Why Isn’t All Design Inclusive? (Crossover episode with the Made for Us Podcast)
Season 4: Episode 20
Welcome to another fantastic crossover episode! This time we have the amazing podcast “Made for us” hosted by Tosin Sulaiman.
Made For Us is an award-winning podcast for anyone who’s curious about how to design for inclusivity. Join us each week for conversations with founders, designers, product inclusion leaders and other creative minds who are challening the status quo of how everyday products are designed. Each episode will bring you insights from people who've spent years thinking, perhaps even obsessing, about how to develop products or build companies that are inclusive from the start. In 2024, they were a Bronze winner for “Most Inspirational Podcast” and a 2024 International Women's Podcast Award winner.
This episode is called “Why isn’t all design inclusive?”
Over the past few months, guests on this podcast have shared some great examples of inclusive design and innovation, but these kinds of products aren’t the norm (yet). Joining me to explore some of the reasons why is Scott Berkun, author of How Design Makes the World, a book that aims to demystify design for everyone. We discuss why it’s so hard to design well and what organizations can do to accelerate good ideas.
Enjoying the show? Subscribe to the free Made For Us newsletter for exclusive content. If you haven’t yet left a 5-star rating or review, this would be the perfect time to do so (it will help others discover this podcast while Season 2 is in the works). In today’s episode, Scott and I discuss:
Business and cultural reasons behind design choices
Key questions to ask early on in the design process
Why we should think twice before using words like ‘intuitive’ and ‘user-friendly’
The ROI of inclusivity
About our guests
Scott Berkun is a bestselling author and popular speaker on UX design, innovation, leading teams, public speaking and other subjects. He’s published eight books, including How Design Makes The World and The Myths of Innovation. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist and other media.
Learn more about Scott
About Made For Us
Made For Us was produced and hosted by Tosin Sulaiman. Special thanks to the following people who helped to keep this podcast running:
Design & social media management: Valentin Grimoux
Audio engineering: Justin Orive at Reliable Sounds, Alex Van Rose & Rishi Das
Post-production & marketing intern: Soumaya El Filali
Music in this episode
Nature sound effect by bbc.co.uk – ©2023 BBC
Climify Theme Song by Casual Motive
The Season 4 Climify Team
Eric Benson (Host)
Cam Burkins (Producer)
Bhavna Bhavanishankar (Experience Researcher and Multisensory Educator)
Adam Dziaba (Designer)
Jacqui Himmel (Multimedia Journalist and Scriptwriter)
Abigail Zhuk (Design Researcher)
Climate Design Assignments
At the end of each episode, we ask our guests what their ideal climate design project would be. They have four weeks with a class full of design students. We translated their response into a project brief that you can use for your class.
