Sep 15: Bias, Colorism, Intersectionality, Addiction, and Empathy

Recent finds that I highly recommend

Photo by Marina, Adobe Stock

I often stumble on great articles, videos, etc. and get excited to share them. Recently, I was doing some research for an article I’m writing and had some great finds that I think you will appreciate. Here they are!

Cognitive Bias and the Design Process [video]
Jon Yablonski, the creator of Biased by Design and Laws of UX, discusses common cognitive biases we have and how they can influence our design decisions throughout our design processes and some key principles to keep in mind to reduce biases in our design decisions.

Confront Colorism Guide [article]
A detailed article about what colorism is, its history, how to recognize it, how to address it, and examples of it in pop culture.

Decision Lab: Biases [blog]
This site provides some really good information about behavioral science in their “Knowledge Center.” In particular, I spent a lot of time perusing the section about biases where I learned about a few unconscious biases that I hadn’t heard of, like bikeshedding and naive realism.

Dysfunctional Systems: Digital Products and Addiction [video]
John Voss, co-founder of Queer Design Club, shares examples of the harmful impacts of designing for addiction, prioritizing output over impact and discusses how we can do a better job of designing more thoughtfully, responsibly and ethically. The talk was given at the 2021 Clarity conference.

The art and design of empathy in everyday life [video]
Jason Kehrer gave this Ted Talk, discussing the differences between empathy, sympathy and compassion, gives real life examples, and shares some actionable steps you can take to be more intentional about designing with empathy.

There is no average person; designing with intersectionality in mind [video]
Lee Dale gave this excellent talk in 2021 at Inclusive Design 24 (id24). Lee eloquently explains intersectionality and how intersectional factors are critical to our inclusive design decision-making. This year’s Inclusive Design 24 is Sep 21 - 22, check out the 2022 schedule.

Thinking, Fast and Slow [book]
I was familiar with this book, but hadn’t thought about it as a resource for combating unconscious biases until recently. The author, Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, discusses our two systems of thinking. He encourages us to move beyond our visceral, impulsive thoughts (system 1) to slower, effortful, critical thinking (system 2), so that we question our system 1 thoughts and create opportunities to reduce the biases in our decision-making.

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Let me know if these were useful

I am often amazed how much great information is out there and stumble on insightful content several times a week. Let me know if you enjoyed any of these and if you’d like more in the future. If so, I’ll periodically send out resource lists like this one.