Mansi Gupta is one of our speakers at UX London 2023. Ahead of her talk — ‘The necessity and practice of women-centric design’ — we had a chat with Mansi.
Here’s what we asked, and what she told us:
At what point in your career did you first identify the need for a new, inclusive set of methodologies for design?
My design background and experience was largely on women-focused international development projects. On reflecting on these projects, I realised that often across cultures, industry & domain, and geographies, we were running into existent and persistent barriers that women continued to experience. I wondered if this was a result of our design methodologies falling short of meeting women’s needs. Reading the book Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez solidified this hypothesis for me and the “one-size-fits-men” terminology had me excited about exploring women-centric design.
What organisations do you see as leading the way for inclusive design practices?
It would be great to hear about a story of success in terms of implementing Women-Centric Design Methodology practices in the field.
At what point do companies need to start thinking about inclusive design practices like women-centric design methodology when they are imagining a new product?
From the get-go! The reason we see a gender-gap in product and service design because women and their needs are often an afterthought. We need to embed inclusive design methods and tools in our existing design process, otherwise we will inevitably create unintended consequences for women and many other minoritised groups.
You can see Mansi’s talk at UX London 2023, on 22–23 June, at Tobacco Dock, London.
