In today’s episode, we talk with Boyuan Gao and Jahan Mantin—the founders of Project Inkblot—who have built a practical framework that can help everyone design for diversity, and can also be a guide for challenging conversations.

We discuss how they see design as an opportunity to bridge the divide and bring people into the conversation about designing products and services that address everyone’s needs, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, or religion. We also talk to them about their definition of intent vs. impact, and how to close the loop on making sure your impact is what you intended.

We hope you can use some of their ideas as a way to open the door to difficult conversations, and better understand your colleagues and customers.

Takeaways:

• Understand why the impact of a product can vary greatly from its intent.
• How design can act as an invitation to participate in difficult conversations.
• Learn about Project Inkblot’s D4D framework to start building more equitable products, services, and content.

Bio

Jahan Mantin and Boyuan Gao are co-founders of Project Inkblot, a team of designers and futurists who partner with companies to build equitable products, services, and content using Design for Diversity™(D4D). D4D is a framework that illuminates blind spots around cultural and racial biases within your design, ideation, and creative processes in order to create better work.