Ep 25: Inclusive Design Deep Dive with Eriol Fox
Shownotes
In this episode, Joyann and Eriol break down inclusive design. They discuss a range of topics including what is design, what are the challenges inclusive design faces and hypothetical campaigns for Dungeons and Dragons.
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Ep 21: What is Inclusive Design?
You can find Eriol here:
Transcript
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:29:13
Joyann Boyce
Welcome and welcome back to the Marketing Made Inclusive podcast. I have an amazing guest to you this week. I know I do say that every week, but I generally mean it because we've been exploring inclusive design and I just wanted to bring on the person who introduced me to the whole genre, the topic itself. Eriol. Eriol Fox Please tell our listeners and viewers a little bit about yourself.
00:00:29:15 - 00:01:11:07
Eriol Fox
Oh, wow. A little bit about myself. Hi, I'm Eriol Fox my pronouns are they/them, but I use a lot of different pronouns now, so you can't really get it wrong with me, as often I say. But I'm a good person to practice they/thems with. I, I've been doing design in big, big, design non like, in the terms of like designers, all the things that I've been doing design for like 12 years, which basically means that I never like particularly specialised in any one thing.
00:01:11:07 - 00:01:51:00
Eriol Fox
I sort of stayed a, a generalist, you could say, in a lot of different ways. But in these days I work at an organisation called Superbloom. Superbloom is a design NGO nonprofit that works globally and works predominantly on tools and technologies from the design side of things for human rights, human rights activists or for internet shutdowns. Basically anything, anything that is a technology that is trying to make the world a better place or is much of a better place as can be possible.
00:01:51:00 - 00:02:26:14
Eriol Fox
That is where, where I earn my money. The other place where I earn my money at the moment is doing a PhD at Newcastle University, which is to do with design and to do with human rights and humanitarian work, but also to do with open source software. So the other thing that I get really nerdy about, as well as inclusivity design human rights is open source software, which is if you're not familiar with it, you've probably used some open source software because a lot of the open internet is based and founded on open source software.
00:02:26:14 - 00:02:33:15
Eriol Fox
So that's a little bit about me. Anything else you want me to cover?
00:02:33:17 - 00:02:45:15
Joyann Boyce
So many things. So many things. But as soon as you were going through I was like we worked together on this bit and that bit, did we do anything for WordPress or am I imagining that one.
00:02:45:17 - 00:02:47:06
Eriol Fox
For the organisation WordPress?
00:02:47:07 - 00:02:51:21
Joyann Boyce
No, the Meetup group, Bristol WordPress did we have?
00:02:51:23 - 00:03:04:13
Eriol Fox
Oh gosh. I feel like maybe at one point I went to a meetup or maybe like there was a panel or something like that, but I don't remember specifically what it was, but I feel it sounds like plausible if you know, I mean.
00:03:04:16 - 00:03:17:20
Joyann Boyce
Yeah. Our paths have crossed many times in the work, but I'm trying to remember when I met you and it's been a while, it would have been like 2018, 17 times.
00:03:17:22 - 00:03:43:20
Eriol Fox
Yeah, for sure. It was. We were both in a community group about people trying to make their way in tech, technology, marginalised folks making their way in technology and that I joined that group shortly after I moved back to Bristol. So it must have been like maybe 2017, I want to say is probably the latest that it would have been.
00:03:43:22 - 00:03:48:20
Joyann Boyce
Oh, wow. I have fond memories of knowing you. Well, you're not getting anywhere, but.
00:03:48:20 - 00:04:00:14
Eriol Fox
Yeah, I think one of the first conversations we had was about like Sailor Moon and anime. Where do you go to find other people that like nerdy things but also kind of chill about the nerdy things if you know what I mean.
00:04:00:16 - 00:04:20:24
Joyann Boyce
Yeah, not super intense, like. Yeah. And I think one of the first questions I remember asking you probably was what? But what is design? Because I think I think the typical marketer thing and I was just like, isn't it just graphic design? And then we had a good conversation. You told me, no, it's not just that. There's so many layers to it.
00:04:20:24 - 00:04:32:14
Joyann Boyce
So two questions: we’re on the marketing made inclusive podcast. What does inclusive marketing mean to you? And then second question is what is design?
00:04:32:16 - 00:05:20:21
Eriol Fox
Oh, gosh, first question, what is inclusive marketing to me. I think inclusive marketing isn't necessarily about trying to be, and I think I learned this from you mostly it's not trying to be like the most, we have included every single kind of person under the sun in every minutia possible, but that you are being honest about how you are marketing, you are being as honest as possible, as upfront with the user or customer, or however you refer to the humans existing in the world as possible and that you make like honest and concentrated efforts to notice who is using your stuff or buying your stuff and that you don't ignore them and that you reflect
00:05:20:21 - 00:05:40:11
Eriol Fox
that like reality back at the world. And I think that's the thing that often companies or people think is the hardest thing is like, well, we have all these people using the tool that we didn't think is the tool or something like that, and how do we find them and how do we put them forwards and how do we essentially like use them.
00:05:40:11 - 00:05:57:09
Eriol Fox
And I think that that's kind of where the tension comes, it’s like maybe they don't want to be used, maybe anyway, it's kind of is tricky, but like, yeah, predominantly honesty and upfront-ness with what's going on. So I would say inclusive marketing is.
00:05:57:11 - 00:06:04:05
Joyann Boyce
I really like that the honesty and upfront-ness because sometimes people using it don't want to be spotlighted and that's fine.
00:06:04:07 - 00:06:33:12
Eriol Fox
Right? It might actually be like dangerous for them to be spotlighted as well, given the work that I do. A lot of, a lot of the stuff that I've learned since my first few steps into like inclusive design is about the human rights angle of things essentially. And yeah, a lot of the time we don't realise who we're putting at risk by accessing or talking to.
00:06:33:14 - 00:06:44:11
Eriol Fox
And often a lot of people globally are very what's the like agreeable or very almost like.
00:06:44:13 - 00:06:45:12
Joyann Boyce
Mmm.
00:06:45:14 - 00:07:09:00
Eriol Fox
Excited sometimes about the things that they're using that helps them in a lot of ways. Like we, we definitely find in the human rights technology space that people are like, if something works for them, they're very like pleased and engaged to like contribute to it. But we have to be really careful that we're not putting those people at risk by like highlighting them or using them as a case study or, you know, all those kinds of things.
00:07:09:00 - 00:07:14:05
Eriol Fox
It is tricky. But your second question was what is design?
00:07:14:05 - 00:07:15:00
Joyann Boyce
Design, yes.
00:07:15:00 - 00:07:46:12
Eriol Fox
Wow. As a person that started a PhD, I could give like the, like most boring. I read a book answer, but I'm not going to. I feel there's, there's two, two answers to this part of the this question, I think two, two hopefully short answers the first thing about design that I think is important is the isn't necessarily we don't, you don't, don't necessarily think of it as in terms of like an output.
00:07:46:13 - 00:08:15:16
Eriol Fox
Often we think of design as a thing that has been created and crafted and made and designed. So you can think of like objects where you can think about experiences or you can think about services or technology and the part of design that is harder to articulate and harder to often realise is the aspect of like facilitation and the bringing together of all the different perspectives in order to design.
00:08:15:18 - 00:08:54:20
Eriol Fox
So when I talk to people about what is the role of a designer within the task of designing, it's to understand, it's to, to some extent, translate and transform into something that then makes sense for all the different people involved in that use of that thing, that, that object for experience. So design in some ways is facilitation for conversation, collaboration, ways in which to engage with people and the world.
00:08:54:22 - 00:09:29:13
Eriol Fox
And it's the, you could also say the second part of the answer is like that. It's a process. It's a process to come to the, whatever the meaning of optimum or whatever the meaning of best is to you and your team or your tool or your domain is the quote unquote final thing that gets used or the thing that is in the public or accessible. Final is a weird word because nothing is ever final.
00:09:29:15 - 00:10:10:02
Eriol Fox
Everything's always changing, evolving, kind of getting sunsetted, getting revived, all that kind of stuff. So final in this, in this way of describing it is the thing that is access any given time with. Yeah, it’s kind of I guess not necessarily what people think of when they think about design. They think about like things you can see, or things.
00:10:10:02 - 00:10:45:02
Eriol Fox
the visuals, the visual components of something as what, what people see. And I think that, that's a symptom of the to some extent the exclusivity. So the non-inclusivity of design as a practice design historically is very elitist, very colonial, very like western in how it's done and approached. Like a lot of the ways that we get to how to design are very private.
00:10:45:04 - 00:11:23:23
Eriol Fox
But you, you access people to extract information from them as opposed to involve them in the process. There are lots of experiments with how to do like different ways of designing with people, but ultimately design is still like having a lot of trouble trying to be non-extractive. But yeah, it's very opaque. Like the, a regular person if you told them that you're a designer, they wouldn't necessarily know what goes into that process because it's intentionally like, I think been.
00:11:24:00 - 00:11:25:07
Joyann Boyce
You’re not able to see that.
00:11:25:09 - 00:11:26:24
Eriol Fox
Built that way, yeah.
00:11:27:01 - 00:11:52:00
Joyann Boyce
I think is really beautiful the way you described it as the translation, because that I think for me is where I connected after meeting you about the depths of design, because being a marketer and coming from social media marketing, we probably don't pay design as much respect because we see it as a tool to means and we have to get something out quickly.
00:11:52:02 - 00:12:11:03
Joyann Boyce
We're normally burdened with some kind of design work, but we don't really know that we're doing it because we have to get this out, we have to do this. And there's so many things that when I started talking to you more about design, I was like, oh, I do that. I try to understand the audience, I try to do this, and then there's the physical elements of it.
00:12:11:03 - 00:12:35:01
Joyann Boyce
Like I didn't realise how much spatial awareness I had until I see this is a small thing, but I see Instagram posts and I'm just like, that's off. And I can't say why it's off. Or someone, we did an audit for a client recently and they had their social icons at the top of their web page, but in front of their menu.
00:12:35:03 - 00:12:57:20
Joyann Boyce
And it just made my body itch because I'm like that's off. Why is, it these things. And I just did, it relates to how much humanness is in the whole process of understanding why things should be the way they are and the understanding of figuring out why people want things in those places. And laid out in different ways.
00:12:57:22 - 00:13:12:03
Joyann Boyce
But I'm curious to know, so you've had an amazing and long career in design, at what point was inclusive design integrated into that or you were made aware of it?
00:13:12:05 - 00:13:33:15
Eriol Fox
Interesting. Yeah, I one of the well, the first conference talks I started doing about the work that I did was about diversity and inclusion in design and I don't really give that talk anymore, mostly because a lot of the examples that are in it are from old workplaces or actually a lot of things have improved since I was giving that talk.
00:13:33:17 - 00:14:01:24
Eriol Fox
So one, right? Yeah. You know, it's really is good to see. And also I am tired of talking about diversity and inclusion. I'm, I am very tired of being invited to talk about that as my subject, even though I, you know, you know, I feel very supportive of diversity and inclusion. But we should absolutely not be making people talk about it when they would,
00:14:02:03 - 00:14:03:10
Eriol Fox
they want to talk about other things.
00:14:03:11 - 00:14:23:06
Joyann Boyce
Yeah. When they when talk about their skills and expertise. Please do not invite me to your conference to solely talk about diversity. I want to talk about marketing. I want to talk about A. I want to talk about the thing that I’m nerdy about. They might have a sprinkling of D and I, but yeah, it's a whole separate lunch. But yes, you were saying.
00:14:23:08 - 00:14:51:14
Eriol Fox
Absolutely a separate rant. But the way that you ask the question is interesting because when did it start coming into my work? I think it started coming into my work a lot later than I, when I realised it was a problem. So I started realising that design and non-inclusive design was present when I started my career. And I started my career in like 2010, 2011 in kind of dot coms and kind of website.
00:14:51:20 - 00:15:24:19
Eriol Fox
Back when website designer was still a job title and I guess like even sort of back then, UX design, user experience design was something the not a lot of people still had that title. It was still kind of growing into itself as a profession and design in my has sort of history, career history was, was very much understood as a a tool for marketing or driving a business goal, which it can be and should be.
00:15:24:21 - 00:16:12:20
Eriol Fox
But business goals aren't always numbers, they aren't always those kinds of things. Sometimes they're like less hard to pinpoint. But I think I started realizing that inclusive design was not really present in my sphere of understanding and my kind of work, like at the beginning of my career within like my first year of working, where I was working just purely from the things that I now realise is like obvious when I look back, like the kinds of people that were working at the company, how homogenous they were, the kinds of ad campaigns that we were doing, which were not, not actually able to really have conversations about what the overarching cultural impact is, is like
00:16:12:20 - 00:16:37:00
Eriol Fox
perpetuating stereotypes or perpetuating just kind of crude jokes for, for the sake of like the reason that we might think that crude jokes might make a business case for us. And it's kind of I'm sure that there would have been conversations in boardrooms about like the this might get us in trouble, but isn't all attention better than no attention, that kind of stuff?
00:16:37:02 - 00:17:12:18
Eriol Fox
I don't, I don't really know about that kind of side of things, but I do know that apart from the kind of design that I was doing early on, being very non-helpful design, it was mostly just get people to do this thing that we want them to do, which is I think we call this a lot more recently, like deceptive design or deceptive design is also commonly known as dark patterns that a lot of the community are trying to.
00:17:12:20 - 00:17:14:18
Joyann Boyce
Move away from the dark and the white.
00:17:14:20 - 00:17:15:18
Eriol Fox
Right?
00:17:15:20 - 00:17:16:04
Joyann Boyce
Yeah.
00:17:16:06 - 00:17:51:10
Eriol Fox
So we can't get away from it. We keep using it. It's like, oh, but yeah, deceptive design is the agreed term. But when you say deceptive design to somebody, they often go and you get dark patterns, but don't call it that anymore, call it this. And they're like, oh yeah. But yeah, it was very much like, get them to buy this insurance, get them to sign up for this thing, get them to do this without necessarily understanding, which is something that I know now, like whether and why that person needs to do that and why they need to do that and why it's beneficial for them.
00:17:51:12 - 00:18:19:03
Eriol Fox
So it's a lot of very like non-inclusive from like a internal perspective as well as like a just the face value of the representation being really poor, like terrible representation. But then again, it was a reflection of what was available to us as designers as well. So you can't really fault people to some extent too much given the barriers that they were facing.
00:18:19:03 - 00:19:03:01
Eriol Fox
And the if you had to use photography, I remember one of my early career, like places in Bristol, like it was amazing that they gave us a budget to go do photography on site. It was like, truly, I was astounded that they allowed us to like, go and do photography and me and the one other designer in this huge company like made a real, well, actually him more than me, which I just gave him the the push that he needed to, to kind of assert this but made sure that the people that we were hiring as models for those pieces of photography were not only people that used our service, but that were all the
00:19:03:01 - 00:19:19:05
Eriol Fox
different kinds of people that used our service. But then again, we all say we're not having conversations about whether like they were being like, equitably compensated given like what? You know that back then that was.
00:19:19:07 - 00:19:20:19
Joyann Boyce
It wasn't a conversation.
00:19:20:21 - 00:20:03:03
Eriol Fox
It wasn't a conversation. And we were kind of astounded that we were able to do anything essentially. But that's kind of when I first realised that being inclusive within the design that I was doing was really important. And then I transitioned my career into more of like a human rights focus And I mean, NGO world and human rights world has its own problems with inclusivity like truly, and they're complicated and painful and, you know, wrapped up with how financial aid works in places.
00:20:03:05 - 00:20:23:15
Eriol Fox
You know, it's no, it would be no surprise for most people to like, hear the most NGOs, especially like the US based ones, are predominantly like white, like led. A lot of the barriers to get into that space are huge. But hey.
00:20:23:17 - 00:20:24:10
Joyann Boyce
I always say
00:20:25:07 - 00:20:46:02
Joyann Boyce
That inclusive marketing and I think it goes with inclusive design as well, can happen with non-inclusive or diverse teams. And that's the thing that people seem to have this kind of rub against. Like, Oh no, the team has to be diverse for us to practice. And I'm just like, we'll be waiting a long time for some certain situations.
00:20:46:04 - 00:20:56:03
Joyann Boyce
So let's kind of look at the two. It will be better. I think with a diverse team you will have better inclusive marketing, but you don't need it to start it.
00:20:56:05 - 00:21:24:17
Eriol Fox
Mmm. Was it? I don't know who shared this recently, but I saw a video recently about like somebody was asking somebody what percentage of the tech workforce do they think are like Black women? And they said loads of people were saying like, oh, 5%, 1%, 20%. And then I think it ended up being like 0.06%. And people were like what? And it's like, actually that's kind of not surprising in a lot of ways.
00:21:24:19 - 00:21:59:05
Eriol Fox
But yeah, it's, it's exactly what you say. And I had a conversation this, this last conference I was up where this conversation comes up a lot, no matter what the subject matter of my talks are, because they're often about like trying to be more inclusive generally, like even if they're not specifically about inclusivity and diversity. But I had a group of people come up to me and to two people were really impacted by the talk, which was talking about like how we design for tools for people that are combating like repressive, oppressive governments.
00:21:59:07 - 00:22:29:00
Eriol Fox
And one person is originally from a incredibly oppressive government, currently detaining people and putting people in prison for protesting and was very like surprised and pleased that somebody was talking about her, her specialty like design within the context of the things that she'd experienced that was huge for her. And there was another person that was from another country that has a lot of gender based violence, a lot of, you know, gender inequity.
00:22:29:00 - 00:22:50:08
Eriol Fox
And like she was talking about how she really wants to go back and be able to do more in her country of origin. But there's also this capitalism. You know, I'm now part of capitalism and I'm earning well, like, why would I go anyway? So, like, is it a revolutionary act to be like leveraging capitalism for your own comfort?
00:22:50:11 - 00:23:17:17
Eriol Fox
I would say yes, if you're enjoying it. But yeah, there was a person that was, I would say, like presumably white didn't correct me otherwise. But asked the age old question, can you guess what the question is, Joy? What can I do? What can I do? Is the white person question or the person that doesn't identify as the thing like that?
00:23:17:18 - 00:23:20:00
Eriol Fox
What can I do to make things better?
00:23:20:02 - 00:23:21:24
Joyann Boyce
How can I be a saviour.
00:23:22:01 - 00:23:56:17
Eriol Fox
Right? Yeah, it's it's so tricky because that question will always come up. And as you were saying, I think the answer to that question for white people to tell other white people is go talk to other white people about the problems and like stop bothering people that are having these problems unless they like, there is that ask of you to like bring you into it and it it was sort of like received really in a like a very confused way.
00:23:56:19 - 00:24:07:19
Eriol Fox
It was like, but you're telling me to go like, be with more white people? Shouldn't I be with more like people that aren't me Anyway, I think she.
00:24:07:21 - 00:24:48:16
Joyann Boyce
Thar is the answer I imagine in my head sometimes that I don't give yes, go, go do the work yourself and then come back, you know, go do some of that self-education and come back with a well-crafted question that isn't just, how can I help? Because that is not helpful. You know, that's so interesting. So in terms of, on that line of doing the work themselves, I find it so fascinating that you mentioned in 2010 that conversation wasn't there because when we did our episode on inclusive design, we were looking back at like the history of where it came about and the, the whole genre in itself seemed to or easy to divide the eighties
00:24:48:16 - 00:24:50:16
Joyann Boyce
with architecture.
00:24:50:18 - 00:24:51:24
Eriol Fox
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:24:52:01 - 00:25:06:16
Joyann Boyce
So I'm just like the crossover. And then I started to think about that, I think you shared it with me, the Microsoft resource of like all the inclusive things. When did you start using those tools and what kind of tools do you recommend for people to educate themselves?
00:25:06:18 - 00:25:40:09
Eriol Fox
Hmm, some of the history is really interesting, like the architecture movement and like the participatory design and participatory action research is like around like the eighties was like when it was beginning that it was much more like the workers focused. So the, the I think a lot of that kind of history was like unintentionally inclusive because the people that were the workers quote unquote, like in the factories, are going to be the people that are like more marginalised historically.
00:25:40:11 - 00:26:00:00
Eriol Fox
So I think that the efforts to include the workers in order to increase their efficiency, often like this is all about how do we work with the workers to increase our efficiency within like the design systems, not necessarily how to empower them. So it was all about, like, making them work harder and faster.
00:26:00:00 - 00:26:01:07
Joyann Boyce
Getting more out of them.
00:26:01:09 - 00:26:33:22
Eriol Fox
Yeah, yeah. And I think architecture was to some extent that maybe as well I don't know enough about architecture, but anyway, yeah, the history is fascinating because the like world of like can computer based design like HCI, human computer interaction, kind of borrows from a lot of those spaces. The processes but is a historically feels very unaware of its own self like it's a very non-self aware practice like what does it mean to use like content design.
00:26:33:22 - 00:26:58:08
Eriol Fox
I don't feel like it's something that has been, is more recent as like a person that, you know, wants to think about, like how the content is structured, how it comes across. All that tone, all that kind of stuff is probably like, well, between 5 to 10 years old, I feel. But when did I start using stuff? I started using stuff in, in a start-up company.
00:26:58:10 - 00:27:38:16
Eriol Fox
I was working in a start-up company here in Bristol and I think I was just, I don't know why, I guess at that point I was like, if not in a start-up company, then then where can you like to try and do something a little bit different.
00:27:18:00 – 00:27:19:00
Joyann Boyce
Innovative.
00:27:19:00 - 00:27:38:17
Eriol Fox
Innovative, right, yeah. And so that's when I started trying to better understand like who the users were and discovering like all the things that were non-surprising that we weren't representing the users that are actually using things in the kinds of design that we were doing.
00:27:38:18 - 00:28:05:19
Eriol Fox
So a lot of our default like for the tools and systems or a lot of the examples that we had were like based on very archetypal like versions of what we thought our users were. Without giving away the name that I kind of want to be a bit abstract just in case, but that were like very much a product of the two kind of white guy founders,
00:28:06:08 - 00:28:36:09
Eriol Fox
essentially like, this is what our users look like because they are us, because we are the founders in they're made this for ourselves. But yeah, I started, I started kind of trying to do more of that kind of work in the start-up company and found that it was like just super awkward. I don't know whether it's like the culture or the space, like the domain, the tech space, because it was like a commercial, like a profit making company.
00:28:36:11 - 00:29:12:17
Eriol Fox
So I don't know if it was like to do with that side of things, but like certainly there was an undertone of but will this increase the numbers that we want to increase? Not the, not the this is a good thing to do. And I think that's often, that's a tension that comes up in design, a lot which is like, what is the thing that, the, what is the thing that is good to do for people versus what is the thing that we want them to do?
00:29:12:17 - 00:29:23:14
Eriol Fox
Because it benefits the person or the entity that it benefits. And sometimes people don't think that those two things can be this one in the same, right?
00:29:23:16 - 00:29:28:17
Joyann Boyce
I just like that. I was like, do you think they clash or do you think that one of the same?
00:29:29:10 - 00:30:10:02
Eriol Fox
I think they can be one in the same. I don't think that they're always in like harmony. Like certainly things that promote a lot of misinformation and disinformation are always going to be like malicious in a lot of ways. But I think that from my experience doing design and trying to do design inclusively with companies that aren't non-profit focused, have a harder time and ask more questions about whether doing the thing that is good for the people also meets their goals, like for doing better business.
00:30:10:04 - 00:30:29:06
Eriol Fox
And often the answer is yes. If you better represent these people, if you better include them, they're going to use their your thing for longer. They're going to have a better time. They're going to tell other people about it. They're going to tell other people like them about it is going to do this. But those are all things that are hard to produce and they're often hard to prove with the design side of things.
00:30:29:07 - 00:31:02:22
Eriol Fox
It's, I've always had a lot of tricky situations around, like, how do you prove that certain design can be easy to track, like it can be easy to like know that a image is more representative, works better and has more people doing the thing that you want them to do than an image that doesn't represent them. That's reasonably easy to track and measure.
00:31:02:23 - 00:31:06:12
Joyann Boyce
Click in. view times. Yeah.
00:31:06:14 - 00:31:23:21
Eriol Fox
Yeah. For sure. But stuff that is a little bit harder, like say, inclusive titles, inclusive like name fields in profile information. Or like any, anything that is more like editable and more customisable.
00:31:24:00 - 00:31:31:06
Joyann Boyce
Just on the name fields. But do you mean the bit where they normally would put like John Doe then the age? Okay.
00:31:31:08 - 00:31:51:23
Eriol Fox
Yeah. So a lot of this, a lot of this conversation started with like the should we capture gender and how should we capture gender? Because gender is a lot more fluid than what we know it to be. There are things like the gender that is expressed on the like legal piece of identification that people would, companies might want to capture.
00:31:52:00 - 00:32:16:00
Eriol Fox
But then there's like how we identify and how we identify over time as well. So it's always like when I sign up for a bank account, my gender might be this, but actually in five years time it might be something else, which is entirely possible. Same thing with a name, same thing with a title like a Ms, Mrs, Mr, Sir type thing.
00:32:16:02 - 00:32:46:06
Eriol Fox
But the, the return on investment for having very flexible user experience tools so ways that customers can use a tool and ways that they want to use a tool as opposed to the way that the tool creators want them to use it all are very hard to track. So you have to come. You could sort of say track how many times somebody changes their title or their gender over a period of time.
00:32:46:06 - 00:33:14:05
Eriol Fox
You could sort of track certain things, but you won't necessarily know why until you do things like user testing and user research and find out, for example, some of the things that we use to find out is the more flexible a system is and the more willing a system is to change different information, the more likely people that do want to change that information will stick around in a in a service, right.
00:33:14:05 - 00:33:36:14
Eriol Fox
So you've kind of got you've kind of got like some tools that won't ever let you change your username. So I think Spotify is one of the examples. Where, yeah, so it's very strange that if you create a username, which is a name that you used to use and you don't use that name anymore, you have to exit the service and re-enter, anyway.
00:33:36:16 - 00:33:51:08
Joyann Boyce
It's tricky on that one for me because my marketing brain is like, yes, you can customise it to who the person wants to be now and market to them. But my data scientist brain is like trying to map all of that in the back end.
00:33:51:10 - 00:34:25:04
Eriol Fox
Yeah, yeah. So this is often the thing that it's like is the inclusivity of the design worth more than the effort for technical, tech, technical building complexity. And often, like this is an age old thing between design and development is that we often are in conflict design and development because the design and designing inclusively is about relevancy, flexibility, understanding people and what they want to do.
00:34:25:06 - 00:34:57:01
Eriol Fox
And those kinds of things are hard to program like complete flexibility, complete like relevancy within like the rules of some sort and certain systems. So yeah, absolutely. I've definitely had the conversations with developers and other people like, but if we have a free text field, we won't be able to like, you know, do these other things, which is valid because they might actually be like critical errors that might not be able to be like, imagine if it was your bank account, right?
00:34:57:01 - 00:35:06:02
Eriol Fox
And if you couldn't map the data of your name to the bank account, you wouldn't be able to withdraw money, which is arguably worse than the flexibility of the system.
00:35:06:04 - 00:35:29:22
Joyann Boyce
But a lot of the things in regards to like gender, age titles and stuff, a lot of it is just for reporting and someone looks at that report once or twice a year. One thing you mentioned, though, and I've always pondered on this one and it might be the naivete I have a data science background, but not development. The titles bit the Miss, Mr, Mrs.
00:35:29:24 - 00:35:31:14
Eriol Fox
Mhmm.
00:35:31:16 - 00:35:52:19
Joyann Boyce
I was just like, Why don't we just simply apply the logic we've had with Miss, Mr, Mrs. to the other things that are now becoming multiples. I don't understand why it's become such a complexity thing, when we've had a version of it in forms for such a long time.
00:35:52:21 - 00:35:54:05
Eriol Fox
Mhmm.
00:35:54:07 - 00:36:12:11
Joyann Boyce
So if we are able to address that, women have titles can change that Miss, Mr, Mrs, can change. Why can't we apply that for men as well? To apply that in gender and apply that in name, if we can easily map it there.
00:36:12:13 - 00:36:31:05
Eriol Fox
Well, easily is an interesting way of saying it. Like so, as a person that's gone through like multiple name changes it’s not a simple process, processes. Well, in the UK anyway, it's not a simple process. It’s a process of actual physical documents being sent to places. So it's sometimes like especially if it's critical information like banks like.
00:36:31:06 - 00:37:03:00
Eriol Fox
So they will require things like copies of marriage certificates along with like birth certificates and things like that. So it's not, it, it's possible, but it's not. I think the, the way of saying it is possible but it’s not ideal for the company because it's time and time is money, right? And it's all about like, I feel like often the conversation that is often unspoken as well because it sounds, it's a kind of phrase that any company doesn't want to say out loud, right?
00:37:03:00 - 00:37:51:15
Eriol Fox
Which is the, what's the, what's the benefit to us as a company to make, change your name? There isn't really, like keeping you is business. Great. But what is that worth to us? Like, are you worth it to us? And there's kind of like some of that some of that gets applied to the design process often, and a lot of the challenges of being a designer, like generally is like how far can you push a certain kind of inclusive design or user-centred design or any kind of centred design that isn't necessarily, I guess, like pure business goals-centred design, but how far can you take it to a user-centred level whilst also knowing
00:37:51:15 - 00:38:12:10
Eriol Fox
that the business or the company or the organisation will say, yes, we can do that because it's always a balancing act of like we want to be able to have users be able to do this, this, this and this. And then it's like, well, it’s more we need them to be able to do this. We don't need to them to be able to do that.
00:38:12:10 - 00:38:26:00
Eriol Fox
So what's the benefit to us as an organisation, company? Designers really struggle. Designers really struggle to articulate that is not something we get taught. Yeah, it's hard.
00:38:26:02 - 00:38:52:21
Joyann Boyce
I think it goes back to what you originally said about designing itself, not being that open of a thing because if I'm not saying that I would be the ideal boss or whatever, but because I have that marketing perspective, there are some elements that I'm thinking like that first, I'm thinking user first. I'm thinking experience first, not necessarily business first, because I know long term, the longer we have the customer, the better.
00:38:52:23 - 00:39:21:08
Joyann Boyce
That's for me, that's the overall end goal. But with design not being transparent, you're having a lot of leaders still looking at it the same way I did when I first came in, like, oh, it's just graphics or oh, it's just this and not applying how much that you've emphasised, how much the user is involved, how much it's human centric, and all of that then leads to longevity, which then leads to return on investment.
00:39:21:10 - 00:39:58:05
Eriol Fox
Yeah, yeah. It's, it's such a complicated like it's definitely a more complicated career or like practice or craft or however you want to call design then, than people sort of often initially think it's very much grounded in the, a lot of hypotheses, grounded in a lot of like balancing between different competing factors, especially like if you're practicing the kind of design which is like, again, inclusive or like aware.
00:39:58:07 - 00:40:21:12
Eriol Fox
So you're not the kind of designer which is like just phoning it in and kind of just doing, doing whatever you're kind of told that you're actually kind of engaging with the understanding of the subject matter. But yeah, often the people that make some of the best designers are people that don't come from a design education background, that come from any kind of other educational background.
00:40:21:12 - 00:40:50:08
Eriol Fox
I think that there's a, it's a lot better now. But I remember when we were first talking about like the tech sector and there was a lot of like there's a lot of conversation about like a tech education or like a design education as well. And I don't necessarily think that the things that they I think the, the things that you learn in any kind of environment are, can be applicable to being good designers.
00:40:50:10 - 00:40:55:19
Eriol Fox
But the gatekeepers would argue differently.
00:40:55:21 - 00:41:17:07
Joyann Boyce
Oh, there's, there's gatekeepers. There's annoying, annoying gatekeepers. No, this has been absolutely fascinating. I already have so many more questions, but I'm mindful that I want to get to one of our fave sections of the podcast. So we are marketing podcast through and through. So we do lean into the capitalism every now and again because sometimes we like to buy things.
00:41:17:09 - 00:41:30:02
Joyann Boyce
Now I may make it niche, but feel free to choose any other area, say there was a maybe a Dungeons and Dragons campaign.
00:41:30:04 - 00:41:31:07
Eriol Fox
Yeah.
00:41:31:09 - 00:41:48:23
Joyann Boyce
And they were trying to encourage you to be their customer. Not that you. How would you imagine that campaign? And it can be a video. It can be like, what would you envision the Dungeons and Dragons campaign that would connect with you the most?
00:41:49:00 - 00:42:12:08
Eriol Fox
Oh, Joyann, this could be a whole, another episode of a podcast. The marketing of Dungeons and Dragons games is a fascinating domain. They've just gone like monetised recently in the last few years. Like, so you can, you've always been able to pay to join games or that it historically has been very much like a people run it for free, for friends and things like that.
00:42:12:10 - 00:42:33:11
Eriol Fox
But people run games from like you pay to participate in that game now and the, there's a really interesting person on, I think she, she's still on Twitter called it's Friday her Twitter handle but she does a whole podcast called Dungeons and Dollars which is how to market yourself as like a paid Dungeon master it’s fascinating stuff. You'll love it.
00:42:34:18 - 00:42:54:19
Eriol Fox
But like, she talks about like a case of the image that you use for your thumb. Now, it has to be a face that has direct eye contact with the user so that they feel like they're immersed in the game. So it has, can’t be a character that's looking off into the distance. Unless it's a campaign that is about like adventure and it's all about the context and then the use of emojis.
00:42:54:20 - 00:43:21:04
Eriol Fox
And, so there's a whole thing to do with character limit as well, which is like the title, you must know like tons about character limit, like and how to optimise character limit, but like you've got like this title to get people to purchase your, buy into your game. You've got like about the size of like 25 words with emojis maybe, maybe that.
00:43:21:04 - 00:43:42:05
Eriol Fox
Yeah, I think it might be even less. But like, you have to, in that title, you have to say what kind of game it is, what kind of person you are that runs the game, who, who you'd like to encourage into that game. So a lot of people use like the Pride flag to be like more inclusive for LGBT players.
00:43:42:07 - 00:44:00:03
Eriol Fox
Other people use different of emojis or different kinds of words like PoC, you know, inclusive, that kind of thing. But okay, so if something was marketed towards me specifically, how I'd want it to be marketed because I went into the generals of marketing games there.
00:44:00:03 - 00:44:01:03
Joyann Boyce
You got excited. I love it.
00:44:01:03 - 00:44:44:02
Eriol Fox
Oh, so excited. It's fascinate. It's such a fascinating, because it's new, you know, when something's new and it's like yummy because it's all like discovering how it works. I think I would want and I have been like susceptible to this kind of marketing before. Essentially Dungeons and Dragons is selling an experience and a community vibe. So the thing that I want my marketing for me certainly, it’s not for everybody, but most people are in it to hang out with a group of people, whether they knew them before or they’re new, new people that they're meeting.
00:44:44:04 - 00:45:26:13
Eriol Fox
What I want the marketing to be is I want it to not just be about the content of the game, but I want it to be about those people as well. So what I would love to see more in the Dungeons and Dragons campaign, specifically the campaign marketing is like more emphasis on who are the people that I'm going to be sharing my time with and what motivates them as like characters or players, because I'm not just engaging in a transaction with this person running the game, the Dungeons and Dragons game, I'm engaging with like four or five other people who have their own goals, their own aspirations, and like, I want to, I want
00:45:26:13 - 00:45:28:04
Eriol Fox
to know bit about that as well.
00:45:28:06 - 00:45:33:06
Joyann Boyce
What level of detail, like, do you want their names? And like...
00:45:33:08 - 00:45:53:11
Eriol Fox
I mostly want to know, oh, this is this is such a weird word to answer you to. I want their vibes, essentially. I know that that's like the worst kind of word to answer, but I want whatever is their vibe to come across like, so it can be visual or it can be like text based. But I want to get, I want to get like a sense of who they are from.
00:45:53:11 - 00:45:56:16
Eriol Fox
Like a snapshot.
00:45:56:18 - 00:46:32:15
Joyann Boyce
All right. I'm seeing it. Okay. One minute video, obviously a non-skippable YouTube ad because we need to see the whole video. First shot is a three way split screen of each character sat in their space and I’m kind of basing it on that what I'm looking at right now, if you're not on YouTube, you need to hop on YouTube and see how amazing Eriol’s space is. But they’re sat in their space and then you're just seeing them kind of like smiling and moving like they're going somewhere, but you can get a sense of their background.
00:46:32:17 - 00:47:00:15
Joyann Boyce
One has like a super earthy, browns, you see, like a what you call it, a dream catcher in the background. Another one is like all clean and cut lines and there's like just weapons, but weapons that are mounted. So you can see their display. So I'm trying to think of the different types of characters, earthy, weapons and maybe a, a magical vibe.
00:47:00:17 - 00:47:08:24
Joyann Boyce
So you're not really seeing anything, but you're getting a glimpse of like glitter and smoke and, you know, it just shimmer.
00:47:09:01 - 00:47:09:16
Eriol Fox
Yeah.
00:47:09:18 - 00:47:15:23
Joyann Boyce
And then it cuts and then someone starts voicing over and it starts to campaign. And then you, like, speed through it.
00:47:15:23 - 00:47:40:05
Eriol Fox
Yeah, yeah. Or if you're, if you aren't already bought into it, like just before that person like launches into the campaign, there's like, you know, a image of like a mirror and it's you like a silhouette in a mirror. Do you know? You mean because it's about like participating in that fantasy. So there has to be a way that you without, like, knowing what that, who that person is.
00:47:40:05 - 00:47:46:03
Eriol Fox
There has to be a way of like, that person going, oh, I could fit in there. It's like.
00:47:46:05 - 00:48:07:07
Joyann Boyce
How integrated do you like your marketing? Because there's that element. There's two issues with this. This idea I'm about to pitch. There's a data privacy issue and access and all of that jazz. But, say they could turn your camera on and put you in the ad. And then you just look and then you're, you're in the ads, you're next to those three characters.
00:48:07:09 - 00:48:35:02
Eriol Fox
As, I'm very aware of, like privacy and stuff like that by susceptible to like, like things that I enjoy, I would be like to just have like, like a little face of me on like a little illustration of a character and be like, this could be you like, thing that would be really cool for like immersion. But yeah, it, yeah.
00:48:35:04 - 00:48:39:07
Eriol Fox
Anything that that brings you into the fantasy is.
00:48:39:09 - 00:48:40:04
Joyann Boyce
I love it.
00:48:40:06 - 00:48:41:15
Eriol Fox
It’s going to be good.
00:48:41:17 - 00:49:00:02
Joyann Boyce
I love it because then that is just the vibes. There's no, it's so fascinating because when we've done this with other guests, they're kind of like defining characteristics about the people. But it sounds like you'll just experience community connection and everything else is up for the shuffle.
00:49:00:04 - 00:49:31:03
Eriol Fox
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There doesn't need to be, like, a specific, like, kind of way of saying the message that, that it's inclusive. It's. It's like it's. Yeah, it's, it is a weird domain to try and market, but it's fascinating. But yeah, it's mostly just about can I see myself there with these people, doing what they're doing and anything that gets that sense over and helps me to feel like, yeah, I can do that.
00:49:31:09 - 00:49:58:04
Eriol Fox
It's going to have me like click, buy right now, sign up right now, for hours with my one of my evenings a week just being like straight, straight up. I have played like 50 to 60 sessions with like pro DMS, which is like, no joke, I'm just going to be full transparent here. DMS charge from like 15 bucks a session to about 40 or 50 bucks a session.
00:49:58:06 - 00:50:02:19
Eriol Fox
It's, like they can make coin online.
00:50:02:21 - 00:50:04:22
Joyann Boyce
Okay. Dungeons and Dragons marketing.
00:50:04:24 - 00:50:09:23
Eriol Fox
Please don’t do the math of how much I’ve spent on Dungeons and Dragons. Some people do the math.
00:50:10:00 - 00:50:21:09
Joyann Boyce
Oh my gosh, no, I love it. I absolutely, because I was getting one of two options. Either Dungeons and Dragons or Sailor Moon, but I feel like trying to make Sailor Moon inclusive is a harder feat.
00:50:21:09 - 00:50:28:23
Joyann Boyce
Like it's just what this one's. Where just kind of have to leave it alone because it is what it was and it's, you know.
00:50:29:00 - 00:50:50:18
Eriol Fox
Well, so it's with Sailor Moon, I think that one feels simpler, in that, the thing that I love the most about Modern Sailor Moon is all the cosplayers that are non-like-white cosplayers that they do such amazing costumes for like the Sailor Moon characters. I want a full series of just those cosplayers, like doing their Sailor Moon like stuff.
00:50:50:20 - 00:51:03:14
Joyann Boyce
User generated content. Okay, Yeah, yeah. You said it. I like that. Yeah. Okay. Got two campaigns there. Let our listeners and viewers know where they can find you on the internet.
00:51:03:16 - 00:51:26:08
Eriol Fox
Oh, gosh, I'm still, I'm still on the what's the word that people are using it not hell-site, I guess depending on your view. I'm still on the, the Twitter or whatever the it's called now X for as long as it makes sense to be there. I'm at Eriol Does Design there but you can also find me on Mastodon. Mastodon.
00:51:26:08 - 00:51:50:12
Eriol Fox
You can also go on my Twitter profile to find Hachyderm URL, which is again, just Hachyderm dot, I think slash Eriol Does Design, so you can find me on Mastodon there, but those are probably the best places to find me online nowadays. If you want to see talks, you can find them on YouTube. If you just search for Eriol Fox.
00:51:50:14 - 00:52:12:07
Joyann Boyce
Yep. Amazing talks and goes way back. Way, way, way, back. Thank you so much for joining me, Eriol. It's been a pleasure having you on the Marketing Made Inclusive podcast and thank you so much to our listeners for tuning in. Let us know your thoughts on the episode in the comments or you can leave us a review, we'd love to hear from you. Have an amazing, amazing week whenever you're listening to this.
