.

Jutta Treviranus:

But you're right.

Jutta Treviranus:

There are these completely unconscious, completely entrenched ways of thinking.

Jutta Treviranus:

About these spectrum of people and how we make decisions and how we make choices,

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and who needs to be considered, and the hierarchy of that consideration.

Jutta Treviranus:

I've been talking recently about this idea of ending the hierarchy of compromise.

Jutta Treviranus:

You were just talking about the notion to say be happy with what you get,

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that in fact the people that should be compromising are the people that

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currently are excluded as opposed to the people that are currently

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well served by the current designs.

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And I also talk about the hierarchy of justification, that individuals

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that are currently excluded are, have such a burden of justifying

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why they need to be included.

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The individuals that are currently included or who are well-served by

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the designs, can rely on saying things like, that's just the way we do things.

Jutta Treviranus:

This is our standard procedure.

Jutta Treviranus:

This is the way things are done.

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All of those tropes that don't allow thoughtfulness and a realization

Jutta Treviranus:

that we are in fact, creating systems that are not good for anybody,

Jutta Treviranus:

but that's another part of this.

Jutta Treviranus:

Who should we be considering if we want to create systems that benefit everyone.

Matt May:

Okay.

Matt May:

You said systems, and now I want to dig into that piece of this, because

Matt May:

one thing that I've, that I found them on the people that I think really

Matt May:

inclusive design has resonated with is this idea of systems and system theory.

Matt May:

That especially if you came up as an advocate, and you've seen how

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difficult it is to make even the smallest amount of progress, that

Matt May:

you do one thing, and you get to this destination, and I've talked about this

Matt May:

as sand castles, you do this thing, you turn around, it gets washed away.

Matt May:

And to think about how.

Matt May:

Exclusive mindset establishes itself in a system, not just in the creation

Matt May:

of a company or something like that, but the culture from which

Matt May:

the people come from that create the company, all of those things are

Matt May:

factors in the design of a product.

Matt May:

And what do you think about the, how inclusive design sort of

Matt May:

juxtaposes with the systems thinking?

Jutta Treviranus:

Inclusive design is intervention in a complex adaptive system.

Jutta Treviranus:

It's all about culture change.

Jutta Treviranus:

It isn't about solutions or fixes.

Jutta Treviranus:

Most of what we work on, or we consider the challenges we're

Jutta Treviranus:

trying to address cannot be fixed.

Jutta Treviranus:

They can't be solved.

Jutta Treviranus:

People change, the environment changes.

Jutta Treviranus:

If you create something that is supposedly an inclusive design or that you see as

Jutta Treviranus:

an inclusive design and you've changed the culture sufficiently that it can

Jutta Treviranus:

be adapted by whoever is the intended beneficiary, if you don't think about

Jutta Treviranus:

what it's nested in, then there will be a friction point at whatever point

Jutta Treviranus:

you haven't actually considered the relation with people around you.

Jutta Treviranus:

The simple way I try to talk about it is, say you create a wonderful

Jutta Treviranus:

inclusive curriculum for a student.

Jutta Treviranus:

It's not going to work unless the teacher's familiar with it,

Jutta Treviranus:

supports it, understands why the teacher's going to be in difficulty.

Jutta Treviranus:

If the principal or the school as a whole doesn't understand, the principal

Jutta Treviranus:

and the school is going to be in trouble if the school board, et cetera.

Jutta Treviranus:

And then the department of ed, those are all nested.

Jutta Treviranus:

The parents have an influence, the funders, the commercial entities that

Jutta Treviranus:

provide the products, people, all of those need to be taken into consideration

Jutta Treviranus:

before that child that requires something that is more inclusive than what is

Jutta Treviranus:

generally offered, can actually realize the benefits and before the benefit

Jutta Treviranus:

of what they're using can be seen by the rest of the class, and the rest

Jutta Treviranus:

of the system that they're nested in.

Jutta Treviranus:

So that's the negative part of it.

Jutta Treviranus:

The positive part about it is that initial inclusive design, that small intervention

Jutta Treviranus:

and culture change, can create this ripple effect where it doesn't only benefit the

Jutta Treviranus:

students, that was the originator of the challenge, but it can ripple throughout an

Jutta Treviranus:

entire school system and then perhaps even an entire country and around the world.

Jutta Treviranus:

So, yes, we're intervening in complex adaptive systems.

Jutta Treviranus:

And therein is the huge challenge and difficulty, but therein is also the

Jutta Treviranus:

opportunity and the amazing benefit that we can derive from inclusive design.

Matt May:

So this is kind of where I contrast that idea of inclusive design

Matt May:

as the term of art that we're talking about and inclusive design, meaning

Matt May:

anything that someone can conceive of that is part inclusion and part design.

Matt May:

A lot of these are what gets the most attention because it's usually

Matt May:

people that, that are thinking about these home run swings, if you will.

Matt May:

The one big thing that's going to solve everything.

Matt May:

That everything will now go through this one solution.

Matt May:

I think one of the hallmarks of that is what I call the one and done, right?

Matt May:

You have this one project and we're going to do this.

Matt May:

And I see this in so many different products.

Matt May:

We're going to do an accessibility sprint.

Matt May:

We're going to talk about this one specific issue, and then we're going

Matt May:

to solve it and it's going to be done.

Matt May:

And it's hard to say, this is a marathon.

Matt May:

This is something that you would need to keep doing.

Matt May:

But when all the attention is going to these big moonshot things that you

Matt May:

look six months later at the thing that was on Buzzfeed, or Now This or

Matt May:

something like that, and it turns out it was just somebody's master's project.

Matt May:

It was somebody's PhD.

Matt May:

And now they just work at some big company doing something completely unrelated.

Matt May:

You have so much potential in this system to do dramatic change, but obviously

Matt May:

those superficial kinds of works are going to be maximized for marketing

Matt May:

value, but aren't going to do anything meaningful in the greater context.

Jutta Treviranus:

Yeah.

Jutta Treviranus:

And I so agree with that.

Jutta Treviranus:

We've dropped solution and fix from our language because

Jutta Treviranus:

these are not fixable problems.

Jutta Treviranus:

Frequently inclusive design is seen as just a version of Design Thinking

Jutta Treviranus:

because it's design for good.

Jutta Treviranus:

And there are a whole bunch of virtuous design sprints related to design thinking,

Jutta Treviranus:

but design thinking is still in the thralls of that competitive, majority

Jutta Treviranus:

rules, winning, best solution process.

Jutta Treviranus:

So the design squiggle, it iterates towards this one winning design

Jutta Treviranus:

based upon a whole set of iterations of competitive processes, where

Jutta Treviranus:

people supposedly reach consensus.

Jutta Treviranus:

And I'm not attempting to denigrate design thinking, but

Jutta Treviranus:

inclusive design is not about that.

Jutta Treviranus:

It's about creating a system that can address as a continuously expand diversity

Jutta Treviranus:

of requirements that are out there.

Jutta Treviranus:

So creating a system that is adaptive, and also within that is embedded

Jutta Treviranus:

this recognition that we always need to act ask, "who is missing?"

Jutta Treviranus:

That people's needs change.

Jutta Treviranus:

That what we need is a system that can react, can be dynamically resilient

Jutta Treviranus:

to the things that reveal themselves, the way that people change, the

Jutta Treviranus:

people we realize have not been part of, or have not been included.

Jutta Treviranus:

So just as there is no fix, and there's no solution, there is also

Jutta Treviranus:

not a final sort of certified, accessible for all inclusive design.

Jutta Treviranus:

The one thing that really bugs me about those moonshots that are

Jutta Treviranus:

supposedly inclusive designs, is that there's also this conception that you

Jutta Treviranus:

can scale by formulaic replication.

Jutta Treviranus:

You've created this wonderful life-transforming solution to all of our

Jutta Treviranus:

accessibility challenges or whatever.

Jutta Treviranus:

And now we scale it.

Jutta Treviranus:

And scaling means that you follow exactly these steps.

Jutta Treviranus:

Again, we are then not recognizing diversity.

Jutta Treviranus:

We're not recognizing human difference and variability, and we're not

Jutta Treviranus:

preparing ourselves for the changes that are happening in our environment.

Jutta Treviranus:

It's the opposite of what I see as inclusive design.

Jutta Treviranus:

There is a huge difference between some of the popular conceptions of what is

Jutta Treviranus:

inclusive design or what people see as the same as inclusive design and our notion

Jutta Treviranus:

of inclusive design being designing for difference, variability, complexity.

Jutta Treviranus:

Designing with the people that have the greatest difficulty or are

Jutta Treviranus:

currently excluded from the designs.

Jutta Treviranus:

And in fact, frequently, design by those individuals, supporting those

Jutta Treviranus:

individuals in designing and in arriving at the systems that will best serve them.

Jutta Treviranus:

Which of course, that's another piece of inclusive design.

Jutta Treviranus:

We're not experts, we're not professionals in that sense that we know better,

Jutta Treviranus:

that we know what people need, that we understand exactly what will

Jutta Treviranus:

work and what will not work for you.

Jutta Treviranus:

It's a process of enabling people to understand their own diversity

Jutta Treviranus:

and difference and become experts in their own requirements.

Jutta Treviranus:

And to constantly recognize that the expertise is with lived experience.

Matt May:

And I think that's the part that ends up being missing in a lot of

Matt May:

these, because that idea of reaching out to somebody whose lived experiences,

Matt May:

you don't know, you don't understand who may be using technology in a

Matt May:

completely different way from you, is an expression of you not knowing, right?

Matt May:

You're unaware, you're ignorant of this difference.

Matt May:

And that tends to be a cause for people to close up.

Matt May:

And I've found so many times that when you pull out of people why they're not doing

Matt May:

these processes, it's that they don't want to feel ignorant about the situation.

Matt May:

They're uncomfortable about it.

Matt May:

And so they might even raise process points, rather than acknowledge that

Matt May:

they have things to learn about the thing that they spend their entire lives doing.

Matt May:

And I think what happens with design thinking is that it papers over that,

Matt May:

that the designer is still is the actor in this scenario, the doer.

Matt May:

And then the users are the done to, right?

Matt May:

They're the receivers of this thing that you bestow upon them.

Matt May:

And I blame empathy training for that.

Matt May:

The idea of marketing and commoditizing the concept of empathy.

Matt May:

Cognitive empathy, in a clinical term, I think is a beneficial thing,

Matt May:

but it's also in the eye of the beholder, and the idea that you can

Matt May:

think for, or on behalf of somebody without actually participating with

Matt May:

them, ends up being a blocker to this.

Matt May:

And it ends up creating a lot of the, Liz Jackson has termed them disability

Matt May:

dongles, this idea of the tool that adapts a person to the environment

Matt May:

and not the other way around.

Matt May:

And I kind of wonder, is there any use for that concept of empathy in this, or do we

Matt May:

have to throw that away and go onto some to some other framing in order for this to

Matt May:

start from a fair, more equitable place?

Jutta Treviranus:

Yeah.

Jutta Treviranus:

And in addition to the empathy exercises, they, the notion of persona as well,

Jutta Treviranus:

and even edge personas and simulation.

Jutta Treviranus:

Another thing that comes up a lot.

Jutta Treviranus:

It's such hubris to think that we can ever know exactly what somebody else is

Jutta Treviranus:

feeling and how they're going to react.

Jutta Treviranus:

And anything that we do to persuade ourselves that's the

Jutta Treviranus:

case I think is really dangerous.

Jutta Treviranus:

We need to come at this with humility, with a recognition that

Jutta Treviranus:

the only person that has expertise about their own experience is the

Jutta Treviranus:

person that's experiencing it.

Jutta Treviranus:

Even if there were huge similarities, I have the same disability,

Jutta Treviranus:

or I come from the same place.

Jutta Treviranus:

I speak the same language.

Jutta Treviranus:

It's not going to be the same.

Jutta Treviranus:

You were asking, is there something, is there value in empathy?

Jutta Treviranus:

And yes, of course there is.

Jutta Treviranus:

There's value in recognizing the common needs, the common or the commonality,

Jutta Treviranus:

the humanness, within each of us.

Jutta Treviranus:

But we need to do that with humility and with the recognition that we don't know.

Jutta Treviranus:

And what we feel, what we know, what we expect is not the same thing.

Matt May:

The reading that is clicking with me is the idea of agonist design.

Matt May:

That you're building something, as people are basically chipping away at

Matt May:

it, like trying to do the opposite, particularly in like political situations.

Jutta Treviranus:

Yeah.

Jutta Treviranus:

But this speaks to empathy.

Jutta Treviranus:

So if you're going to design a country, a regime, then you should

Jutta Treviranus:

design it, not knowing whether you're going to be the pauper, or the least

Jutta Treviranus:

powerful, or the most powerful.

Jutta Treviranus:

But I think there is definitely a value in empathy, as long as

Jutta Treviranus:

that empathy comes with humility.

Jutta Treviranus:

And if we can use empathy and the stories, the real stories of people who are facing

Jutta Treviranus:

challenges at the moment to unseat people from their presumptions and assumptions.

Jutta Treviranus:

Whatever we can do to extend somebody's imagination of what the possibilities

Jutta Treviranus:

are for life and possibilities of people's existence is good.

Jutta Treviranus:

The minute people think that actually gives them expertise or knowledge

Jutta Treviranus:

about what somebody else is feeling, what somebody else is experiencing

Jutta Treviranus:

is dangerous to a large extent.

Matt May:

Yeah.

Matt May:

There's also this idea of, experiencing one aspect of exclusion is transferable,

Matt May:

that there's a piece of it.

Matt May:

This is something that over my career, just pieces of the

Matt May:

rest of my life come into me.

Matt May:

And I understand that I experienced exclusion in the educational

Matt May:

environment that was related to my ADHD.

Matt May:

That I was always kicked out of classes.

Matt May:

I was put in detention.

Matt May:

I was always in academic trouble in one sense or another.

Matt May:

That was actually my first experience in accessibility spaces, which

Matt May:

was, why don't you adapt to us?

Matt May:

Why don't we change the way that you that you do things

Matt May:

in order to fit the situation.

Matt May:

But then I come into accessibility and think that it was just out

Matt May:

of the goodness of my heart.

Matt May:

That was how it resonated with me.

Matt May:

It took a while to put the pieces together of, I have experienced what it's like to

Matt May:

not be a participant in this ecosystem.

Matt May:

But that only goes so far.

Matt May:

There are lots of great self advocates who can push for

Matt May:

inclusion only for themselves, but at the expense of other people.

Matt May:

And I think that there's this other level of advocacy where it's, okay,

Matt May:

you understand what this is because you have been in a situation that

Matt May:

doesn't that doesn't make you feel like you're participating equitably.

Matt May:

But you use that, with the skills that you have to help to amplify

Matt May:

others that are in the same situation.

Jutta Treviranus:

Yeah.

Jutta Treviranus:

We're at a point at the moment, within the evolution of the field

Jutta Treviranus:

where there is cachet in having lived experience, which is lovely.

Jutta Treviranus:

It's lovely that we've come to this point, that we recognize that, oh,

Jutta Treviranus:

our own lived experience is something of value, and lived experience of

Jutta Treviranus:

having gone through the challenges and struggles that exclusion has created.

Jutta Treviranus:

But I, I don't want people to think that's the only reason or the

Jutta Treviranus:

value within inclusive design, or that that's the only motivation.

Jutta Treviranus:

Because, you have experience of struggle, of exclusion, of systems that don't work.

Jutta Treviranus:

I truly believe that many of the crises that we have at the moment, and many

Jutta Treviranus:

of the ways in which our society seems to have gone sideways and is quickly

Jutta Treviranus:

accelerating towards some sort of major extinction or disaster has to

Jutta Treviranus:

do with not attending to difference diversity, not understanding complexity

Jutta Treviranus:

and that moving forward with the type of version or disruption or ending

Jutta Treviranus:

that inclusive design proposes is something that will benefit everybody.

Jutta Treviranus:

It's not just about a group of individuals who have been wronged,

Jutta Treviranus:

where things need to be righted.

Jutta Treviranus:

Much deeper than that, it is about how are we as a society going to live, survive,

Jutta Treviranus:

and in wronging, in the wrong that we've done, and in the practices of the wrongs,

Jutta Treviranus:

lies everybody's demise, to some extent.

Jutta Treviranus:

It is a complex adaptive system by virtue of doing these wrongs of excluding

Jutta Treviranus:

people about not valuing our differences.

Jutta Treviranus:

In the xenophobia, in the disparities that are there in the sort of linear thinking,

Jutta Treviranus:

the monocausality, all of those things that are not part of inclusive design, but

Jutta Treviranus:

that inclusive design is trying to unseat.

Jutta Treviranus:

There also lie many of the crises and the troubles that we have got ourselves into.

Matt May:

All right.

Matt May:

I'm going to pause here.

Matt May:

We're going to get into the troubles and then probably in the last 15, 20

Matt May:

minutes, we're going to solve them all, but we'll take a pause right here and

Matt May:

then we'll just jump right into it.

Matt May:

On the next episode of InEx:

Chancey Fleet:

Graphics were something that I received.

Chancey Fleet:

They were not something that I requested or chose.

Chancey Fleet:

They were curated for me by textbook publishers and other sighted folks.

Chancey Fleet:

There was never a direct path from my curiosity to an

Chancey Fleet:

image being under my fingers.

Matt May:

A conversation with Chancey Fleet.

Matt May:

Okay.

Matt May:

We're back.

Matt May:

And we want to get into the part of the discussion, as you were talking

Matt May:

about, the forms of exclusion and the history that we work with,

Matt May:

that's an important aspect of this.

Matt May:

And to start from that, I think that it's entirely fair to say that in

Matt May:

terms of design as a practice, that the history of it is shaped, just

Matt May:

even in the last century, it's shaped enormously by upper-class white

Matt May:

men in North America and Europe.

Matt May:

Those have been the traditional defaults.

Matt May:

And we can add in abled, heterosexual, cisgender to the mix.

Matt May:

A part of the idea of why inclusive design.

Matt May:

And this is one of the things that I think is evolving more recently.

Matt May:

Inclusive design is a how, it's a technique, it's a

Matt May:

methodology, but you need a why.

Matt May:

You need a reason to be doing that.

Matt May:

And that to me is equity.

Matt May:

Of establishing a place where everybody has has a stake,

Matt May:

and everybody has contributed equally to the outcome of that.

Matt May:

And going back to the adaptation of your program into the IDRC that you had moved

Matt May:

from the idea of moved from disability into, in the definition, all forms of

Matt May:

human difference, and that kind of opens up multiple sets of exclusion to discuss.

Matt May:

And there are, including some of the people that were talking within this

Matt May:

series, experts from other lived experiences, that also have needs that are

Matt May:

not themselves expressed in the products.

Matt May:

And thinking about LGBTQ community, things like deadnaming people in

Matt May:

software applications, of gender identity, of the representation by

Matt May:

race and gender in the workplace, in leadership, in imagery that we create.

Matt May:

This idea of inclusive design is not just limited to disability.

Matt May:

And I want to talk about how does that expand?

Matt May:

How do design practitioners start to understand where they came from, where

Matt May:

the things that they learned are, and what the biases are that are already entrenched

Matt May:

in the work that they've created, the artifacts that they use on a regular basis

Matt May:

so that they can start disassembling them.

Jutta Treviranus:

Yeah, there's so much I can say about that.

Jutta Treviranus:

The premise that I've always throughout my career, that has grounded me,

Jutta Treviranus:

that I am persuaded of, is that diversity is our greatest asset.

Jutta Treviranus:

We're not using diversity here.

Jutta Treviranus:

I don't know why we missed it in terms of the human realm.

Jutta Treviranus:

We as economists, despite capitalism, think about diversification of markets,

Jutta Treviranus:

biologists, and most people that think about animals at all or the

Jutta Treviranus:

ecosystem think about diversification.

Jutta Treviranus:

We fight against extinction.

Jutta Treviranus:

Every child knows which animals are threatened with extinction.

Jutta Treviranus:

And yet exactly those same people are the people who are in essence promoting

Jutta Treviranus:

what can be called epistemicide, or the killing of ways of knowing.

Jutta Treviranus:

We're winnowing down the diversity within our society, within our systems.

Jutta Treviranus:

So the premise is that diversity is our greatest asset and

Jutta Treviranus:

inclusion is our biggest challenge.

Jutta Treviranus:

And that's what has been driving me for the longest time.

Jutta Treviranus:

And diversity, I hate actually the categories or boundaries of that

Jutta Treviranus:

diversity, because it is so entangled and there are so many different forms,

Jutta Treviranus:

and it's that lovely mix of things, as opposed to, I belong in this box here.

Jutta Treviranus:

And by belonging in the box, these are the assumptions,

Jutta Treviranus:

presumptions you can make about me.

Jutta Treviranus:

When I think about what is diversity or what's human difference, I think

Jutta Treviranus:

it's this rich interplay of so many different facets of everybody's identity.

Jutta Treviranus:

And it's that interplay that is something that is, I think we'll reap the

Jutta Treviranus:

greatest rewards in terms of this asset.

Jutta Treviranus:

Disability too.

Jutta Treviranus:

What is disability that the difficulty, but also the beauty of it is that

Jutta Treviranus:

there is really no real definition.

Jutta Treviranus:

People keep trying to capture it, but it's just different.

Jutta Treviranus:

It's sufficient difference from the norm that things aren't designed for you.

Jutta Treviranus:

And it can be seen as a strength, and it can be seen as a problem.

Jutta Treviranus:

I think in terms of disability as something that is a problem, there are

Jutta Treviranus:

far greater things than we see that are a problem than the things that we classify

Jutta Treviranus:

as within the formal classification of disability, if there are such things.

Jutta Treviranus:

So the fact that disability is not really defined that we cannot create

Jutta Treviranus:

boundaries to it, that we can't box it in, I think is one of the reasons why it

Jutta Treviranus:

is frequently what I go to when I talk about the need for inclusion and the

Jutta Treviranus:

benefits of inclusion because the other I guess justice seeking groups have very

Jutta Treviranus:

well-defined, here's who belongs here.

Jutta Treviranus:

Here's who's in the club.

Jutta Treviranus:

Here's who's not in the club.

Jutta Treviranus:

Or here is the distinction between someone that has this identity

Jutta Treviranus:

and somebody that doesn't.

Jutta Treviranus:

But that can't be there in terms of disability, unless it's self

Jutta Treviranus:

identification as having a disability, but the problems and the exclusions

Jutta Treviranus:

that come with it are many people, experiences who don't identify.

Jutta Treviranus:

And the benefits extend well beyond the group.

Jutta Treviranus:

Yes.

Jutta Treviranus:

The entrenched thinking that we have that the white male cisgender dilemma,

Jutta Treviranus:

that is who has authored this mess that we're currently in and who for

Jutta Treviranus:

whatever reason continues to be in power and still has the ability to make the

Jutta Treviranus:

decisions and influence the decisions.

Jutta Treviranus:

What is so infuriating about that is that it's associated with innovation,

Jutta Treviranus:

it's associated with progress, it's associated with all of these

Jutta Treviranus:

sort of powerful influences still.

Jutta Treviranus:

But in fact, those same mindsets that are promoted by the people in

Jutta Treviranus:

power are so ancient and so old.

Jutta Treviranus:

And so damaging.

Jutta Treviranus:

We're still under the influence of the industrial revolution, the idea of the

Jutta Treviranus:

average person and the sacredness of being within a particular norm the notion

Jutta Treviranus:

of survival of the fittest, the Dewey decimal system with categorization, the

Jutta Treviranus:

80/20 rule with the quick wins and the quick profit that needs to be there.

Jutta Treviranus:

And even the things that are supposed to be these Inclusion sprints or

Jutta Treviranus:

designs for good are all about competing and survival of the fittest still.

Matt May:

Yeah.

Matt May:

Since you were talking about the Dewey decimal system, the thing that

Matt May:

just blew my mind about this was the discussion of categorization of LGBTQ

Matt May:

content in the context of a system that was designed by a virulent homophobe.

Matt May:

You don't expect that there are going to be a lot of really progressive

Matt May:

voices in the early 20th century, but this was a disorder to Dewey and the

Matt May:

work that it took just for it to be in different sections from a medical

Matt May:

disorder of either homosexuality or transgender issues, even the fiction

Matt May:

content there had to be reclassified.

Matt May:

And so the Dewey decimal system, I think, is a great example of codifying the way

Matt May:

things are to one specific perspective.

Matt May:

And in this case, an American perspective, which is then how all

Matt May:

of this information is organized.

Jutta Treviranus:

Yeah.

Jutta Treviranus:

Dewey was homophobic, he was racist, he was sexist, he was everything, and his

Jutta Treviranus:

particular classification finds his way into all these taxonomies and ontologies

Jutta Treviranus:

of metadata of coding still in the digital world, in the library world.

Jutta Treviranus:

And he of course created these hierarchies.

Jutta Treviranus:

What is at the top and what is trivial, what is important and what isn't, and

Jutta Treviranus:

assigned a codified place for everything.

Jutta Treviranus:

That also shows the history or the lifespan, the evolution of these complex

Jutta Treviranus:

adaptive systems and our unconsciousness of where does some of this come from?

Jutta Treviranus:

It is a great example of why we need diverse perspectives.

Jutta Treviranus:

And especially now.

Jutta Treviranus:

One of the things that's so distressing is when I talk about edge perspectives,

Jutta Treviranus:

people think that I'm talking about extremism or that I'm talking about,

Jutta Treviranus:

the individuals that are have extremist right-wing or left-wing views.

Jutta Treviranus:

And that's not what I'm talking about.

Jutta Treviranus:

And I think the one myth that I keep trying to get rid of is the notion

Jutta Treviranus:

that inclusion of edge perspectives is going to cause a greater extremism.

Jutta Treviranus:

When in fact what we found again and again, is if you make room for

Jutta Treviranus:

a diversity of perspectives, then you actually achieve a much greater

Jutta Treviranus:

equilibrium because you don't have these two polarities, which push against each

Jutta Treviranus:

other and become more and more extreme.

Jutta Treviranus:

You can look at this from the perspective of physics.

Jutta Treviranus:

If you have a pendulum that is pushed in two directions, it's

Jutta Treviranus:

going to keep swinging higher and higher in both directions.

Jutta Treviranus:

But if you add other forces, the other perspectives, then

Jutta Treviranus:

it will find an equilibrium.

Jutta Treviranus:

I'm going to take you on a tangent because I'm quite distressed with some

Jutta Treviranus:

of the practices that we have at the moment in terms of inclusion and equity.

Jutta Treviranus:

And I don't think that a lot of what is happening right now is or it's not getting

Jutta Treviranus:

us where we want to go, necessarily.

Jutta Treviranus:

And that includes the polarization that is happening within the equity

Jutta Treviranus:

versus non-equity or equity versus whatever's not for equity movement.

Jutta Treviranus:

There is this sacredness in certain rituals and performative examples

Jutta Treviranus:

of doing equity or doing inclusion, and that is quite distressing.

Jutta Treviranus:

I think that the minute that there is a stasis or there is something that cannot

Jutta Treviranus:

be questioned, the minute we abandon self-critique, then we are going to

Jutta Treviranus:

ossify and we are going to become static.

Jutta Treviranus:

And that will be the end.

Jutta Treviranus:

The minute we say something is certified as accessible or inclusive

Jutta Treviranus:

or ethical than and that we have had success in arriving at something,

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that's our end, that's our demise.

Jutta Treviranus:

So...

Matt May:

Or as soon as we create the checklist for doing inclusive design,

Matt May:

or we take down one well-defined structure and replace it with an

Matt May:

identical well-defined structure, where there is no variation or variability

Matt May:

to the way that you do things.

Jutta Treviranus:

Right.

Jutta Treviranus:

Exactly, yeah.

Matt May:

So let's talk about how not to do that.

Matt May:

What are the things that if you had to give a class on them cause of

Matt May:

design in five minutes, what are the things that you would want to do?

Matt May:

This is a great I've known you for long enough.

Matt May:

I know that you can do it, but I want to get into the, like how, what

Matt May:

are the things that people are doing wrong that you see and how would

Matt May:

you reframe the mistakes that you see people making over your career?

Jutta Treviranus:

Okay.

Jutta Treviranus:

So you've just triggered one of my allergies, and one of the

Jutta Treviranus:

things I think we're doing wrong.

Jutta Treviranus:

But not as a critique.

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I think one of the things that's distressing is the

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shallowness, the need for speed.

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The, you have to do something within 140 characters.

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You need to tell us everything, of great depth, within a certain period of time.

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You have 10 minutes to do your TED talk, et cetera, whatever.

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So the distressing thing about that is, that means that we cannot take people

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far from where they currently are.

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It's going to take somebody a while to understand and to see the steps that they

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have to move from their current position.

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But that isn't to say that you can't say something fairly profound

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within a short period of time.

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That you can give people the foundations of what is needed, but for them to

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really understand them and for it not to be just simply these words, it takes

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more time, and there's a succession.

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You have to take quite a few steps away from where you are.

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So if I had to compress or get at some of the fundamental things without actually

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talking a little bit more about what that actually means, not your assumed

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understanding of a particular word, because of course, words are also such a

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slippery, strange thing, what a word means to you is not what a word means to me, is

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not what a word means to somebody else.

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What is fundamental to inclusive design?

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I think one of the first things, okay.

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When an image I can use to illustrate inclusive design, I'll use two things.

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I'll talk about that human starburst.

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And I'll talk about what we call the virtuous tornado.

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So the reason for the human starburst is not because of process.

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Basically how I came up with this notion of a human starburst is because

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of 40 years of gathering data on the diversity of needs that people have.

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And the only way to actually represent that, because of course

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we all want data, we're obsessed with data at the moment, and data

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analytics and data is the only form of evidence that seems to be accepted.

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And we equate evidence with truth, and that's the only truth that's there.

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Trying to come up with something that is much more true to diversity.

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I plot it in a three-dimensional multi-variate scatterplot, which

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looks like a human starburst.

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And that the truth that I gained from that is that there is this huge space, and most

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of us occupy only 20% of it in the middle.

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And the people that actually have some understanding and knowledge and

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experience of the rest of the space are the people that we're currently

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excluding in our design, excluding in our assertions of knowledge and truth.

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And if we want to innovate, if we want to be creative, if we want

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to find the weak signals and the things that we've missed out on.

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And that we've forgotten about or have excluded, then it's the individuals

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that are out at that and the experience and the needs that are out there.

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How do we do that?

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The way that we do that is through what I call the virtuous tornado,

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which is recognizing that we're never going to get it perfectly.

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And in fact, it's the imperfect, the impermanent and incomplete

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that are the things that we should value that have the potential.

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And it's that idea of potential that we need to keep seeking.

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So the virtuous tornado starts with what we know at the moment as being

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the individuals, the experiences and the individuals that are currently

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excluded and have the greatest difficulty, and attempting to work

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with those individuals to create a design that is inclusive of them.

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And that includes the creating the process that they feel is inclusive of them.

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And then going through the full cycle and iterating at the end of this cycle,

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where there has been an opportunity to try out the design, to evaluate,

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to determine is this addressing these challenges, asking again who then now

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is missing and what are the challenges that are, that the system that we've

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created as not addressed and going further out and further out at each iteration.

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So it's a process without end, and it's creating a system or a structure that

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expands, and that includes more and more.

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Inclusive design is not about stasis.

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It's not about completion.

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It's not about reaching a success.

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It isn't about winning.

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In essence, it is actually quite counter to the fundamental way in which we

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make decisions that we plan, that we solve problems, that we think about

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education, that we think about work, that we think about value and valuation.

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It contests all of that.

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And so it's a massive culture change.

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And at any point where we think we have landed on a dogma, or something

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that's sacred, or something that you know is a performance of inclusive

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design, then that's the wrong term.

Jutta Treviranus:

That isn't inclusive design.

Matt May:

So I want to ask a tactical question here, because this is

Matt May:

something that I'm asked a lot.

Matt May:

Let's say you have a researcher that says, okay, this is what I want to do.

Matt May:

I really care about this space.

Matt May:

What do I do next?

Matt May:

How do I reach out?

Matt May:

Who do I reach out to?

Matt May:

What changes do I need to make to the way that I do research, or anything

Matt May:

like that with a designer or an engineer, anybody that's involved

Matt May:

in the process because they start out and they built a head of steam.

Matt May:

And then you get to the practical pieces of this, and then it gets

Matt May:

substantially harder, and that's where people start to hedge their bets.

Matt May:

What's the next step for people, once they have decided that they

Matt May:

want to undertake this work?

Jutta Treviranus:

So it completely depends on where they're starting, and I

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think they need to start where they are.

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Say it's a researcher, a data researcher.

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Say they're into quantitative statistics.

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The advice I would give there is, let's look at that and query that and

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question why you're doing this this way.

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And who is it that you're excluding with that?

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And who is it that can't use whatever you're doing, or that your assertions

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are not actually addressing?

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Do you proclaim this finding or conclusion based upon this statistical significance?

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Or do you look at, well, look at the spread here and look at the variability.

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You remove the outliers, et cetera.

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Almost any discipline, any field, any place where somebody is at, there

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is a reason for, or a process that they can use to say, wait, what is

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it that I'm doing that's excluding?

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What is it that I'm doing that is causing someone to be harmed by what I'm

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doing and excluded from what I'm doing?

Jutta Treviranus:

There are so many issues with this idea of engineering.

Jutta Treviranus:

The denial, actually, within engineering is that the world is

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changing, that it's predictable.

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Engineers assume a predictability that yes, the world is complicated

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and we can work out the complication.

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That the risk mitigation or planning process, that there's some way

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in which we can predict things.

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When in fact, it isn't linear process.

Jutta Treviranus:

It's the black swans that get us.

Jutta Treviranus:

In terms of engineering, there's the hubris that you can plan for

Jutta Treviranus:

anything that is going to come.

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And that of course, causes you to create these boundaries and linear

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processes, which are going to exclude.

Jutta Treviranus:

So that's the conversation with the engineer.

Jutta Treviranus:

For the clinician, or the medical professional, it's, how can you in

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fact have expertise in these things?

Jutta Treviranus:

How can you tell people what's good for them when you don't know

Jutta Treviranus:

the full extent of their life?

Jutta Treviranus:

When you're seeing somebody and diagnosing them when you have

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medicalized these things and fit them into prognostic categories.

Jutta Treviranus:

So for every person that intends to get into inclusive design, and

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I think inclusive design needs that range of disciplines, that

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range of perspectives, there's a different set of questions to ask.

Matt May:

Great.

Matt May:

So I have one question that is all ranging.

Matt May:

You can go in any direction that you choose with it, but who do you think

Matt May:

is worth following in this space?

Matt May:

Who do you think is doing good work?

Matt May:

Who do you think is meeting the bar that you had set for

Matt May:

practicing inclusive design, or has a critical view of inclusive

Matt May:

design that you think is important?

Matt May:

Anything that people can grab onto to further their own understanding?

Jutta Treviranus:

That's a hard question because I think there's

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a growing group of people.

Jutta Treviranus:

And so my sense is too, that is always changing.

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I don't like identifying just one person.

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But there are these nuggets that arise and people that come up

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with new things because I think inclusive design is a field that

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needs to, be continuously refreshed.

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I think back though on people that I think we haven't listened to, people

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like Donella Meadows and the primer in systems thinking, or Ursula Franklin,

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who was talking about the real world of technology and rethinking technology as

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a mindset, this notion of acting like earthworms, the importance of earthworms.

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The preparing the ground.

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I think what we need to do is to continuously search for people who

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are adding fresh perspectives, who are expanding the field, just like

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that virtuous tornado, who can give us some more information that is true

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to our human difference, true to the idea that we all have value, true

Jutta Treviranus:

to an understanding of complexity.

Jutta Treviranus:

Sorry that-- I can name off a whole slew of people that are currently

Jutta Treviranus:

there, but I think the point that I want to make is that everybody has

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the potential to add to this field.

Jutta Treviranus:

And what it's about is adding those diverse views, those

Jutta Treviranus:

diverse perspectives to the whole.

Matt May:

I'm going to, rather than the narrow you down to people, I think

Matt May:

fields of study, because it's the confluence of a bunch of different

fields:

there's research, there's design, there's things like feminist STS, there

fields:

are all of these other influences that come in and where academically would

fields:

one branch out on inclusive design?

Jutta Treviranus:

I like to ask the same question.

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Who are we missing?

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What are we missing?

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So what are the fields or the areas of study that we have

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not paid adequate attention to?

Jutta Treviranus:

So the other ways of knowing, I think the pushing out of indigeneity and

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Indigenous ways of knowing is really promising the ideas of other groups

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or other non-Western views of history of culture, of what has value, the

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perspectives that we've denigrated are, I think there's a lot to learn there.

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There's a field, which I think is really interesting and

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it's this notion of wisdom.

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We've been caught up in smart and intelligence and those sorts of things.

Jutta Treviranus:

But can we balance that with the ideas of wisdom, and what is wisdom?

Jutta Treviranus:

What we need to reach is an equilibrium, a balance, and that comes about by

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diverse perspectives and we can't go too far in any one direction.

Jutta Treviranus:

There isn't an answer per se.

Jutta Treviranus:

And the reason or the way that we understand that and realize that is in

Jutta Treviranus:

bringing in that diversity of fields, of perspectives, of ideas, of experiences.

Matt May:

All right.

Matt May:

I think that is a great place to stop.

Matt May:

I want to thank you for doing this again, and we'll have show notes and we can put

Matt May:

links to some of the things that you were talking about, like the virtuous tornado.

Matt May:

And, yeah, I'm really grateful that we had this chance to talk.

Jutta Treviranus:

Thank you!

Jutta Treviranus:

It's been a pleasure.

Matt May:

That's our show.

Matt May:

Show notes and transcripts for all InEx episodes are available at inex.show.

Matt May:

That's I-N-E-X dot show.

Matt May:

All episodes are released under Creative Commons Attribution,

Matt May:

4.0 International license.

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About the Podcast

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InEx: a show about inclusive design

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About your host

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Matthew May

InEx is Matt's major research project for his Master of Design in Inclusive Design degree at OCAD University.