Building For Everyone

Foreword xiii

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 Building for Everyone: Why Product Inclusion Matters 11

Product Inclusion Team Approach 13

Understanding Who Your User is 15

Understanding What Exclusion Looks Like 17

Speaking a Common Language 20

Expanding Diversity and Inclusion to Products and Services 22

Recognizing the Need to Communicate with Underrepresented Users 24

Case Studies: Prioritizing Inclusion Across Industries 28

Going beyond default shapes and sizes 28

Designing comfortable virtual reality headsets for everyone 29

Ignoring the impact of airbags on women and children 30

How Google’s Product Inclusion Team Got Its Start 31

Chapter 2 Google’s Capstone Research: What We Learned 37

Understanding Our Research 38

Our research objectives 38

Our research questions 39

Definitions of key terms, parameters, and metrics 40

Desired outcomes 41

Examining the data 42

Drawing conclusions 43

Learning from Our Experience 44

Putting Our Research and Experience to Work in Your Organization 44

Chapter 3 20 Essential Product Inclusion Questions to Light the Way 47

The 10 Questions Every Team Needs to Ask and Answer 47

Has your team been exposed to product inclusion? 50

Have you identified a champion for your product inclusion efforts? 51

What’s the product (or business) challenge you’re trying to solve? 51

What is the inclusion challenge you’re trying to solve? 52

How do the product/business and inclusion challenges align? 52

Whom do you need to influence to unlock resources to solve the problem? 53

What’s your action plan for a test/pilot? 53

What partners need to be involved to execute, document, measure, and communicate the results of your test/pilot? 53

How can you build the resources to continue this work beyond this workshop? 54

What is your public commitment to documenting and sharing the outcomes of your work in product inclusion (both internally and externally)? 55

10 Questions Most Teams Ask Our Product Inclusion Team 55

Why should leaders care about team members’ personal backgrounds? 56

Why is culture important? 57

What part of product design is the most important? 59

Do you have insights specifically for [insert specific product/service]? 60

Can you come to my team meeting? 61

Which dimensions do I prioritize? 62

How do I get the most perspectives to the table? 63

I want my program manager/VP/marketing manager/engineering lead to care about this. What do I do? 64

Am I biased? 65

What’s the one thing I should focus on? 67

Chapter 4 Building the Case for Product Inclusion and Getting Buy-In 71

Building the Case for Product Inclusion 71

Building a human case 73

Building a business case 75

Bringing it all together 78

Building Buy-In: Top-Down and Bottom-Up 79

Getting buy-in from execs 80

Starting a grassroots transformation among employees 83

Chapter 5 Adopting Product Inclusion Principles to Guide Your Work 91

Checking Out Existing Product Inclusion Principles 92

Pinpointing Your Own Product Inclusion Principles 95

Putting Principles into Practice 96

Developing people, processes, and products 96

Chapter 6 Integrating Product Inclusion with Your Work 101

Holding Teams Accountable with Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) 102

Defining objectives 103

Defining and scoring key results 104

Modifying OKRs 104

Integrating Product Inclusion at Key Touchpoints 105

Identifying your product inclusion touchpoints 106

Specifying inclusive actions at each touchpoint 107

Applying an inclusive lens throughout the process 110

Staying on Track with the Product Inclusion Checklist 112

Using the product inclusion checklist 113

Modifying the product inclusion checklist 117

Chapter 7 Getting to Know Your Underrepresented Users 121

Building an Inclusive Research Team 122

Modifying Research Studies for Underrepresented Users 123

A Six-Step Inclusive Research Framework 124

Step 1: Explain the purpose of the study 124

Step 2: Establish your inclusion criteria 125

Step 3: Build your sample 127

Step 4: Choose a research method 129

Step 5: Conduct your research 130

Step 6: Share your results 131

Bringing It All Together: From Research to Product 132

Chapter 8 Integrating Product Inclusion into the Ideation Process 135

Conducting Inclusive Design Sprints 136

Identify and invite participants 137

Lay the foundation for a successful design sprint 138

Conduct the design sprint 139

Delivering Lightning Talks 143

Chapter 9 Starting Your Own Dogfooding and Adversarial Testing Programs 147

Creating and Managing a Dogfooders/Testers Pool 148

Recruiting employees 149

Choosing a dogfooding lead 150

Coordinating dogfooders with product teams 152

Following up with the product team 154

Following up with your dogfooders/testers 155

Case Studies on Inclusive Dogfooding/Adversarial Testing 155

Case Study: Owlchemy 156

Case Study: Grasshopper 160

Case Study: Google Duo 161

Case Study: Project DIVA 162

Chapter 10 Making Your Marketing More Inclusive 165

Inclusive Marketing Guidelines 166

Google’s Inclusive Marketing Consultants Task Force 168

Extending inclusiveness to all your marketing activities 169

Chapter 11 Measuring Product Inclusion Performance 173

Mastering Performance Measurement Fundamentals 174

Choosing the Right Performance Metrics 175

Evaluating your metrics needs 176

Classifying metrics 177

Considering some metrics to adopt 178

Combining Metrics with Objectives and Timelines 181

Chapter 12 The Many Shades of Nude: Product Inclusion in Fashion and Retail 183

Focusing on Inclusive Fashion 184

Considering color 185

Broadening selections for size and fit 185

Making sensitive product and marketing choices 186

Increasing gender diversity 187

Making Your Retail Store More Inclusive and Accessible 188

Brickandmortar establishments 188

Online stores 191

Product Inclusion at the Gap 192

Product Inclusion at Dyne Life 196

Chapter 13 Looking to the Future of Product Inclusion 199

Sharing Perspectives on the Future of Product Inclusion 200

Product Inclusion Across Industries 201

Eyewear 201

Medicine/Healthcare 203

Architecture 207

Fitness 207

Toys 208

Movies and television 211

Academia 214

Fashion 215

So What Does All This Mean? 221

Acknowledgments 225

About the Author 231

Index 233