Lessons from One Designer’s Journey in Uncentering Her Design Practice

Tell us about what modified in your design apply because you joined Spotify. Where did all of it start?

Last winter, I stated a bittersweet goodbye to household and mates within the US to hitch Spotify’s progress alternatives group in Stockholm. I spent the primary few months attending to know my new teammates, chatting with the designers behind my favourite Spotify options, and consuming lovely amber saffron buns to distinction the darkness of Sweden’s winters — after which 2020 occurred.

Anyone who lived by means of 2020 is aware of that the assumptions we maintain in regards to the world are, as a rule, constructed on sand. The occasions of the yr — a world pandemic, vital conversations on race and privilege, and rising indications of inequality worldwide — made this much more true. Like many others, I discovered myself questioning, properly, all the pieces: my preferences; the way in which I hung out, cash, and a focus; my concept of “good design”; the historical past I used to be taught; and extra.

This questioning seeped into my work life as properly. As the yr progressed, I continued to learn analysis experiences that challenged my view of how, as an illustration, Spotify listeners in areas with unreliable web connectivity use their telephones and knowledge plans. I sat in on interviews with music fanatics in Mexico, Brazil, and Indonesia that challenged my views on how audio suits into folks’s lives. I heard time and time once more from the UX author on my group that my designs or copy “wouldn’t translate well.” 

I discovered that constructing Spotify for the world meant incorporating various viewpoints and experiences into my design apply at every step of the way in which. It meant considering past the wants of my economically advantaged, Western-educated, able-bodied, iPhone-carrying, privileged self. In different phrases, it meant uncentering myself from my design apply.

For individuals who don’t know, what does it imply to “center yourself” in your design apply?

Different folks put themselves on the middle of their design work in numerous methods, however listed here are some examples I seen in my very own apply:

When I mocked up designs that appeared or sounded “good” solely in English, I used to be centering myself and uncentering the billions of individuals on this planet for whom English is not a primary language. 

When I used principally Western artists in mockups meant to characteristic the breadth of the Spotify catalog, I used to be centering myself and uncentering the billions of followers whose favourite artists aren’t from the West. 

When I offered my designs predominantly on high-end, large-display iOS units, I used to be centering myself and uncentering nearly all of the cell phone customers on this planet on smaller, lower-resolution units. 

When I delivered design specs to engineers with out the alternate textual content that VoiceOver or TalkBalk must learn aloud, I used to be centering myself and uncentering the hundreds of thousands of individuals utilizing assistive applied sciences. 

When I believed that high-quality design coaching might solely be present in Silicon Valley, I used to be centering myself and uncentering the deep data to be gained from designers in areas like China and Africa.

Designing for not-myself meant carefully analyzing the views I held, and the way they affected the product and design selections I made. I’m a daughter of Korean immigrants in America, which supplies me a head begin, since I naturally straddle two cultures and might see by means of two distinctly completely different cultural lenses. It additionally helps that I began my design profession in Mumbai, India. Living in such an unfamiliar surroundings compelled me to reevaluate my assumptions continuously. But I nonetheless suppose I’ve much more work to do.

What recommendation would you give to designers eager to uncenter their very own design apply? 

Once you may determine the methods during which you middle your self, you merely want to begin questioning and undoing them one after the other! There are many locations folks can begin to take themselves out of their design apply. The three I began with have been: leveraging the specialists round me, diversifying my supply materials, and refreshing my spec guidelines. 

How do you “leverage the experts around you”?

In my position, I’m lucky to work with inside groups with specialised data in all kinds of areas associated to creating international merchandise. Some individuals are deeply educated about listener conduct in access-constrained markets, some are specialists in accessible design, and others have expertise scaling digital merchandise to tons of of languages. They’ve created useful toolkits and tips for designers, which have been important to my design course of.

We even have unimaginable person and market analysis groups that continuously develop new insights about how folks from numerous areas of the world work together with audio. They be sure that we study from listeners in every single place — not simply within the US and Europe, however Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa as properly. 

These specialists are essential to the suggestions course of, and better of all, they’re at all times keen to have a espresso and chat about their learnings!

Here’s a easy instance the place collaboration throughout specialties — together with UX writing, design techniques, and localization groups — was important: the Spotify app begin display. This display will get hundreds of thousands of day by day guests worldwide, so it’s vital that our entrance door is welcoming for all customers — it doesn’t matter what language they’re viewing it in.

Option 1 seems to be easy and clear in English, however the format is tough to adapt throughout languages. Not each language makes use of the sentence construction “Continue with [authentication method].” Many languages take a unique sentence construction; as an illustration, a direct translation in Korean would require writing “[Authentication method] continue with.” In Finnish, we use “Jatka Google-tunnuksilla” for “Continue with Google” and “Käytä puhelinnumeroa” for “Continue with phone number,” so this format doesn’t translate properly.

Option 2 works higher however nonetheless isn’t perfect. Although the design interprets extra simply, the all-caps letters and character spacing aren’t nice for languages like Arabic or Finnish during which texts develop as much as 30% when translated. This means textual content can get reduce off or go to a number of traces. The downside is compounded when folks have textual content enlargement enabled on their telephones. Not to say that all-caps letters can really feel aggressive.

In the third choice, we used sentence case strings, which aren’t solely extra readable but additionally permit for simple translation and textual content enlargement. It’s not good but for extraordinarily giant textual content sizes, however we’re persevering with to iterate to ensure the format accommodates all accessibility settings.

How can folks discover these professional voices in their very own organizations?

If you’re employed in a small group with restricted assets, you may not have colleagues with these particular roles. I might suggest merely beginning by figuring out people in your group who’ve private or profession experiences completely different from yours. 

Perhaps it’s somebody who speaks a unique language, who’s skilled a short lived or everlasting incapacity, or who has deep private or skilled expertise in contexts which might be unfamiliar to you. Set up a chat and see what you may study from them. How would possibly what you study have an effect on your design selections? 

Once you discover a set of specialists in a sure space, create an area for folks to share data and ask questions. For instance, I’ve personally discovered our inside accessibility neighborhood to be extraordinarily useful. The group is a one-stop-shop for solutions and assets on accessibility and has tons of of members. Designers, engineers, entrepreneurs, product managers, UX writers, and extra can put up questions and count on a response from specialists equally various in perform.

Another considered one of your suggestions was to diversify your supply materials. What does that contain?

Inspiration can and will come from in every single place. It actually shouldn’t be restricted to Silicon Valley tech newsletters and coaching applications.

My teammates and I are constantly attempting to develop into extra intentional about incorporating a various set of voices in our design consumption habits. This consists of discovering new design and tech-focused publications targeted on non-Western markets, bringing in audio system with a variety of views, or just sitting in on person interviews with folks from unfamiliar contexts. 

Listening to various voices usually creates pressure between what we’re listening to and what we’re inclined to consider a couple of sure viewers. This is an effective factor! Question your assumptions, relish within the paradox and let your customers shock you.

One means I’ve seen this come to life at Spotify is thru a brand new speaker sequence on the decolonization of design. It all began final yr when product designer Mady Torres de Souza posed an vital query to our group: how have colonial views centering whiteness affected the way in which we design, and the way would possibly designers be extra intentional about uplifting traditionally marginalized cultures and identities?

These discussions developed into an inside speaker sequence, which invitations specialists from quite a lot of backgrounds to assist our group critically study the Western design self-discipline’s tendency to middle whiteness. The conversations have helped us replicate on and reverse practices that will perpetuate colonial legacies by design. 

How can designers incorporate extra various supply materials into their apply?

Auditing your design-related media and content material consumption is an effective place to begin. Take a have a look at the publication subscriptions you will have, podcasts you take heed to, information retailers and social media accounts you observe, and coaching applications you’ve attended. Then search to diversify them; the extra these voices contradict one another, the extra you’ll begin to discover the nuances round how folks outline “good design.” I’ll present a listing of assets I discovered helpful for individuals who aren’t positive the place to begin! (Check out Janey’s appendix of assets right here.)

Another useful train is to replicate on a number of the assumptions you’ve made in regards to the folks utilizing your product. Which ones are based mostly on arduous proof, and which of them are based mostly on probably incomplete narratives? How would possibly you validate or invalidate your assumptions by going on to the supply and seeing for your self?

My colleague, product designer Linnea Strid, has spent quite a lot of time desirous about and interacting with customers in markets with low connectivity. She brings these insights into designing Spotify Lite, a light-weight model of the primary Spotify app that’s widespread in a lot of our non-Western markets. Here are a few of her reflections on utilizing first-hand analysis to right assumptions about how folks in areas of low connectivity take into consideration their knowledge plans: 

“We bake in biases even once we are consciously designing for people who find themselves not ourselves. These can embody assumptions like ‘people with poor phones won’t care about poor image resolutions,’ ‘people with slow phones hate their phones and want to upgrade,’ or ‘people with less money won’t spend money on a music service.’

One of the pivotal realizations designing Spotify Lite was that we’re in a position to name issues ‘bad’ as a result of now we have the privilege of a degree of comparability. If your knowledge plan is as massive as you may afford, you do not contemplate it costly. If your telephone is quicker than the one you had earlier than, you do not contemplate it gradual. So once we despatched out surveys asking if folks thought of their knowledge plans costly or gradual, we overwhelmingly bought ‘no’ again — regardless that we have been focusing on individuals who we knew have been prone to have these constraints.

I feel there’s a hazard once we assume that ‘pretending I am a user who is like this’ is an answer to bias. It’s vital to construct an actual understanding of them by means of first-hand analysis, or creating summary necessities to observe — eradicating the guesswork of what it’s to reside like them.’”

And lastly, whenever you grew to become severe about uncentering your apply, what modifications did you make to your spec guidelines?

Earlier in my profession, the guidelines I’d use to speak all the pieces a couple of design to an engineer was fairly quick. It would present some visuals with annotations on font kinds, sizes, colours, and padding.

Now, my guidelines consists of all of that, plus specs for the way designs ought to look in languages during which textual content expands when translated, how designs ought to look when customers enlarge the textual content sizes on their telephones, right-to-left languages like Arabic and Hebrew, and tiny display sizes (suppose iPhone SE and Android telephones, which fluctuate extensively).

I additionally work with a UX author to incorporate specs for alternate textual content for every part on the display, which VoiceOver or TalkBalk will say out loud for folks with visible impairments, and for loading states for areas of low connectivity. 

And lastly, I be sure that to incorporate a suggestions session with the localization group and engineers to ensure my designs translate properly. The forwards and backwards actually helps iron out unexpected points! 

If you’re seeking to refresh your individual spec guidelines, an excellent place to begin is to easily invite a extra various viewers into your design suggestions classes. When you’re on the point of ship specs for manufacturing, is there somebody you may invite with a deep data of accessible design or designing for access-constrained markets? What distinctive views are you able to add to your suggestions classes that can be sure that no matter you launch is globally viable?

Can you share an instance of a singular perspective you added to your suggestions course of? 

I’ve discovered so much by working with UX author Anjana Menon, who works throughout a number of groups at Spotify and has seen virtually each word-related faux-pas possible. Here are a number of the issues she’s desirous about when serving to us design translatable, accessible experiences: 

“For UXW in particular, we don’t just come up with the right words. We need to think about how we structure the information hierarchy and consider the order of how we place buttons and copy. We make sure to write helpful headings and labels, descriptive links, and alt text for VoiceOver and TalkBack. 

It’s also important to use accessible verbs and avoid ableist language, acronyms, and abbreviations that aren’t familiar to others. For example, a call-to-action that says “See your playlists” wouldn’t make sense to somebody interacting with Spotify completely utilizing a display reader. We keep away from having colloquial language like ‘jump back in,’ which might not be understood by non-native audio system or can be tough to translate.”

When you may’t get an precise human within the room to share suggestions, small reminders may be useful, too! I really like these stickers product designer Cait Charniga put collectively as a fast and easy method to bake accessibility and inclusion into digital design crits. Teammates can place them in elements of a design file the place, as an illustration, a sure visible or interplay sample might not be perfect for accessibility options like VoiceOver or TalkBack. They function mandatory reminders to broaden the lenses by means of which we critique design work and are only the start of an evolving course of to make sure that shipped work is thoughtfully and inclusively designed.

What would you say have been your greatest learnings all through this journey?

In critically analyzing my assumptions and processes, and actively working towards those that foster an incomplete understanding of the world, I’ve discovered that my design apply can itself develop into an act of social justice. With this consciousness, I can carry out easy, day by day acts of resistance towards the centering of Western views and requirements of design. 

One of my greatest takeaways from this specific second is that nothing I do as a designer is impartial or goal. Every alternative I make is both centering myself or striving to middle others. In all the pieces I create, I’ve the chance to make a acutely aware option to uncenter myself and have the true experiences of others represented extra in my work. This means understanding all the pieces I do and consider by default and turning it on its head with the intention to see by means of a brand new lens.

Dismantling defaults which might be so ingrained in our design upbringing gained’t occur in in the future. I’ve realized that that is, in truth, a lifelong journey. The vacation spot isn’t perfection; it’s a continued will to be unsuitable and stand corrected. I’m grateful to the UX writers, researchers, engineers, designers, and regional specialists on my group who preserve me accountable. They present me that my design apply may be a lot greater than only a day job. It is usually a steady apply of uncentering, whose affect hopefully goes past any work I do in designing screens.

There’s a quote I really like from Cathy Park Hong in Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning that goes:

“Conscription [to whiteness] is every day and unconscious. It is the default way of life among those of us who live in relative comfort unless we make an effort to choose otherwise.”

From now on, I select in any other case.

For the complete checklist of books and assets, Janey has utilized in her journey to uncentering her design apply, go to her Medium.