How can designers help the healthcare industry become more diverse and inclusive?
I want to start by touching on a documentary we’ve probably all seen, Netflix’s ‘The Social Network’. Partly because I use these platforms to advertise for the clients I work for and also because generally, we all engage with them on some level.
First, overall I thought the documentary had a lot of positives.
It’s good to analyse critically the platforms we (increasingly) engage with daily, and the documentary has clearly encouraged lots of people to start to do that. Or at least make them feel a bit bad about using them!
It led with Tristan Harris, a humane technology expert who described these platforms being made by “a bunch of 25-year-old white guys” and the documentary (mostly) centred around these people.
What might have been useful was using this to look at the issue of diversity in the tech sector.
The reason I mention this is because the issue of (mostly) white people making decisions about people’s lives is not unique to the technology sector, for example in the advertising industry:
87.6% of all employees in advertising are white
(IPA diversity report 2019)
And just 12.40% are BAME
And then there was the the almost entirely western perspective it took which again highlighted a bias towards our own echo chamber. Issues of social anxiety or teen suicide raised in the doc wasn’t looked at in other regions with high social media use: say in Africa, where 139 million of Facebook’s users reside.
One area as a designer I’ve spent a good proportion of my time is image searching.
But the results could also create bias. I worked in an agency where a large portion of our work was creating brand communications for African businesses and UK African diaspora and it highlighted to me stock images are hugely biased towards US and western sensibilities.
This is the first page of results on getty images for ‘Senior man’ — one of the most at risk groups currently for Cornavirus, and as has been reported, is an area senior BAME communities are disproportionately more at risk.
And for balance, here are the same results for ‘Senior woman’
What does this mean for healthcare communications?
The NHS made this ad with Sir Elton John and Sir Michael Caine assuring viewers that getting the COVID vaccine is easy and safe.
It’s clear, warm and funny.
But it excluded the BAME groups I’ve mentioned with whom vaccine hesitancy reportedly gained traction due to lack of trust.
This video was released a week after the one above and was organised by Adil Ray, the comedian behind Citizen Khan. Not the NHS.
Another example is Prostate Cancer, the most common cancer in men in the UK.
Although it affects all men, black men are 2–3 times more likely to develop this cancer. The death rate is twice as high. Furthermore, black men are more likely to develop prostate cancer at a younger age.
Here’s their homepage and two campaigns:
So what can designers do to tackle this?
Much like the tech ethics discussed in the Social Dilemma we can introduce the term design ethics into our teams and make it a regular part of discussion.
It means evaluating accessibility in your projects. Not just visual or verbal but representative.
One of the most insightful practices I often undergo in the design process are co-design sessions with potential customers, or to use an industry term ‘users’.
Including a diverse range of people in your user research is great but co-designing with them will lead to greater understanding of their mental models.
Add underrepresented groups to illustrations and imagery. But bear in mind that just adding inclusive illustrations can feel like tokenism if your organisation isn’t also active against racism and gender discrimination.
During creative and design crits ask: “Does this meet our ethical standards”?
Acknowledging if there is a gap can bring out more energy and motivation to address it.
Measure it: our work needs ethical assessment as much as it needs creative and profit.
This isn’t a topic that should stay within our teams.
We should tell a story, (if we can) about what we are doing.
So how do you take the next step?
The problem with the advertising and tech industries is they get excited about something new, something big and exciting, they celebrate it, award it, publicise it and once launched in to the world, everyone shifts to the next big thing.
The dynamics of ethical design evaluation are different from this aspect of the advertising world, they are evaluated over months and years.
So how do we tackle that with an industry of creative dreamers?
Celebrate small wins
The good questions we ask and quick decisions we make. Brainstorms to champion higher ethical standards. Anything that captures day-to-day achievements.
Small wins build our personal growth and fulfilment over time. They just don’t come with the shiny bits of wood and metal that the ad industry loves so much.
Aim to make designing ethically a standard daily practice.
We should take responsibility for the effect all our decisions have on people, however small they are and should be part of our work routine.
