Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Audrey McRobie Illustration by Lilyan Salazar

Thursday, June 15th saw the first installment of Vectors, a conference produced by Gabriel Valdivia, Michelle Morrison, and Julio Martinez, as part of San Francisco’s Design Week. This year, Vectors explored the role of identity in design — how identity impacts design culture, work, and the future of the industry.

The conference was so well-run that it was hard to believe that it was in its inaugural year and pulled together in just 3 months at that.

Below are what I found to be the biggest takeaways.

1. Use Your Vulnerabilities to Your Advantage

Be open. Get naked.

The first three talks were, on the surface, very different. Pablo spoke about the insecurities he felt about being Mexican and wondering if he was a “real” designer; Robyn spoke about her lifelong struggle as a trans-woman and how she’s turned that struggle into a way for trans-teens and adults to find proper healthcare; Alex spoke about becoming an immigrant as a child, leaving behind a very rigid, rules-based, communist Cuba for the chaos of Costa Rica and the capitalistic world.

Find your chaos and make it your superpower. — Alex Valdivia

Beneath the surface, all three highlighted similar lessons: combat your imposter syndrome; take your story and make it your strength; and your insecurities are what make you — and your work — unique and powerful.

Beyond what sounds decidedly fuzzy and feel-good, there’s an important message here that helped unite the audience from the start: no matter where you come from or what your story is, you belong in the design community just as much as anyone else.

2. Be Intentional About It

The panel discussion, “Untapped Potential,” and Rafael Smith’s talk, “Designing for Unconscious Bias,” both surfaced a second theme: the importance of being intentional about creating diverse design teams.

Emphasizing that “diversity has to be purposeful,” Jacinda Walker contended that we no longer have the “luxury” of hiring people who are just like us. Chikezie Ejiasi, drawing on his own experiences, addressed design cultures in which certain members don’t feel comfortable bringing their ideas to the table.

Another notable point was that it doesn’t matter how many “diverse hires” we have; it matters how many of these hires end up in leadership roles. In other words, look no further than the leadership of any team, department, or company to know to what extent they value diversity.

Give [POC] the things they’re passionate about, not the things you’re passionate about them solving. — Chikezie Ejiasi

Raphael, Lead Designer at IDEO, spoke about our inherent biases, the importance of being aware that they exist, and how to take steps to work free of them. He presented products that helped with the last one specifically, including:

An app that records the percentage of male and female voices heard in a meeting;
a tool that scans your job posting to highlight any words that may limit your pool of candidates to one gender and suggest words that are more inclusive; and
a product for Airbnb hosts that hides any profile details that give away a user’s gender, race, etc. (i.e. names, photos) when these users make requests to rent the host’s property.

These topics [identity and diversity in design] make people uncomfortable, but the worst thing we can do is not address them. — Gabriel Valdivia

3. Building and Scaling a Design Culture

Following Raphael’s talk, Jody Owens, Design Producer at Stripe, spoke about how the rapidly growing company has worked to scale its design culture.

Their strategy included a ‘referral party,’ in which all employees sifted through their networks for potential referrals. This ensured that referrals were coming from outside the design team, and as a result, ensured more diverse backgrounds amongst their candidates.

Stripe’s design team also studied how larger companies have scaled their own design teams. For example, they explored how Facebook Design performs design reviews, how frequently designers’ work is critiqued, what tools the team uses, etc.

Stripe’s design team has also begun displaying their work on a bulletin wall in the office and on an internal page for their global offices. This isn’t meant for displaying perfect work, but rather to get company-wide feedback and to keep the conversation going. In the process, this instills an appreciation for the role of design within the company as a whole.

A Note on Gratitude

Vectors gave me a renewed appreciation for the Bay Area’s work culture, and for the people it brings together — people from such wildly different backgrounds, yet united by a common purpose and the ambition to see it through.

The conference highlighted a wider design community that’s welcoming, open and conscientious. As a writer, a lot of the conference’s talk about product design didn’t apply to my work per se, but the experience as a whole instilled in me a sense of gratitude to be a part of a community that’s building something together, no matter how different our projects.

Speakers List

Creative Confidence (“Fear and Design”) by Pablo Stanley, Product Designer, Carbon Health
Sight to See by Robyn Kanner, Co-Founder, MyTransHealth
Chaos to Craft by Alex Valdivia, Interactive Designer, Blogger
Panel: Untapped Potential

Designing For Unconscious Bias by Rafael Smith, Design Lead, IDEO.org
Scaling Stripe’s Design Culture by Jody Owens, Design Producer, Stripe

Diversity in Design was originally published in prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Diversity in Design

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