Katie Schlott Talks Inclusive Design & Designing for Women

Be Customer Led – Katie Schlott Talks Inclusive Design & Designing for Women

Welcome to be customer lad, where we’ll explore how leading experts in customer and employee experience are navigating organizations through their own journey to be customer led and the accidents and behaviors of lawyers and businesses exhibit to get there. And now your host of Bill’s staikos.

Now collaboratively developing impactful strategies that lead to creative and game changing business solutions for companies. Now she’s worked with some major brands, federal express HPG. AbbVie SC Johnson, Samsung, best buy the list goes on and on. And we are talking today about a topic that is near and dear to my heart.

Today’s conversation is really about inclusive design and bringing women perspective into design. Katie, thanks so much for coming on the show.

Just tell us about your journey. It’s got some great twists and turns like you’ve been on the PR side, you’re going to education side, clearly user centered design, runs through a lot of those disciplines, but the practicing that much more heavily, like how has that given you one, your journey with an, even if you think about the perspective that’s given you in your work with,

I think obviously there’s not a linear path and I think for a lot of us, I’m sure yourself included. There’s no degrees, no specializations when we were going through university. So it has a, a mix of experiences that are brought into it. So I graduated with a journalism degree and there are two paths in the old school way of thinking about journalism.

Reporter anchor writer, or you went PR and communication. And it turns out that a professor told me, told me that my, my headline writing was way too creative. So I said, okay, well I guess that, I guess that’s not in the cards for me. So I went the PR route and my first position was at a pretty large global PR firm in Chicago.

I did consumer goods. So everything from children’s educational toys to cleaning supplies. And at the time, honestly, there were only so many tactics you could leverage in PR blogs were just becoming a thing. social media was only Facebook at the time and the digital it’s nuts. I mean, I’m really, I’m really aging myself here, but the digital landscape didn’t invent.

Smartphones. So there were only so many things you could do to garner excitement and press and communicate about your client’s products. But I remember kind of that aha moment, and this was going to be, I just knew it was going to be a moment that was gonna change the trajectory of my career. And we had this new product, this client that I was working with at the time.

And it was a flameless candle product. Okay. as pitching the media contacts, I’m calling my contacts at USA today. I’m calling my context at good housekeeping. And they’re saying, no, go, this is not a thing, not a thing. I think our readers would want. And so everyone in the office is like, let’s hold a brainstorm.

So we held a brainstorm, trying to get creative. How could we pitch this differently? And our clients. Kind of quote-unquote winning idea was just take the center part of this candle, the most innovative part, the IP that they were really trying to tout and make it a pencil holder. And I wanted to just stand up and immediately walk out.

I didn’t want to compromise the integrity of the product that the client wanted us to pitch. So I said, what am I even doing here? What, what am I doing? So I decided kind of right then and there that I want it to be on the other side of product and service creation, not promotion. I wanted to design products, design services that people actually wanted and needed, opposed to trying to push things on people that wasn’t even interesting or needed by them.

And, I’m sure we I’m sure you’ve had that aha moment.

It was my left call.

So moving from PR and communications into this space that wasn’t really well known. 14 years ago, when I joined the IAA as an independent design innovation consultancy, none of those words, anyone could comprehend let alone all of them together. And so trying to explain. my new job, my new calling is going to be using human centered research and insights to really help clients make the right decisions on their products, on their services, on what people want and need.

So 180 degree flip from PR. so that’s where I’ve been. That’s what I’ve been doing for the last 14 years.

No worries. But that being said like really interesting organization doing some pretty cool work. So tell us a little bit about what you’re doing there, how you’re doing it, how you’re working with. Sure.

But we do that through a combination of design thinking and business strategy. So it’s merging creative, iterative, iterative, agile way of thinking and working, which is what designers like us have used for decades with that analytical. Financial rigor of the traditional business strategy. And I kind of break that down into three buckets.

When we think about how we help our clients and our clients range from, fortune 500, 100 companies who are legacy leaders to category disruptors. So it’s a little bit of, of everyone that, that we’re serving, but. The first category I think of is helping clients find new growth. So identifying new and emerging places for companies to place that could be white space for them to grab based on shifting technology or emerging behaviors or an untapped market, maybe that they, that they didn’t see the second category that I, that.

That we really carve out is creating new offerings. So this is more around building prototyping, testing all of these new innovations, and that could be everything. Physical and digital products to say new business models or new services or new experiences and the power, those first two, I think when you combine those, we’re doing things like in the logistics space, designing.

The societal acceptance strategy and experience designed for autonomous bots, never thought those words would come out of my mouth, or in the industrial space, launching new air quality software platforms that promote not just the building, but healthy buildings. So big, meaty, exciting topic areas, that really dig into what, what can help companies grow and, and that third area.

Which I think is really critical right now is helping your clients really nurture and empower that culture of innovation within their own organizations. So we do this day in and day out, but our clients want to replicate. They want to create those experiences in house. So how can we help them work more iteratively, collaboratively?

Cross-functionally like we do. So we have a whole skew of teams that work together, business strategists, researchers, UX designers, UI designers, architects, technologists, and they really kind of bring these three, three parts to life.

But, just before I, I, I’ve got a question now we’re going to, I want to really get into this sort of the topic set, but of course, I’ve got to know Katie, which part or which one of those three, or maybe which part of. The innovation process that you guys go through and I see you guys were really like, which one you got on?

Well, what’s your favorite?

So thinking about new areas of opportunity, prototyping, building, failing. Multiple times throughout that process, but teaching your clients that that’s the way that we’re going to iterate to, to really build something that the people they’re trying to serve need a post to creating something that they think they’re going to serve their customers.

I

And one of the reasons why we’ve connected on the show, you all have created a capability focused on designing for. So specifically. Yeah. So tell us a little bit about.

In the industry of why it’s important. but I think it’s good to go back to kind of what it is and better understand that. And then of course, I’m going to dig into everything designed for women. So you’re right. It is a rising need. People need to be aware of it, educated about it, understand how to incorporate what people might hear as responsible design practices or inclusive design practices.

And I think one of the things is talking about what it is. So the way that I think about inclusive design and the broader definition is specifying products and services for as many people and as situations as possible while you reduce kind of that ability or level of ability that’s required. By each of those people.

So this is the way I think about it rather than using kind of that common average user inclusive designers really extend those possible use cases to the Wyatt widest variety of people. And I think that’s really important because unfortunately where we’re at is that culture kind of really assumes that a few can represent all.

And that leaves a lot of people unserved. So when you’re designing for and marketing to the same homogeneous, demographics, time and time again, with those same kind of tired assumptions about their needs, you’re missing. Huge opportunities for equity and for innovation. So at the crux of it, if anyone takes away anything about, what is inclusive designer?

Why do we need it? It’s because we need to think about inclusive design because by not including, we’re inherently choosing to exclude, and that’s a really hard. To take on it’s no one starts designing, saying, well, I’m definitely excluding women or I’m dead. that’s not the point, but the point is that if you don’t focus on it, you’re going to miss out on that opportunity to really design with those people and for those people.

So

And I think that that is true. No one goes in and says, I’m going to do something bad. Right, right, right. I came across and I shared this with you. I came across that frankly just blew, blew me away. And I don’t mean to pick on anyone in the automotive industry, the people, et cetera. cars, interestingly are designed with a default nail approach crack doing so, and this is a really scary statistic as a, not only as a husband, but also as a girl, dad as well, women are approximately or about 50% more likely to suffer serious injuries in an accident.

Why haven’t we fixed it? It seems simple, but I, I appreciate that stat and I think it’s helpful to pull in where it comes from. So I, my guess is that it’s pulled in from the book invisible women, which is written in by Carolyn cradle Perez. And this is an amazing book. It’s a book that. Is brought together through case study stories, research, research statistics, but the main focus of it is to highlight the hidden ways in which women are excluded from kind of the building blocks that we live in today, which is data.

And so they go through medical research, technical workplace. The one that you’re talking about is, is automotive. To break it down, kind of how she does in the book. Just to give a couple of rationale as to like, why is this still happening? There’s a couple different reasons in the automotive example. One is how women are positioned in the cars.

So they’re not designing for that. Women actually sit further. Towards the steering wheel because they, they have to reach those pedals and then they also sit more upright so they can see over the steering wheel. But when car manufacturers are making cars, that isn’t the standard position. So women are out of position driving.

Number one, then you add in the layer of women’s anatomy. So what’s happening is that women have less muscle in our necks and our upper torso than men. So that makes us much more vulnerable to whiplash. The way that the automotive industry today is creating seats or designing seats has actually amplified this, this vulnerability because they’re harder.

So when women are going forward and backward in an accident, they’re not, they don’t have anything to brace their impact. So you’ve got two things that are now working against. In general, which again, if you leveraged inclusive design practices, you would know and be able to see, but there’s a third challenge to that in that the way that they’re testing and considering cars is through car, car crash, dummies, you see it all the time on commercials, right?

And this is, this is pervasive. It is not just automotive industry, it’s healthcare, it’s a technology. And there’s so many examples in so many ways in which that shocking. These are things we accept as facts. We accept these as a foundation and then these become kind of those pillars of ma of measurement, almost that we hold all these systems upon.

So we, as leaders in this industry have to kind of hold ourselves accountable to deconstruct those pieces and figure out what data are we building on? How are we researching? Who are we researching? Because all of those components are incredibly important. Parts of, of inclusively designing for people.

Like Zionism is a collaborative process, but where do you see this happening? Most a

Product services and kind of advance that thinking. one is in the financial sector, right? A focus. there’s a huge lack of focus on women. and they’re very underserved and they’re generally not educated within say the investment space. And so we’ve seen companies like. Which has popped up in the last couple of years, which is a woman owned company, focused on financial investing for women.

and we’re recently they extended that into personal banking and membership models. So I can only imagine that the need is there in, in the financial sector. I think there’s two other areas which are really interesting as well is support. So within the last, let’s say two years on Nike launched maternity wear or maternity gear, which is seen as incredibly unique within women’s clothing, but it shouldn’t be honestly, because given it’s important for women to move throughout their pregnancies, we shouldn’t have to wear clothes that don’t fit for our bodies.

Companies like PNG and others that are focused in creating new opportunities. So Kendra is a company that I believe was launched about two years ago or three years ago. And they’re the first company that’s come from this partnership between am 13 and P and G is venture group. And it’s, it’s amazing.

They’re supporting women and providing products and services throughout menopause, which no one talks

So in light of that, Can you, where do you think some of those big gaps are not don’t call anybody ask specifically, but maybe like, if you can generalize a little bit, I know that we work with a lot of different companies and clearly a lot of different organizations need help in inclusive design, but like where do you see like some of the biggest gaps where you even yourself as a consumer have.

Whether it’s in the driver’s seat or buying a product. And you’re just like, this company really needs my help.

So I’m of course will not call, call out any companies. This isn’t the name of the game and inclusive design, but I think. An emerging space, only look at tech. And so I’ll call out kind of tech in general, specifically in the emerging spaces of AI machine learning, tech ethics, it’s even more of like this wild west environment and you need inclusive design in those.

Evermore than before. It’s such a rich opportunity, but I think there was this, I, I can’t remember where I read this in an article, but I loved the statement. It was AI systems are biased because they are human creations and it’s so incredibly true at a more granular level. You think about, humans are the ones who are generating, collecting, labeling data, that goes into these data sets and then you’ve got humans.

Determining what data sets, variables, rules, algorithms should be created, but both of these stages can in, can really introduce biases in terms of what’s going to go into that technology. So one of, one of the examples that you hear a lot about right now, Is in facial recognition. And I always think about data when we were talking about the automotive industry, right.

It’s garbage in garbage out, right? So the outcomes are only going to be as good as the data that you’re putting in. So for facial recognition, there’s a study done where, women are just not being recognized in these technologies, black women far, far less. Well, why? Because the inputs were based on white male faces.

So the data that comes in really needs to be considered. And I think there’s ways to improve that it is not gloom and doom in these industries. It is so much opportunity to be had. So thinking about who are you bringing in to capture that data who are on the teams? we know that that in stem, there are far less women, but that doesn’t need to be the case.

So your team composition, how you’re creating data, I think AI and machine learning, there’s huge opportunity

Yeah. Tell us, or share with us some of the best practices you’re seeing out there. You’re being, you’re bringing in, to your work, through, with Aja collect,collaborative. Excuse me. Talk to us a little about some of those best practices and inclusive design that people can take away and start to explore, test, learn in their own.

Don’t worry about where you’re starting from. It might be big interview point. It might be at zero that’s. Okay. but I think you have to get beyond your comfort of not knowing or deeply understanding every nuance of inclusive design and. I I’m not an expert. I’m learning as I go as well. So we held when we first kicked, kicked, started designed for women as a capability at IAA.

We held a series of round table discussions and we invited leaders from across fortune 100 companies. This topic of design for women specifically, and what can we be doing in our work? So I thought, great. We’ll have three or four people that will be interested. It turned out there were 40 some people, it was incredible companies like Google, Nike, Airbnb Johnson, and Johnson service.

Now USA diverse, diverse companies, but what will. But I found really fascinating as we help these really vulnerable conversations to say, what are we learning? What are we concerned about as leaders in this industry? If you’re a researcher, a designer, and executive, and there were a couple pieces that really popped out to me that I found.

That are there so simple. It doesn’t have to be a huge initiative. There are small tweaks you can make to your process. So to get, to get to your question, one of the things we talked about in those round table discussions was, opening the scope in the broadest sense. How do you rethink your target audience?

And a couple members had really rich stories. I won’t go through all of them, but one was talking about how could, how can we watch for inherent default? So many times, let’s say within the cosmetic industry. They’re very much saying, okay, well our targets women 18 to 30, simple enough, however, people turn 35 and 40 T at 60.

And guess what? The more solidified they are in those age groups, the more disposable incomes they have to be able to spend money. So. We talked about opening the aperture in the targets that you’re looking at using stretch personas, thinking about not just those defaults that you might always be going to another area where that was really interesting from a design perspective was to reevaluate the QT.

That you’re using, be it in your digital experiences, your service experiences, and someone in finance brought up this really great example when they were looking at their icon library. And she said, we use a wallet icon. And I was like, yeah, that’s great. I okay. And what was interesting about that was that it’s a default way that men carry a money.

Why isn’t it a purse? So, I mean, all of these things are things we can very simply evaluate right. In our design process. Those are just a couple. And then I think another area or recommendation is to use existing tools and materials. You do not have to make everything from scratch. Microsoft has an amazing inclusive design toolkit that you can pick up and use.

Google design materials also continues to innovate. So I think. Thinking of all of these areas of opportunity, use those as small pieces within your, within your purview to be able to influence the work that you’re doing on the daily.

Yeah. International women’s day is on March 8th. Yeah, the theme this year is break the bias, which is pretty cool. We’ve been talking about, I mean, even your point around sort of AI and machine learning, just the bias inherent in that, what would you tell people about how to celebrate on marches?

To celebrate that. So, no, I know. I

So every time we hold a round table, or every time we learn new learnings, we democratize that information. So you can go to our website and continue to look up great tips and tricks. also create, starting to create a community. I think it’s really important. if you go and search inclusive design or you, you search design for women, you’re not going to come up with a lot of search hits.

so I think it’s really important to start building communities. So we’ve, we’ve been doing that. I also think it’s incredibly important. If you’re an executive, I always have kind of like, what are my top two projects that I would tell kind of every executive to, to harness this year, if March 8th is my platform, I will take that as the platform.

So if you’re an executive and you’re not addressing that now, It’s pretty important to start thinking about it and it’s not shrinking or pink it, right. It’s not taking what you do and making it pink. It’s one of those things that you really need to understand how you’re including women in that process.

So number one, executives, are you addressing women as customers? Are you addressing them in the process and designing for them? I think the second area of focus as we celebrate that day is how are you integrating your products or solutions? To solve bigger, more systemic challenges that are facing women.

imagine you’re a tech company and you have many, many, many products in your portfolio, but each has an owner. Each is siloed. I’m sure you experienced this when you work with companies. However, what if you thought about it differently as an executive, you flipped that on its head and you said we could leverage an integrated technology solution to solve a bigger problem.

Equitably. I just challenge everyone to think a little bit differently about who you’re focusing on and how you’re using your solutions currently to think differently about those challenges.

The idea by the way about not just. How much time you’re spending in meetings or free time, but my wife and I, we’ve got a shared Google calendar. Everything goes on it even, even like my work meetings. Right. But. That would be really incredible to understand and see, like, am I being a good partner in taking on,an equitable distribution of those responsibilities?

It’s like, you need to be thinking that someone gave me really good advice about how to be a great ally. And they said, start in your home and such. And if you can do that in your home and make that part of your day to day there, that’s going to spill over to the workplace. So, from my friendly allies out there, starting the house, this has been a really inspirational conversation.

I’ve got two more questions or who do you think rather look up to in your specific area of expertise?

She’s written a book about it, and it talks about these 12 dimensions of diversity and thinking about how you create inclusively products and services. and I think she’s a trailblazer and someone. definitely has a lot of resources. Another, if you go a little bit deeper, Into more specific areas of inclusion, an area I’m incredibly passionate about is caregiving.

and as part of that sandwich generation, unfortunately I found myself there. there are amazing people doing work in that space. Obviously there are bills waiting to be passed, but, I shampoo is the co-director of caring across generations and she’s created a national coalition of about 200. I have a sucky advocacy organizations that are really working to transform longterm care caregiving.

man, I’m pretty sure I should say I get up at like 5:00 AM I meditate? I read 30 pages. I don’t, I don’t.

I would say, and I think. See behind me, but a creative outlet is really important for me. so I find time to express and painting. I found during the pandemic as we’ve been on zoom I’m co-creating with my colleagues on the artwork, in my background, which has been really fun. I also blocked time to write, just do reflective writing, which I published content on LinkedIn and re recently started a sub stack, which is just a great outlet.

My mom. One of the most inspiring people. I know who’s overcome chronic illness, her spirit, her lights can teach us. And then my kids, they keep me inspired constant bursts of creativity and resilience, which honestly, I really think we could all use right now. So, so those would be the, the areas, definitely not, not knocking meditation, but that 5:00 AM wake up call would with,

I think I get a lot of inspiration from my kids. My nine year old. I’ve started asking her questions about different products, sort of things that like, what is this going to be when your dad’s age? I almost like we talked about this almost every night before she goes to bed. Now, the stuff that comes out of this child’s brain off the charts, incredible, every child would be the same.

And I’m like, now I want to get like my seven year olds kind of perspective now. And just kind of see how they start to differ. A little guy is a little bit too young for that, but on the last, like such a good question to ask again, I could see that she’s probably fricking right. Like,

I mean, these younger kids are so incredible. I coach a incubator program in our local high school. Those classes are starting so much younger and those opportunities are. Amazing. So yeah, I, these future generations are going to run circles around us, be it with inclusive design, be it with, their prowess and technology.

It’s, it’s exciting to see that light ahead,

And she’s been magnificent every step of the way. Thank you for being that. Thanks for being a great guest. Thank you for dropping some serious knowledge on us today. And I hope to have you on the show again, sometime I’d love to, if you’re open