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TIMOTHY JORDAN: On this end of The Boardwalk,
I'm joined by former attorney, human rights activist,
and inclusive designer Elise Roy.
Elise, thanks for coming to I/O Live.
ELISE ROY: Thanks for having me here.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: For those that don't know your back story,
you lost your hearing at age 10.
ELISE ROY: I did.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Which is why we're
going to be using Google's Live Transcribe app
to make our conversation happen in real time.
Can you tell us what it means to be an inclusive designer?
ELISE ROY: Absolutely.
So an inclusive designer is someone
that helps organizations solve problems
from the perspective of people with disabilities,
or difference.
It's based on this human-centered design tenet
that, when we solve for extremes,
we often develop better solutions
than when we solve for average.
And that might seem kind of counter-intuitive,
because the greatest number of people
tend to hover around average.
But the problem is that no one actually is average,
and so when we solve for average,
and people are a little bit over here, a little bit
there, there's this gap between what we create,
and what their needs are that we're not meeting.
If instead, we solve for those extremes,
then we've already covered that gap,
and we've created something that's
a lot more adaptable, and a lot more innovative.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: That makes so much sense to me,
and it reminds me of something else that you've talked about,
which is human-centered design.
Can you define that term for us, as well?
ELISE ROY: Sure.
So human-centered design is a philosophy, a methodology,
for problem solving.
It's based on a lot of things that we've
taken from the design realm, and it
can be applied to almost every realm you could imagine,
from international development, to privacy, to the sciences,
to technology.
And what differentiates it, is its almost obsessive focus
on designing around the human that we're trying to reach.
So in the past, a lot of times, we
think that when we're trying to solve a problem,
we want to get all the experts into this room,
and have them figure out how to solve it.
The problem with that is, they have
one point of view, their own.
So if, for example, they're a bunch of developers,
they're probably going to create something that's very complex,
and most of us don't-- you know, the so-called average people,
don't really understand.
If instead we focus our process on the people
we're trying to reach, then we develop something that
fits their needs much better.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Yeah.
ELISE ROY: And so there's a lot of empathy involved, where
you're trying to understand what their needs are,
you're following them around in real-life situations.
You want to make sure that you're also
answering the right problem.
So many people are answering the wrong problem.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Yeah.
ELISE ROY: And then there's ideation,
which is similar to brainstorming,
but we use a lot of design methods
to really get people thinking outside the box.
It's a lot more powerful.
We want people to throw out crazy ideas,
we want as many as they can think of.
And then, we prototype, which is a lo-fi solution
that we know we're going to mess up with, you know?
But that's the purpose of it, is to fail and to learn from it.
And then the last step is to implement it, and make sure
that it's sustainable.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: I love this idea of having practices
and mechanisms for helping experts get out
of their perspective.
Because when you bring an expert in the room,
you're asking them to give their expert opinion, not
their general opinion.
And that's so focused most of the time, right?
ELISE ROY: Exactly, exactly.
And that's also why I love inclusive design,
because that brings people even further outside of their tunnel
vision.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Yes, I see.
This reminds me of another quote of yours, if I may.
You said, "when we look for gaps of exclusion,
we identify opportunities for great change."
And I find this really inspiring.
Do you have some examples that you can share,
where you see this really clearly?
ELISE ROY: Definitely.
I can give you some Google-centric examples.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: OK.
ELISE ROY: So Google's Chief Internet Evangelist, Vint Cerf,
he created email for his deaf wife.
And as you know, that's become a huge thing that everyone loves.
But he didn't see it as something
that would be applied to everyone, initially.
And most people didn't think of it in that way at first,
because we have the capabilities to talk to people on phone,
and that was the way that business was run.
But slowly, we realized that people also have this desire
to not have to keep talking to someone on the phone,
and they want to say something real quick,
and be done with it.
And sometimes, we also have this desire
to formulate our thoughts before we communicate with someone.
And email filled those hidden desires.
Another example is YouTube.
They inserted closed captioning capabilities into their media
player, which was really amazing at the time,
and closed captioning was originally
created for the deaf, so that they could follow along.
But what YouTube realized was that if a video has closed
captioning capabilities, then the likelihood
of it being watched to the end was increased by 80%.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Wow.
ELISE ROY: Yes.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Is that because there's so many situations
where you have to sound off?
ELISE ROY: Exactly.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: OK.
ELISE ROY: So the reason why designing for inclusion works
is because we find ourselves, as we go about our lives,
in these momentary situations where
we have a momentary disability.
So we might be carrying something,
and we lose the use of our arms.
If we're in a bar, closed captioning
is helpful, because we can't hear.
And if we are in our office, and we
want to sneak in a Facebook video,
closed captioning is helpful.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: That's awesome, those
are really great examples, and I love how it's really connecting
this idea of designing for the extremes,
and then it becomes more usable for everyone.
ELISE ROY: Exactly, yeah.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: That's really great.
Elise, thank you so much for joining us, and sharing
your gifts and your insights, I really appreciate it.
ELISE ROY: Thank you so much for having me.
I really appreciate it.
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