Aurelius Podcast: Episode 51 – Diversity and Inclusion in UX with Timothy Bardlavens

Aurelius · Episode 51 with Timothy Bardlavens on Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in UX

Episode 51 highlights – Timothy Bardlavens podcast about Diversity and Inclusion in UX:

Diversity, equity and inclusion in UX and tech culture
Ways to recognize how tools and systems are directly contributing to inequity in our society and work
Stories and examples of how our society created inequities and how to recognize the connections to the work we do
Tips for doing more equitable UX and design research
Working to identify your own thoughts, actions and behavior to help create a more just and equitable world for all

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Timothy Bardlavens podcast discussing diversity, equity and inclusion in UX

Episode Transcript

(this transcript was automatically created using our very own transcription feature in Aurelius and has been minimally edited, please excuse any typos or weirdness 😀 )

This is the Aurelius podcast episode 51 with Timothy Bardlavens. I’m Zack Naylor co-founder at Aurelius and your host for the Aurelius podcast, where we discuss, all things, ux, research and product. In this episode, we have Timothy Bardlavens a product design manager at Facebook. He’s a product design, leader and diversity equity, and inclusion specialist involved in organizational culture. Timothy is also a co-founder of and design whose mission is to cultivate and activate black LatinX and Indigenous designers by providing tools resources and training to support them on their creative Journey. Timothy and I had a very deep conversation about diversity and inclusion in the world of design and ux, particularly in tech companies, and culture, it’s very clear. He’s an expert and deep thinker about how we can create a more Equitable work, culture and World in general. This conversation is so important for several reasons. First Timothy has first-hand experience real lived experience.

And how the systems in our work and personal lives. Do not inherently support. The equality of all people, in addition to that, Timothy has clearly given a lot of thought and application to exactly how we can all work to make our society better for all people and it includes all of us. I sincerely hope you enjoy this episode and take away some things to consider and act. On the Aurelius podcast is brought to you by Aurelius the powerful research repository and insights platform. Aurelius is an all-in-one space for researchers to organize notes.

It’s capture insights analyze data, and share outcomes with your team. We recently announced two of our biggest features yet. Aurelius, now offers transcriptions and are automatic report Builder, you can add any audio or video recording and have notes created for you automatically. Then Aurelius automatically creates a report with every key insight and recommendation from your project which you can then edit design and share with anyone right from Aurelius. Check us out at Aurelius lab.com. That’s a you re Liu es el a b.com. All right, let’s

To it. Hey Timothy. Hey, how’s it going? It’s going good, man. Live in these covert X TI, indeed, you response. Thus, I that came before your spots said, more than anything in the actual answer to that question, which I think all of us can probably relate to right now, right. But you know, at the time of recording this actually funny enough it’s April Fool’s Day so that’s funny but folks will be listening this after the fact I mean things are kind of picking up, you know, more more folks, getting vaccinated weather starting to turn although where you

And I live that can be deceptive as we kind of chat about before we got into it. Well, none of those things are nearly as important is is hearing from you, which is the whole reason we’ve got you on the show and I appreciate you coming on. Taking the time, I was wondering, can you introduce yourself? You know, let people know some of the work that you do your background. What you’re passionate about stuff like that? Yeah, sure. So I always start with one the name, of course of Timothy bar Blevins. So yeah, I start with. I’m the I’m a black gay man from the south and that’s important to me because one up from the south

There’s a lot of misconceptions and oceans actually just having a conversation with someone this morning and they’re from actually grew up in the Pacific Northwest. I live here. Now they live in Atlanta and they’re like, man. Racism is showing your face here is like yeah, I appreciate it because I know where I can find is that this passive-aggressive shit, we have up here in pnw, so that’s the thing. But no, I make that introduction because it’s in that I even do this in job interviews is really a thing of like it’s who I am its the collection of my experiences as what mister

Lens through which I see life is how I navigate space is, how I have the navigate systems, this country, all the things. And so I always start with those is like the core of my identity and who I am. And so outside of that, I am a product design leader, I am diversity, Equity inclusion specialist. I am deeply involved in organizational culture and how we do it, effectively and all the things. I think that probably do way too much in life. I’m also co-founder of a company and a

With the gray in last year’s Antoinette Carroll who is also one of my best friends so we found it and design together is Imagine company but it started as a fellowship program where we focus on emerging creatives black like a Latin accent indigenous folks who just need additional access to people to mentorship to growth opportunities. To all the things we never had access to what we were growing up because of, you know, having the lack of role models.

Azure, I could access to the people who could give us The Insider or just have the vocabulary to understand what many of us especially within that group of black, nickel at nick-san divisions, folks, we have to navigate on a day-to-day basis. So, yeah, that’s me as far as like, work. I work at Facebook right now. I am a private design manager at lead a pillar within our communities group. So communities is basically, the whole is the shifted. Facebook is making towards their across the company. Like, I used to have friends and family and I was

We help people build community on, and off the platform. And so I do a ton of work there when it is centered around Community, as well as helping drive a bunch of the racial Equity work that we’re doing to say, like, how do we make sure we’re building our products. More equitably, both retroactively and proactively so kind of work. I’m always busy, work Sunday through Friday and I got to try to make sure I take Saturday’s off all the time, I hope so. I was going to say I feel like I hope you’ve got something that you enjoy that is not actively working because

Buddy needs that regardless of how passionate we are and that’s pretty impressive. All the stuff that you’ve got going on, which is one of the reasons. Of course, I wanted to reach out to you because a lot of the things that you’re passionate about and experienced in and have expertise and background in. I think a really relevant to kind of boost the signal on right and discuss these things and I came across the one talked, I mentioned this. When I reached out to you that you gave it was called navigating whiteness. And so you know, of course, the title, I think immediately catches somebody’s attention regardless of your Curiosities but then you know, watching that it was really profound especially some of

Experiences you shared in, kind of here. Here’s what this looks like. And here’s what we do about that. And obviously something I kind of wanted to dig in with you on that. And so, I’ll ask a question, which seems like kind of a stupid one, but it’s a good segue as like what sparked that for you, right? To kind of give that talk and obviously your background I think is, is the case how did you for a get to the point where you say this is a talk I want to give like I want to share these experiences, you know. Yeah, well couple things one you know I will say that sort of to what you said earlier around. Take make a space for myself. One thing,

II made a decision on very early life is I’ll never do anything that I’m at, then I’m not passionate about. I never do work just to like, fund a passion and so, like, everything I do even with my job as my hobby and so that means that I get fulfillment out of it regardless. And so when I take a break, is really a meaningful break just say, I just want to chill out and do nothing. There’s like, hey, what are your hobbies? It’s design is leading its diversity, Equity inclusion. It’s writing. It’s all these things is just a combination of who I am and what I’m at, what I really enjoy doing.

To the your question where it’s parked, I’ll be transparent and say that part of it was well the Talk itself which has now become a two-part art of actually technically is going to be three particle. Is I was asked to speak to students at SBA for their products. Have design program at think, it’s a master’s program. And so I’d completely forgotten about it until the day of for the most part or maybe a couple a day before.

I was like shoot, I have to figure out what to speak about and I had these ideas rattling. My brain before quite some time, but I was like, eventually I’ll get to writing something down. And all those people who, honestly, believe I may have ADHD, or some form of, like, some form of it. Where like, I’ll procrastinate like hell. But at some point, if there’s a deadline and I have to get to of, then all of a sudden, a hyper focused. So I get into the zone and I can like crank out some shit. And so that talk that you saw was really about 3 hours of me, right?

Five pages of, like, all the things that are in my brain and how do I really articulate? And so, I think that was sort of the impetus of it but in actuality, you know, as I’ve broken it out into these now. Two parts, like one part is already been released and final, I’m working on editing for the second part. It’s like at a realization that a lot of these thoughts are a culmination of my experiences and the things in the vocabulary have developed over the past decade. Like there are things where it first started with me and like, these are things I experienced and I didn’t know at first how to call it a thing.

Thing. And then I figured out oh what is the thing that I calling was the way I could look carefully around that. And then over time I started to see how these micro experiences for myself, connected to macro experiences, that connected to systems that connected to. This concept is not really a concept, this realization in existence of whiteness and there and then it’s really like, well how do we Define what that is and how do we get people to dislike disconnect when they think about white supremacy? How do you get them to disconnect it from Hood?

People hanging from trees, things like that. And to say, well, actually white supremacy is in all almost everything we do. When we just don’t understand it, it exists and we have internalized white, and this is a society because who have our leaders have been, who has been in Congress, and in government, and empowered, the most in this country, white people, specifically white men. And so, we think about whiteness and all the innovations that exist. They are many times created it to whiten. And even if they don’t deserve

Deserve it. Then what happens is there’s a whole society and really the whole world is sort of indoctrinated to this. And now it’s like how do we go through dismantling? All that indoctrination? Because it is because it’s centuries, right? It starts with colonialism and goes all the way until today, maybe, even before colonialism, really? So yeah, it’s just like a culmination of thoughts. Yeah. And really life experience for you to it. Sounds like, you know, actually kind of really like the story, how that came up

Because it’s it reminds me of this thing a former colleague. Shared one time it was like the timeline of a design project. Let’s say it’s a week and it’s like the first four days are like screwing off. Screwing off, screwing off screwing off day for is like oh shit. Day five is like crunch to do all the work in the five hours before the meeting. And that’s just I think that’s a lot of like creative people work. I think a lot of people in general maybe just like that, but I’ve found like, just kind of our industry. It’s like it’s just a lot of thinking and churning on stuff and

Then you’re like I’m ready to put hammered a nail kind of thing, so kind of makes sense to me. I really appreciate you sharing to how you came to that. I kind of want to tie it back to something that you mentioned, you know, being from the south and now in Pacific Northwest and saying, I appreciate knowing where the cards are on the table rather than this passive-aggressive bullshit. I think some of that you told me, but I’m tying it back to that because I feel like some of that is not recognizing as you say whiteness. Or like, not not being able to really Define what that is and see it, because we’re so sort of saturated by it, just not yet.

Yeah, absolutely. In Seattle, I live in a neighborhood where I live across the street from a Japanese Community Center, while they’re sort of Ginger, find anything around them. And there’s two buildings that are on the other side of my block that they, I think there are sort of being supported by, or paid for by a different like, a nonprofit organization just to allow elderly Asian, folks, to have a place to live. And these are mainly folks, who likely immigrants who came over, whose children have like gone off in are doing different things.

Whether it’s across the a tour across the country, but then I also live in a space where, like, right up on the other side of my block, there’s a Buddhist temple, they used to. That was started as a Buddhist temple was turning to a Japanese internment camp and then turn back into a Buddhist temple. They were given it back by the government, to be able to use it as a temple again, right. And so I is a really interesting space to be in here because you have this really tough history that exist within a neighborhood know. Like the Central District used to be a black, a very black neighborhood and they’ll

A Langston Hughes Community Center. That’s right. Up the road. But the funny thing is like the links and q’s Community Center surrounded by whiteness because it’s been gentrified so deeply to help people live closer to the city where they work, that aren’t the people of the community. And so like, it’s just like, oh no, it’s just an interesting thing to sort of like, think about and navigate through in Seattle, like is a perfect record. In fact, I remember, I think it was an article about Marco lucky who actually say this about Facebook. He said, there are more black lives matters posters in the

The window then are black people working at the company? I know that like I was just saying earlier today, honestly hasn’t really kind of conversation early this morning. So, obviously these are things, I talked about like, all the time, but I was having someone else. Like, you know, the funny thing about Seattle and other places like Seattle, Portland is one the bay area’s. Well, you’ll see people with the black lives matters sun, in their front porch or their front yard, and at the same time, they’ll say, I don’t want to bust up in my neighborhood because, but stops bring Crime and it’s like, well, the stops actually are

Overwhelmingly use or buses or the state poet translator or overwhelming use by black and brown folks. And so the attribution to Crime to bus stops is that tribution of crime to black and brown people. But there’s a lack of awareness of there’s even a connection there and that’s how people like that’s how those tropes have been used for like decades and they’re still being used. If people are like oh well no I just attribute like you knows people and crimes. Oh no poverty and crime who are the people who inextricably live in poverty more than

Anyone some country black and brown clothes? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, that lack of recognition in the connection there. I think is I think it’s a big deal and and I’m glad I’m grateful that there’s a lot of folks who are helping push that forward, like yourself like Antoinette actually in Philly with her work too. So that’s that’s super cool that you kind of mentioned her. But so being that we are in the the ux research product design, kind of world, may be narrowing it, in on that. I mean, can you talk about some of the work you do there and it ain’t even, you know, how it affects your work, and how you have navigated that as that kind of professional.

Because that’s a lot of folks who are listening to this. I would argue probably all of the folks listening to our podcast or in that same field. He talked about that a little bit more. Yeah. So this is actually ready to part to Mark when I’ve been digging in on us. I thought about I’ve been thinking this a lot and I had a realization that there are there’s one a level of understanding people need to have when it comes to systems and How Deeply they run and even especially working Tech, how it connects and sometimes the work you do, you don’t even realize it. The second is around Frameworks, many times.

People are looking for Frameworks and there are a lot of Equitable design Frameworks are a lot of co-creation Frameworks, a lot of friends around. How do you do more Equitable research, and yet either people don’t access them or they access them but bastardize them because they’re looking for a checkbox or short list or things that can just quickly do. And I realize in part of the article is really digging in. On really, the most important thing people to do is shift their mindset and they need to actually dismantle some of the whiteness that

Approaching these things with these problems with. So let’s start with systems. So an example, I use is Cash app and say, so and that’s question. Why does cash app exists? Their mission is something along the lines of making it so that everyone can have access to their funds and what is Cash Up, you are able to easily send receive and store money, who is it for cash? App is really, for the unbanked and underbanked who are folks, who are most most likely to be unbanked. Or underbanked, most likely there was a black and let makes folks are in

Business folks as well. And if you ask what is unbanked or underbanked, that’s people who either don’t have bank accounts or they live in neighborhoods where there is not a bank, close enough for them to be able to effectively access. Most likely it is going to be lower income neighborhoods. And so then you start to see like, well, you know, why are these folks unbanked a specialist focus on that? Well, it could be like, especially there’s a lack of trust, there’s issues with fees. There’s a lot of, there’s actually a lot of expense that comes into maintaining

Bank account. And let’s say, for example, you don’t maintain a minimum balance thing you get hit with fees. Let’s say that you need to overdraft because you need to pay a bill. You didn’t have enough money to hit the overdraft fee and if you don’t pay that fast enough, then maybe another overdraft fee or you may go into negative. If you go into negative and stays too long, you’ve been count, could be cancelled, you could be blackballed from banks, these things happen all. The time, I lived in the negative for much of my, I guess my twenties like through college and through like my first three or four years out of college. I’m basically paid got paid

Pay bills, to put my account to negative. And I got paid to fill in that negative balance in two weeks, just to do it all over again. And so, when you start to dig through, it was like, well where is their lack of wires, their lack of trust and all these issues with it. You step back and say, well, there’s a lack of trust, especially if you’re focusing on black people, if you go all the way back to the 1870s, right after emancipation, when they created the freedman’s bank and they made it as a way to help build economic wealth and prosperity for black or recently, fried’s enslaved, people and so

What happened was the First National Bank started. It was his primary white banging. They started taking buying risky real estate, you’re in railroads projects and they would take that risk and put it on freedman’s bank and they did it to the point where that bank could no longer recover. Frederick Douglass actually took over the bank for a bit to see if he could help it recover and he couldn’t even get it there. The entire board for the bank, of course of all white men. So end up shutting down the bank and in doing so it was over 66,000 black. People lost six million dollars in

in money because of them, shutting down that bank in the eighteen hundreds. And so you say, well, whereas there are like people who like bike folks all the time, they stick money in there, you know, an air mattress, so they put it somewhere else like they don’t like to put it in the bank and it’s because you have the fees you have this history of like how people have been abused when it comes to the banking system, especially black and brown folks. And then it connects to why does keshet exist because the system failed, someone 300 years ago, and it has so hurt a population that now we have

Create patches for it. Now in 2021 to be able to fix those three hundred year problems. So like we use the Nets, just the system and it’s supposed to be overwhelming is supposed to feel like a lot because you have to realize that this is a lot to have to work through. It’s going to take time to navigate these other Frameworks. There’s a lot of them. How do we leverage them? There’s some work really well, but there’s a monster that comes with leveraging, a framework and understand the system, which is, if the innovators dilemma, right? We want things fast. We have to be first to Market. It has to be the best so on and so forth.

Why Supremacy says, quantity over quality is a preset there. Another Western says, concept is progress over everything, basically, which basically means that like, it doesn’t matter who you hurt progress is what matters. Individualism is also a precept, white supremacy. And so we you say innovation in the way that we use it right now of like get into a corner, do it ourselves be first to Market be the best is like we’re basically driving white supremacist precepts to the products that we build. So how do we take a step back and say, how do we co-create? This Innovation is really saying.

Poor the marginalized people. How do we bring those folks in and co-create with them? Understand how we actually solve my problems and work with them on it over it versus the opposite which is how research goes right now. Is for example we will have people who will come in, they do let’s say an hour study. Let’s say we do that for 15-20 people and their research goes out and they coalesce and they synthesize those learnings and they spit them back out. But there’s no really gut-check to say did we actually synthesize these appropriately? Do we take these and 50 of them to our own minds?

Onset without actually saying well let’s go check and make sure we actually synthesize this away. That really hit song to keep problems to be solved. They’re actually understanding these individuals experiences and it how do we return back to them once we synthesize and started? Creating something to ensure that we have actually met the need versus trying to solve a problem that we Aztec, or designers, or even researchers have created ourselves, and many times, we create hypotheses and want to prove a hypothesis versus actually understanding for solving a real human problem. That’s like a

Oh, diatribe of things. I could even go. I can go forever. But I’ll pause, they say there’s a lot there, it’s a mindset shift and is there. A lot of things within it that we have to change and people have to realize last thing is we look at sort of like people problems in these Frameworks and things like that. And say if we do it this one way and keep going the same way then we’ll get there next reality, there’s Nuance to it. There’s a multi-dimensional approach that we have to take every case by case basis. And then we have to really start to dig in and like internet has a

Talk around being able to be humble and like being humble is around. It’s not humble its checks. After have to go back and remember now. So basically the whole thought behind it is you can’t just have empathy because if you have empathy yeah sure you feel for person but that doesn’t mean you actually are taken it back seat and really absorbing and understanding sort of another person sort of perspective so I see humility. So like the quote that she uses that I love that I pulled his like empathy without humility.

Often shows up his judgment if empathy doesn’t have, humility is still about you and no such an amazing, an amazing thought. And then Emily Rose Underwood. She’s a community initiative specialist from Missouri, Historical Society. She says, humidity asks us to step outside of ourselves. Listen absorb someone else’s truth, even if it makes us feel defensive that defensiveness many times is why fragility. So anyway, I’ll pause there. I said a lot. That was a that was a lot of really awesome stuff. And I think I actually I

I appreciate that you call out this feels overwhelming because it should be cut because it’s a lot. It’s this isn’t something. We’re gonna know. This will probably resonate to you, but this isn’t something we’re going to break down in a design Sprint. This isn’t something we’re going to figure out in tackle with a workshop. Like, this is something we’ve got to put as what I’m taking from what you’re saying, at the Forefront of our minds to impact our decisions every single day. It reminded me of a quote to somebody, we had on the show recently all about via middle. She said, I hope I get this right, she said

Idea of inclusion is interesting to me because a lot of times it doesn’t account for the fact or like the reason for exclusion in the first place they went a lot of what you were saying. Sort of that like connected back to what some of the stuff that she was talking about because that’s essentially what it sounds like you’re suggesting to. Folks like it’s fine to say, we want to be inclusive, we want to empathize with this. We want to be better.

But to actually examine, you know, your example why it is Cash app exists like well yeah, maybe you don’t have to trace the full lineage of everything you’re doing, but to at least understand the purpose of exclusion or the cause of exclusion, you can’t really get to that next step, right? Yeah. I think a really interesting thing that someone told me is during the murder of George Floyd, when that was still raw during the murder of granite, a when that was still wrong, honestly for me to goes actually Force the for George Flores wrong again. Because the the

But during the time where everyone started was waking up to racism again or suddenly, is this think she was saying that? Like a lot of her friends, like white friends from high school and college and things like that reached out to her as like, I’m so sorry like I didn’t know and they were like, you know, there are also emotional and it’s funny because she said just like I don’t know why you’re calling me just like, you know, I’ve dealt with this. Like you’re the like you’re the one who needs to deal with you and it sort of thing where like people suck they see them.

Wake up to the reason for exclusion but then they want to put the emotional baggage on those who were excluded as opposed to saying like, hey, this isn’t your problem. Something I need to do, I’ll take it a step further and say, you know, I don’t believe it and we’ve actually had a few of us have a debate about this, but I don’t believe there’s any such thing as a white, a lie because you think about like this black people, Asian folks Latin makes folks indigenous. Folks, we didn’t create racism. So why why do we need allies from the folks who created racism

Of course, the why can’t we be the Allies to those who are trying to dismantle it? Like the Creator’s, can’t all of a sudden, you’re like, oh well we’ll help you and will support you. It’s like you created this. How can you always sit and be the one that like it’s wants to be the Savior as well. It just it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t track. Yeah, that’s an interesting perspective on that. I mean, I don’t have any background to the debate that you’ve had. I mean, I wonder, I could see both sides of that for sure. And that’s A New Perspective to me. I can see on one end, a hundred percent. What you’re saying, how can you like we’re gonna help and support? That was

Well, you can just stop to write over then, but then on the other side because that’s basically what you’re saying, right? I mean, if that’s your standing argument, I can see on the other side. Someone saying maybe the definition of an ally being like, well, this is just somebody who is supporting the cause. But I think yeah, from what I’m taking in your side of that debate, it’s like what at the root? It still comes back to? Well, that was where it was created so I could see I could see both sides that it’s an interesting perspective, I haven’t heard before, well think about like this. So you said like, Hey we’re going to support you and the calls. What is

Cause the cause is let’s say like just shorten a black and brown Liberation or whatever the case may be, right? But the cause is in reaction to A system that was created by the folks who are now trying to dismantle ideal proceed is trying to dismantle a system. To create this created by the oppressor and the oppressed or is trying to be an ally in helping the old Percy dismantle, it versus the oppressor Bingo Sao. This is a system we created and we should take more ownership over it or take ownership over.

It and those who have their causes that are specific to their social identity, whether they be black Trans, whatever the case may be, then they can, they’re like, whatever their cause is will support that. But ultimately, it is within the umbrella of this larger call of and cause of anti-racism and dismantling of these white supremacist constructs and systems. And so like, I think they’re sort of thing of like, it’s potentially a way how you view but I think ultimately sort of seems back to the same thing. It just started like even the framing of like we have this step Asian H stuff right now.

Right? And so with that said, hey just don’t stop Asian hate stuff. But like we have the whole step agent agent, hate movement is happening, and it’s just like black lives matter movement, and when I missed him more and more pop up, is not stop. Asian, hate or black lives matter, but Step white terrorism. And the reason for that shift is for a long time. Like, how do we protect these people is, like, yes, we need protection. We need support, things like that, but in actuality the thing we need protection and support from is the terrorism?

It has happened for centuries and so how do we look at the root cause and say, how do we stop that versus stopping the effect of that cause? Right. That’s sort of like, how I think about it is even the same with product and design and research is like, hey, we want to make products more Equitable, why are they inequitable and how do we go back and retroactively assess previous products that were built and see how we can do this better? How do we create the systems and goals equity center goes to make sure we do a good word for word and how do we make sure we’re always clear about what the root cause is and it

Hey, we’re moving too fast. We didn’t have the right team. We didn’t have the right research, participants, we didn’t have something and let’s be clear on what that was and then figure out. Either one. Do we need to mitigate it moving forward? Do we need to completely change? What we have previously done, or whatever the case may be? It’s sort of the same thing of like you have to get to the root of it and say how do we focus on that thing versus the effect which is oh these like Facebook’s perspective or prefix books, world is like, you know, for a long time. There are folks who

Are saying that people were disproportionately being disciplined on the platform who were non-white because they were saying things that were for quote unquote, violating its white folks. So like we say a white cracker that was seen as a probably to be a band for. But if you said something like Michelle, Obama is a monkey that you wouldn’t get banned for that. But that’s a racist rope, the best. A big part about it is like when we looked at those those discrepancies and we said like, we need to figure out

How to do this better, if Facebook had to go back and look at the algorithm and looking people who are making the algorithm the say, Okay? Clearly we have a problem in Howard looking at hate speech, and we need to change this. And look at it, it take a different approach to it. So yeah, it’s sort of like, they couldn’t say the symptom, is we just need to do this one thing, when actuality there’s a bigger problem that we need to go deeper on. Sorry, that’s a little bit of a ramble. I can go off on tangents all the time though. This is really great. I mean, I am personally more along the lines.

Of yourself where I can get a lot of sort of energy and enjoyment out of discussing this at, like a really, really high level and even philosophically. But I like a lot where you were. You were starting to kind of drill into some of the specifics at the tail end of that. And I kind of want to, I would ask you to go further on that because again, people who are listening, this are in the same field that we are and they have to believe. Certainly if they’ve made it this far, they actually care to try and do this better. So the question I would want to ask is like, can you share any more examples like that and stories like that of where?

We looked into this, we did some of the hard work and here’s ways that we worked to fix that because, you know, Facebook is a great example of that. I mean, there’s there’s just a lot going on at Facebook, despite any of the pros or cons that come along with that. It’s your, you know, your experience there, even particularly, I think, is extremely useful, I think, for folks listening to take away and say, Here’s how I can start doing some of this hard work in my job tomorrow. Yeah, I will say before I jump in there, I think that to the question of life. You know, what can I take with me to like even start doing this tomorrow?

So, Vivian castilho is the founder of humanity Center, amazing researcher. I would recommend. She be on this campus one day. She’s amazing. She don’t have an agreement, really good conversation, a few weeks back. And one thing she said to me, that resonated immediately as and I have to write this as, like, just a question, are you willing to suffer? Because disproportionately black light Nixon indigenous, folks indigenous folks have suffered and experienced organization of trauma and driving towards a global cultures systems and products.

But what we need is more folks who are willing to sort of suffer to get to the right thing. And by what I mean by suffer is like, are you just do you just love the idea of building Equitable products of doing things more equitably? Or are you actually willing to do the work and doing the work means that you have to push against leadership. It means that you have to, like, extend timelines. It means that you have to like, think less about what metric you trying to drive in more about what is The Human Condition you’re trying to address.

Like, these are things, you’re sort of having to go through, which means that there were people. There were going to be people, especially leaders who will push back on you on this because the system says efficiency, Effectiveness and metrics. And so, I think that’s a really big question for folks is, like, sure, I can give you a ton of really specific and invite specific examples and advice on how you can navigate systems and spaces. But you will enact to actually step up and do it and push it because some folks have lost it lost their jobs, trying to push this, some folks have

And if they haven’t lost their jobs, they’ve had to leave their jobs because they found that the system or the people, or the leadership, or whatever. We’re not in a place in which they can get where they needed to go. And so, it was better for them to leave like quite, honestly and transparently. That’s why I left Microsoft because I found that no matter how much I try to push on certain things, it just wouldn’t go. And so you think about like the inclusive product team, like it was great and externally, it was like, oh we have these great guides and so on and so forth. But internally we use none of that shit like it did.

I shall do my product work at all. This is like it was a great marketing technique, but it didn’t actually show up anywhere. It’s so I think that’s, that’s a question. I push people on and, like, we can get into specifics around it much. Like I’ll say one company that when I give, you know, credit to Dantley Davis that I honestly believe it’s because, blackmail and Leadership, who is very vocal about diversity Equity? Inclusion is actually pushing it through the work that he’s doing is Chief design officer. Twitter is like, if you look at the community work, they just started launching over the past few weeks.

Weeks, they’re doing things like hosting listening sessions to get people’s feedback on. Some of the features are looking at very like asking folks questions. They’re posting things out there creating a co-creative design a process in which the computer Community can actually tell them what they want and they can leverage that as a mechanism to make sure they’re creating the right thing. Because how do you create a community product of community is involved? And I mean, honestly, this the conversation we’re having at, you may use a Facebook right now is like, how are we going to continue to build community products? If communities aren’t involved in that process,

This and how do we do that more effectively? And so I think that’s just something that’s not just I think with Community products because anything in general, how are you going to build products for people? You have no idea who you’re building for. Like, do people realize that it’s usually that screen readers were never actually intended for people living with disabilities. They were intended for a specific, a specific subset of folks, and they just so happened that I wish I could remember this anecdote specifically. But there was a, there was a reason behind why screen readers exist, but

They were augmented over time to be focused on folks living with disabilities. And if not mistaken, like, they basically pivot it to be specifically that because it was more honestly, was from a monetary perspective, like it was just more profitable. So they’re things that like, sort of existed like are even for folks living with disabilities that wasn’t actually created for them, but has been augmented for them because the profitability about it or like someone discover, oh, of Ibuki uses to. It was never intended for that kind of people. Yeah, that’s really.

You’re seeing stuff as this. My job on this show is to try to kind of encapsulate, a summary of a lot of what you just said there, you know, and I have to apply my own kind of experience to that, but a lot of what I’m taking away is like what you can do tomorrow to start working on this stuff. It’s just having top of mind. I mean, that’s and be willing to be uncomfortable. It actually reminds me of some stuff. I was not super familiar with her work, but brene Brown, and I actually dug into a little bit more details of the thing. And one of the quotes that she had that,

It’s actually really interesting to me. Was it went along the lines of something? Yeah, where she said, there is no courage without discomfort or yeah, something to that nature. And it’s just kind of like what I’m taking from what you’re saying is very much. You got to be willing to be uncomfortable. No. Yeah, I think everybody. I think everybody’s personal tolerance or ability capacity for that will probably be different. Yeah, but without it, I don’t think that we can make any progress here. That’s kind of what I’m taking from what you’re saying it. Yeah, something I would say all the time is progress has come

Double change is uncomfortable because progress is like you’re pushing up against boundaries a little bit. You’re trying to stretch things out a little bit more piece by piece right low. So if you’re within a square it’s okay I’m going to push this a little bit. Make this into a little bit of a rectangle maybe if I push it, these edges a bit it will turn into a trapezoid is like expanding bit by bit but actually we need is change and change is going to be uncomfortable. Change means that potentially you’re going to have to jump into the water a little bit and get your feet wet or like jump in full force. The Marissa

Has. She is the head of Community, Trust and safety and Facebook. She was previously the head and like founder of the equity engineering team at Google. And she would say this a lot around, like you have fast, you have comfort and you have, I think that’s fair with the third one was was like fat. Like the if you want it fast, it’s going to be uncomfortable. And if you want, or I think it, I think it was like personally as money or something like that, or people like resources. So if you want it fast with its little resources as possible, then it’s going to be really uncomfortable.

If you want it comfortable and you want it fast, going to take a lot of resources. If you want to comfortable with, as little research, that possible is possible is going to be really slow, right? And so you have to sort of, like, figure out what is, what are you willing to sacrifice? And to me, it’s like, most likely speed is the one to sacrifice. It is, these are again systems. That go really far in, like, for a lot of people, especially leaders is having to look at their career and saying, where did I participate or benefit from this system? How do I know?

Navigate how I dress that? And is that this a like all of a sudden all of your successes are have disappeared? And no, you no longer like all these things no longer matter. But it’s to say like now that you’re aware, how can you leverage your power? How can you leverage your influence to activate and to make these changes? Yeah, that’s huge. Love it. Absolutely love it. I am certain that I could talk with you for probably several more hours about this. Well, I have to be respectful of your time.

And I see that that’s running out. Unfortunately, here’s the thing, though, I ask every guest this when we kind of wrap up. I say, you know, if I got struck with amnesia tomorrow and could remember we talked about and somebody came to you and said well what was that? What was the podcast about what was what was that conversation all about? How would you summarize that for them and I want 17 different directions? It’s a harder one. I think that if I really had summarized at all it’s that building Equitable products. Processes and systems is a painstaking process.

Is that has to address decades if not centuries of iniquities and systems built to the to operate exactly as they do today. So be willing to be patient, be uncomfortable, but also actionable like patients doesn’t mean in action. It just means that it won’t happen tomorrow, but it still must happen. And so we have to be able to take action continue to take action and just have the wherewithal to do it for the tenacity. I should say very well said.

I love that. Awesome. Like I said, I am going to be processing and chewing on a lot of what you shared in our chat for a while. And I know for sure that I could do this for several more hours, but we do need to wrap it up. I’m curious though is, is there anything that you want to share with folks that we didn’t get a chance to talk about or address in the chat so far? Now, I think this is great, you know, I think like part 2 of navigating whiteness that article should be out, hopefully, but by the end of April, and then I’m working on releasing.

Part 3 in May, that will be directly to my medium versus through Facebook design, which all of them will be posting my Medium as well. You can just literally Google Timothy Bartlett ins and I’m always there on everything, but I think that will be interesting because it’s really around the ethics of design and how design is connected to Behavioral Science and how we can take some of those ethical Frameworks and connect them into the work. We do as a way to really think about like how do we start to build more equal products even?

Ethics perspective before we even get into the actual work itself. Awesome. Yeah. Well, you know, the like I said, the the one talk that you gave is already out there, the one article, he wrote is already out there will have links to those in the show notes folks will have them. I think by the time that this releases you very well, might have part 2 already out. What? Have a link to that, too? If that’s the case. Yeah, and I just got to say Timothy, thank you again for taking the time. This is really awesome. I know the folks who listen to our show will have taken a lot away from this. I certainly have thank you. All right, we’ll see you next time.

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Unnamed Note

This is the Aurelius podcast episode 51 with Timothy Bard Levin’s. I’m Zach Naylor co-founder at Aurelius and your host for the Aurelius podcast, where we discuss, all things, ux, research and product. In this episode, we have Timothy bar, Levin’s a product design manager at Facebook. He’s a product design, leader and diversity equity, and inclusion specialist involved in organizational culture. Timothy is also a co-founder of and design whose mission is to cultivate and activate black Latin X in it.

Indigenous designers by providing tools resources and training to support them on their creative Journey. Timothy and I had a very deep conversation about diversity and inclusion in the world of design and ux, particularly in tech companies, and culture, it’s very clear. He’s an expert and deep thinker about how we can create a more Equitable work, culture and World in general. This conversation is so important for several reasons. First Timothy has first-hand experience real lived experience.

With the gray in last year’s antenna Carol who is also one of my best friends so we found it and design together is Imagine company but it started as a fellowship program where we focus on emerging creatives black like a Latin accent indigenous folks who just need additional access to people to mentorship to growth opportunities. To all the things we never had access to what we were growing up because of, you know, having the lack of role models.

Soz of the Aurelius podcast. Anywhere you listen to podcasts, like iTunes Spotify and more stay up to date with new episodes come out by signing up for email updates on our website.