In The Arena by TechArena - Inclusive Design with Project Inkblot's Jahan Mantin

Episode Date: September 14, 2023

TechArena host Allyson Klein chats with Project Inkblot co-founder Jahan Mantin about what it means to be a designer and how to build inclusive design practices.

Welcome to the Tech Arena. My name is Alison Klein, and today I'm delighted to have Jahan Manton with me. I'll have her introduce herself in a moment, but this podcast is about our series of the future, the future of technology and the future of teams. Jahan is an expert in looking at how to form teams that are inclusive creators and I wanted to have her on the show. Welcome to the program Jahan. Thank you, thanks, happy to be here.

So Jahan why don't you just go ahead and introduce yourself and your background and how you became co-founder of Project Inkblot. Yeah, sure. So I would like to start saying by saying I'm a native New Yorker because, you know, native New Yorkers, we love to say that. And my background is in publishing, actually, advertising, marketing, also on the kind of editorial side. And I mentioned that because that's where I met Boi Nguyen, who is the other co-founder of Inkblot. And, you know, it's a very long story. We started working together. We met as editors and went through various iterations of our work.

But we landed on Inkblot when we started to get a lot of work designing IRL programs for kind of like equity minded initiatives, like lots of like, you know, women's quote unquote entrepreneurship programs, you know, years ago when like that was sort of everywhere. in doing that work you know we started to see a lot of gaps in the processes and gaps in the way that things were being designed and it really started to occur to us like you know we're kind of being starting to get hired to like design things equitably and this isn't a skill set that is unique only to us and actually everyone everyone can can engage in this and it it just it doesn't just it requires a lot but one of the things it requires is questioning and like critically questioning. Like I know we've always done it this way,

but does it have to be this way? It really doesn't. And it also really involves centering the people who are adversely affected or might be adversely affected by what we're creating. And so out of that was, you know, born Inkblot Design, which we used to call Design for Diversity, but it's born Inkblot Design, which we used to call Design for Diversity, but it's now Inkblot Design.

And it's been quite a ride. It's been an adventure. Anyone starting their own thing, it's always an adventure. just, you know, kind of just enthused and like committed to bringing this lens to, you know, tech folks, media folks, where like the impact is so outsized and can be great and can also be so damaging. So we were, you know, taking our professional experience, our personal experiences. Bui Wen is Chinese. I'm a Black woman. And we just were like, our lived experiences are critical to actually the design of these things.

It's not like a throwaway. It's not just critical. It actually enhances the process. And we were also really inspired by, like, you know, design, justice, principles. You know, the work we're doing, it's not like new. process and we were also really inspired by like you know design justice principles you know the work we're doing it's not like new it's not like we're the first people to think about these things there's actually thousands of people you know already thinking about this we've already been doing work with this so we were really inspired by that as well. You know, when we had a conversation and just talking about Project Inkplot, one of the things that you talked about is your view of the designer community and it being very broad and your work with the tech sector.

And that's when I knew I wanted to have you on my show because we're exploring the future of technology. We're exploring, you know, the broadening applications of AI, expansion of robotics, all sorts of technologies that are being wielded to solve some of the largest challenges that our planet is facing. And it's my belief that you can't do that unless you actually solve for everyone that is on this planet. And I wanted to talk to you about how you saw, I know that you've worked with a lot of folks in the tech sector. First, how do you define the designer and the design philosophy that goes into Project Inkblot? And how does that relate, do you think, to how we point technology development in the future? Oh, man. Okay. It's a great question. And I also read your post on ChatGPT. Oh, yeah. Thank you. Great, by the way. Well, you know, our belief is that everyone is a designer. And I say that not to like dismiss

or take anything away from folks who like went to design school and like they're a designer, it's in their title, they're really proud of that, they have an identity around it. It doesn't take anything away from that. You know, I did not go that route. But we do believe that like to be human is to be a designer. I think it's like intrinsic to the human experience. It's like you're planning something, you're being deliberate about it, or you might be unconscious about what you're designing, but it's such a part of the human experience. I think it's actually really kind of profound. And I think, you know, to start with, Hey, we're actually all designers here opens up a sense of like agency for folks. There's a certain agency that comes around with like, Oh, there's, I'm making something and I can start to kind of direct, you know, the,

the outcome of it, or I can start to look at like what we're trying to solve here. So I think it's just really like fundamental to the human experience. So that's our stance, you know, and our work is really around design education. It's really around, okay, there's kind of two facets here. Like we want to support leaders in the design industry, especially in tech and media for all of the things that you just said. You know, we also want to support Black Indigenous POC designers who are focused on projects that are like impacting our well-being. even in in both of these sort of lanes if you will there are folks in both of these areas who have arrived with like yeah i'm a designer and i know i'm a designer

and then there are folks who have been like oh i've never thought of myself as that before that offers me something that gives me a sense of agency and how I might move forward. And I think that that kind of thinking is really critical to all the things that you've named. There's like a paradigm shift that's like so critically needed's it's not just like a DEI effort where it's like well let's hire more people of color more LGBTQ etc yes for sure but you can easily sort of fall into the um the thinking of the corporation you're working for and still start designing for like one type of person so I think that starting with hey we're all designers is like where we start from and then I know that you've worked with a lot of teams on this

when you're thinking about that mental model shift what is it that you think that organizations need to do to change the dynamic of creation, to change the dynamic of design, to be more inclusive? And I think that, you know, one of the things that you said to me that was really poignant is people were asking us to do design, but it's not like we're the only people that are capable of doing inclusive design everyone is you do not have to be from a population that you're trying to represent to be able to design for that population so what do you think it takes to shift the mental model and open up that aperture into inclusivity?

I think it takes a mass of people because to be honest, like when folks are working inside of these companies, there's so many dynamics companies are like, there's like their own organism, you know, there's like so many things that are happening at one time. But one of the things we really stress in our design education programs they're like cohort learning programs there's like a lot of um importance on not just like strategic ways for us to design differently but a lot of like focus on relational ways for us to learn about one another and not like in like a kumbaya way necessarily but just

a way for us to get like really curious about like well who am I how do my lived experience impact what I'm designing right now because they are undoubtedly and who is this person like who has been who I've worked with for six years and I don't know anything really about him I mean we've had folks in our sessions like I've literally worked with this person for five years and I just had a conversation I just learned so much about them just just in this one how did I not know all these things about you and so I think it really takes I mean it takes so much but I think one of the places to start is like you need a mass, like you need a critical mass of folks that are like, wait a minute, this doesn't have to be this way. Because just being siloed or having, you know, a few folks in a company that are trying to push for something isn't necessarily going to get some agitation and activation, it starts to push, you know, leaders who might be hesitant or reticent.

And it's and that's critical. And I think the relationship building is actually in some ways more critical than the strategic piece. Because, listen, I've often heard and sometimes sometimes I feel like that too. It's like, you know, burn everything down and just start over. This is a hot mess, you know, but even if you were to burn everything down and start over, you still have to work with people. It's, it's interesting. You're, you're introducing two concepts that are very straightforward and simple, which are, we are all designers and we have agency to affect outcomes through that design but in those two simple concepts you are absolutely changing the

foundations of how work environments function today it's totally casual to nobody do super easy Allison so tell me John how it's been to it's no big deal it's super easy Allison so tell me Jahan how it's been to work you know go into a corporate environment and bring these ideas what have you seen through that process and what's been the outcome it has been wild it has been I mean our our programs are never not never rarely very rarely mandatory so these programs are never, not never, rarely, very rarely mandatory. So these programs are like the people that are coming, they want to learn. They want to evolve. They want to be there. They want to join together. Like they see the possibility of something different. And so in that sense, a lot of them have been really moving. And, you know, to be honest, we've had incredibly kind of connected,

connected moving sessions where folks are sort of opened up to this new possibility, this new way of doing things. So what we do is we introduce practices from our framework and some of them are strategic and some of them are relational and we practice. We're not in like an ivory tower, like, Hey y we figured it out we got the solution we know it all and um you know this these sessions you'll know we'll all be designing equitably by the end but what it does is it opens up pathways of possibility and so we'll have folks say like hey you know i remember we'll have folks say like, hey, you know, I remember we had someone who was like, you know,

we have these like edge cases. And, but what if they're not all edge cases? Like, why are we looking at edge cases in this way? Can we start to look at this differently? If we have someone that we think is sort of the ideal user, what about creating a profile of someone who might be negatively impacted by what we're building or might be adversely impacted?

Like that is something that you can just start to bring it in to the design process. We're already using processes all the time. And I know humans, we are, you know, tend to be pretty resistant to new processes, et cetera. But it's like this type of creative thinking around equity, around design has been, it's what's kind of kept us, it's one of the things that has kept us moving forward is folks like well we could

try that we could test that and it might go the way you want and it might not go the way you want but it's all data at least you'll you'll discover something that then leads to something else so we see like a lot of relational kind of breakthroughs we've seen folks trying on different practices we've seen folks saying hey i'm starting to use your um you know critical questions around your framework and how we're designing and that's been from like programs to like oh we need to capture data around this new process we're rolling out and how to capture like gender and racial data in a way that is safe for folks and like intuitive like how can we start to think about that and approach it in this way so I think it just opens up a lot for folks and I also have found we found that um people

have been genuinely like you know what I've been thinking about this and I, and I want a place to go to where I can talk to other people who are thinking about this. And that I'll say is the other thing that we've noticed is that what happens in a lot of companies, no surprise to us, there's just a lot of silos. So someone can be like, I didn't even know product had tried that out. I didn't even know design was trying this thing out. I didn't even know that was happening. And there's like a real opportunity in, in skill sharing and resource sharing. And it's sort of, that's been this constant that we're like, yeah. Yeah. Corporations as little societies have their quirks, but that is something, you know,

if you could make a tool that would make communication effortless across teams, you'd make a fortune. So you started Project Inkplot, I think, in 2012. Is that right? Mm-hmm. And obviously have gotten a lot of success out of it. And then we enter the pandemic, and we enter 2020,

and George Floyd happens. The Black Lives Matter movement gains incredible momentum across the country. And corporations start responding with inclusivity initiatives and greater interest in leaning forward in this space. What happened for you and in your team as corporations became more aware that maybe they should be focusing on inclusivity? And what did the conversation shift at that point oh man did it i mean honestly we were kind of shell shocked like we it was really overwhelming

actually initially and that's not just my experience it's the experience of a lot of folks who are working in equity colleagues of ours partners of ours friends of ours who are also doing similar or adjacent work were like slammed, slammed. And we had to start to get clear on like, who do we want to work with? We didn't expect everyone to, you know, be at a certain level, but it became like, let's create a rubric for how we can discern, you know, who do we want to be working with here? And so it, it certainly was an incredibly, incredibly rich learning experience. And we were sort of nonstop for quite some time. And then it also was a really great opportunity because it almost became a forcing mechanism

to start to go back to some of the work we had started together at the very, very beginning, which I didn't mention, which really centered Black, Indigenous Indigenous POC communities. And we really were like, you know, something we started to see, this was like a pattern, that there were a lot of folks within these companies who were Black Indigenous and are POC, who were like, George Floyd has been publicly murdered and what am I doing? I can't, you know, how can I apply a lot of these talents and skills at this

company to things that are benefiting my community? How can I be of service there? And we started to notice that in ourselves, in our friend circle, in our colleague circle, and folks we were working with. And that was part of the impetus behind launching Incubator, which is our fellowship for Black Indigenous POC technologists, creators, media makers. And that was kind of a monumental shift for us. We did a lot of community-based work years ago when we first started. So it was like a return to that work. And it was almost a little hard to put into words how profound that experience was to,

you know, bring together folks who were like, you know, if you're on the, if you are adversely affected, if you're a misrepresented person, if you're dealing with constraints already, in terms of, you know, systemic racism or sexism or all these things you're actually perfectly poised to creative solutioning you're the best person you're like I actually know what could what could benefit here I know what I know how we could start to shift things you know you're on the front end of the experience of it. And so gathering folks who are like super passionate and fun and joyful and also like grappling and healing and really wanting to come together to say, I have this idea. I really need feedback.

I need some space. I need to work through this idea. I need to be connected to opportunities and resources was incredibly fulfilling for us. So yeah, it was like this long sort of like kind of journey back home in a way. So we definitely still work with companies, you know, leading design education programs. And that sort of created this social enterprise model, which is how we kind of how we be now, you know, which is like that work helps to funnel this other work as well. That's fantastic. I have to ask you about this. Bloomberg came out with an article yesterday,

and it announced that DEI roles inside of corporations have fallen by 19% over the last year. And we've seen broader layoffs in the tech sector, but it seems that there's also a pulling back by some companies in terms of their investment in this space. I don't think anybody would say that the job is done. So do you? Yeah.

You know, you work with corporations in this space. How would you view, you know, you think that companies are a little the last couple of years doesn't have a backlash that actually hurts the people that we're trying to bring closer to the table yeah you know it's funny we don't even consider ourselves dei and i think part of the i think one of the things that has to just kind of well first of all say this dei coming in and out is just it's it's like the cyclical nature of that you know industry quote unquote or field it's it's in i mean really when you start to really look at like you're just going through like the 70s, 80s, what they called it then, they called it something else, but it's still the same thing. And then it comes back in and then it goes, there's like a dip.

And then it comes back again. It's like, we got to bring in DEI. And then it goes in. So to me, this is to be expected. And I think a lot of folks working in this field, this is not surprising to anyone. But we don't even really consider ourselves DEI and I think that's part of the the problem is that DEI is viewed as something that's like ancillary it's like this side thing and then you have like of course people are like we're out of here

because you have one person you know for a whole company that's expected to hold this huge initiative um so i think there's again there's like this paradigm shift where it's like this isn't a nice to have thing or just something that you know is like a numbers game it's not the company picnic that can be cut in down years yeah exactly exactly it's like it's not those things like when i think around think about equitable leadership or like really creating products and services and content that can actually work for many people that's different um in my mind than how we think of like dei like if equity is just embedded into how we work there's no need for things like dei if these are a part of like our principles and our values and like what we live into, we don't need to have this. It's ironic. It's like a segregated department for DEI.

Right. You know, and I think that's part of the challenge. You know, something that comes to mind is a friend of mine that works at Google and was sharing about, you know, folks having kind of a paradigm shift about a inclusive camera technology they were working on. And, you know, I'm paraphrasing, but the sentiment was like, oh, it's not about making a camera. This is about dignity and self-worth and creating something where people can see themselves reflected back and be like, yeah, that's what I look like. That's authentic to how I appear. And that's not just making a camera. That's something else. And so, yeah, you know know and paradigm shifts are not easy

and maybe that won't be reached in this lifetime I would hope so but the path forward is so critical I think that the the follow-on to what you're saying is this is not an effort simply to develop internal culture. This is an effort to be the best and best performing business possible. And so it should be something that should be at the foundation of what you're doing exactly and it's also like it's not going to go away you know the the the desire for di as a reactive approach is will always well i don't know always but it's there but in terms of you know the things you spoke about in the beginning those those what we're dealing with on a planet level, human level, the criticalness of all of it. I mean, it's felt, we can feel it.

We know like things are, this is intense, you know, it's not going to go away. So it's like, we actually need these skills if we're going to be living in the modern world. I have a couple more questions for you. I just want to make sure we're at the half hour. Do you have a few more minutes? Sure. Okay.

You talked about incubator and building community engagement, which I think is fantastic can you just share a little bit about what incubator takes folks through in terms of the experience and you know what does that from tip to tail look like yeah I'll give um kind of a high level overview I mean we participated in different incubators before and they've been really great, like business incubators. But what we found was that there was a gap in terms of particularly what it's like as a person of color to, you know, not have the same necessarily opportunities or be faced with different barriers when it comes to like, venture capital or these kind of things. So you go to these business incubators, but there's no conversation around that. So that's a gap there. There's a missing there.

And then you might go through like a more kind of equity program, but then there's not things around the other. Like we just saw this, this, this gap. And then we had this desire to be, you know, with our people, with our community. So I think of the incubator as like a genuine idea incubator, almost like an ideation lab, which is something really nice. If you have the fortune to like, you know, to have gone to like college, you have a lot of space to do a lot of like thinking that's what you're there for, ideating and ruminating but not as much when it comes to you know you have a professional life or you're working and like you're a parent and like all these things so the incubator is a space for folks to come together they're super nurturing space for folks to come with their ideas and if their people were

at different levels some were like we i've worked on this project for a while. One was around migrant workers. One was around a technological piece app around agriculture and black farmers. There was just a variety of different projects. And folks were at different stages. And what they really were looking for was like feedback. And especially now, like people were super isolated. You know, there was some folks that were like in major cities, you know, less folks that were maybe more rural areas. And they're like, I have no one to talk to about this. I want to talk to other folks who I trust, who are also committed to equity, who want to create projects that are benefiting our communities.

And I really need to think this through. So we used some practices and key elements from our framework. You know, our framework is divided up into three kind of sections and within those sections are various practices to try on. But the first is like, who are you? Like, actually, who the hell are you? You know, how is that impacting what you're designing? What are you designing? You know, is it useful? Is it necessary? Are you the person to be designing it? I mean, there's so many questions that come up in that inquiry. And who are you going to design it with? Are folks who might be most negatively impacted,

do they get to be designers too in this process? And how can you work with folks so that we're really building something that's of value? So we took them through a bunch of different activities, lots of conversation, lots of folks kind of trying on different practices. You know, the idea was like, let's kind of birth this project out into the world, but let's give a space that is intentionally slower. That's kind of the antidote to fail fast and break things where we're not going to actually put in metrics around like profit doesn't mean you can't have a profitable project,

obviously, but we're going to remove all those things just for right now. You know, it's an eight week program so that you can get the feedback, be with your idea really. And it's like people had a ton of breakthroughs. I bet. It was fantastic. Yeah, it was deep.

That's awesome. I love that you're evolving too. That's wonderful to see. What's next for Project Inkplot? Oh, my gosh. What's next? Well, I'm excited to say that we have our first ever public cohort learning program that we're running. And that's kind of like a big thing for us because our programs have been run inside of companies.

But we got feedback from folks who were like, well, I'm not in a company, but I really want to do this program. So we're like, well, let's gather some folks. So that's starting February 16th. We have a few spots left. Folks can go to projectinplot.com and go see the banner to sign up. And that introduces folks to our framework and really has folks trying on some of the practices, starting to investigate case studies of equitable and inequ equitable design. And I think what's really critical is also meeting other, again, meeting other people in various industries, mostly kind of tech media folks, but still like folks that are in adjacent or similar industries that are also kind of leaders in their field who are really wanting to connect to other people to say like, are you in this wait I'm in this too you know what can we build so we're gonna be

running that and the other thing is kind of to your point is it's really easy to get frustrated too in this field or to just feel like uh it's not moving as well yeah you know it's not moving as fast. We know it needs to move. And it can make you want to pull your hair out sometimes. And so you can't do equity work alone. It's actually impossible. I don't think it's possible. You know, you have to do it in community. So that's a major impetus for us to run this. That's fantastic. I love what you're doing. I love everything about what you've talked about today. Jahan, I'm sure other people who are listening online also have loved the things that you're saying and would like to engage. So where do we send them

to engage with you and the team and learn more about future incubators, the educational programs, et cetera. Yes. You can go to projectinclot.com and sign up for a newsletter. You can join our next cohort. If you're interested in incubator, definitely sign up. We'll have communications out for our next, our program, which will happen again this fall. And folks can also shoot me a line too. I'm just at jahan at projectinclot.com and always happy to chat with folks. Thanks so much for your time today. It's been a real pleasure.

Thank you, Allison. All right.