Are you looking to integrate inclusive design into your organization’s product design framework? Get the latest insights on product inclusion at Inclusive Design 24, a free, 24-hour, online event that will take place on September 22.

The event will feature talks on inclusive web design, building accessible user experiences, documenting accessibility requirements, and more.

Following the success of last year’s talk, “There is no average person”, Say Yeah CEO Lee Dale will be hosting the following conversations at this year’s conference:

• A Designer’s Guide to Documenting Accessibility with Stéphanie Walter at 20:00 UTC (4:00 pm EST)
• An Inclusive Design Workflow for Teams with Scott Vinkle at 21:00 UTC (5:00 pm EST)

Catch these other great talks

• Design on the Spectrum: Creating a More Inclusive Workplace with Lona Moore at 16:00 UTC (noon EST)
• Beyond the Water’s Edge with Malcom Glenn at 18:00 UTC (2:00 pm EST)
• Performative Equity & Inclusion with Zariah Cameron at 19:00 UTC (3:00 pm EST)
• Building UX research practices for inclusion with Josh Kim and Maureen Barrientos at 23:00 UTC (7:00 pm EST)

View the full schedule

Watch the conference

This event is free, with no registration required. Join the conversation live on the Inclusive 24 YouTube channel. 

Ready to adopt an inclusive design framework that helps grow product access and engagement? 

Learn about our approach to inclusive design and how we can help create delightful experiences for your audience.

Get in touch

The post Inclusive Design 24 Conference, September 22, 2022 appeared first on Say Yeah!.

From November 8-10, we’ll be attending the Toronto Global Forum 2021.

Some of the sessions we’re excited for:

• Moving towards inclusive capitalism: how financial institutions can lead the way, with Guy Cormier
• The future of education in digital economy (panel)
• Redefining a new prosperity (panel)
• The mutual impacts between health and the economy, with Anna Van Poucke and Robert B. Koopman
• Diversity and inclusion encompassing economic opportunities, with Wes Hall

Discover the full program

Register today to get access to this jam-packed event

Tickets are free for virtual-only access. In-person tickets start at $700.

Register here

The post Toronto Global Forum 2021, Redefining a New Prosperity, November 8-10, 2021 appeared first on Say Yeah!.

With a combination of business tips and tricks, as well as sharing successes, this is a must-watch event.

The need for supplier diversity

At Say Yeah, we value working with diverse organizations, suppliers, businesses, and individuals when we work on projects. Working with diverse suppliers is key to building better business relationships that really serve and connect with the wider community. The Indigenous Entrepreneurship Forum offers an opportunity to connect with and learn from Indigenous entrepreneurs and business leaders and explore social procurement and supplier diversity opportunities.

Learn more about our supplier diversity initiatives.

The Indigenous Entrepreneurship Forum program

• A panel discussion with Indigenous-led businesses on the topics of Social Procurement and Indigenous Businesses
• A presentation from ICIE (Indigenous Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship) – Indigenous Incubator and Support for Indigenous Innovation and Entrepreneurship
• An overview of the City of Toronto’s Social Procurement Program

Check out all of these great talks and panels, and connect with Toronto’s Indigenous business leaders and entrepreneurs.

Get all the details and register today!

Get your ticket

The post Indigenous Entrepreneurship Forum, October 26th, 2021 appeared first on Say Yeah!.

Explore topics of activism, the future of tech, lifestyle topics, and more, all tailored towards Black voices in tech.

Some of our picks for talks to watch

• Digital Anthropology: Next-Gen Equitable Inclusion in Consulting, with Lisa Smith of Deloitte
• Unpacking bias in APIs, with team members from Ayden
• Holding the world to ransom: ransomware and the cyber challenges of the future, with ​​Dan Patefield, Oz Alashe, and Dr. Bernard Parsons
• Where TV meets tech, with team members from Sky

We’re looking forward to hearing from all of these expert speakers about their experiences working in and innovating in tech.

Check out the full schedule

Watch the event live

Head over to Swapcard to see the full event. No entry fee required!

Watch the event

-The Say Yeah team

The post Black Tech Fest, October 19th-21st, 2021 appeared first on Say Yeah!.

We’re thrilled to be speaking at the inaugural Magnify: the Inclusive Design and Research conference!

Sure to be a packed lineup with ample inclusivity knowledge building, the conference has been extended over a two-week period to maximize the content and learning opportunities.

Say Yeah CEO Lee Dale will be speaking as part of the Looking Out stream with his talk “There is no average person; why designing with intersectionality in mind is critical”.

And Say Yeah Researcher & Designer Kate Matesic will be a part of the Examining our Everyday stream with her talk “Are co-creation methods really inclusive? How your team can build equity into co-creation sessions”.

These talks aren’t the only ones we’re excited about.

Here are our picks for some other must-catch talks:

• Disabled UX Researcher in a Digital World by Holly Schroeder
• Exploring the past and potential futures of inclusive design by Deborah MacKenzie and Jacqueline Antalik
• Design Research for Social Taboos by Ankita Mirani
• Safe Spaces for Raw Research by Marissa Cummings

Check out the full conference lineup.

Get your ticket!

Buy a ticket on Eventbrite to save your spot at the conference. Tickets start at £10 for students with a standard price of £50, with a pay-what-you-can option in the event you do not have the financial means to register at the standard price. Don’t miss out!

Buy your ticket

We’re looking forward to this multi-day immersion into inclusive design and research with fellow practitioners

Not sure how to get started with an inclusive design process?

From our inclusive public sector work to our insurance, banking, and other private sector work, we continue to develop our inclusive design practice and bring impactful service design and product strategy outcomes to the organizations and communities we work with.

Get in touch

The post Magnify: The Inclusive Design and Research Conference: October 5th-14th, 2021 appeared first on Say Yeah!.

In fact, markets are more diverse than ever and are becoming increasingly so, moving us far from the wishful thinking of having a primary archetype to design for—and the hope that this will reduce product and service development efforts.

When there is no average, no archetype, no shortcut, what then?

The good news is: designing for market diversity helps your bottom line.

That’s because markets have always been inherently complex and traditionally simplistic ways of designing products and services for complex markets has limited their effectiveness.

Once you bring practices to your organization that consider the range of individuals who use your products and services—including recognizing all the intersectional factors that define markets as a series of individuals, not homogeneous archetypes or personas—you begin operating at a level that has a profound impact on both operations and customer experience.

Let’s quantify the bottom-line impact

Designing for the full spectrum of your market affords you a series of benefits. These include:

1. Discovering new market opportunities by connecting with and providing service to previously untapped areas of your market.
2. Improving customer access by removing barriers that limit access to your products, services, and content.
3. Growing engagement and conversions by providing more relevant, usable, and accessible products, services, and content.
4. Reducing the risk of human rights offences by being proactive about understanding accessibility standards, language considerations, and access rights.
5. Reducing the risk of unintentionally alienating parts of your market by being more aware of market expectations and more intentional about serving the full spectrum of your market.
6. Reducing ongoing costs by more efficiently planning and delivering products and services that serve your whole market, without the need for rework and retrofitting.
7. Reducing ongoing effort by starting on a path that makes it easier for everyone to engage with your products, services, and content.

A roadmap for organizational transformation

By avoiding boxing people in by demographics and assumptions through more intentional market definition and user research considerate of the full diversity of your market, you can more deeply understand customer intent, journeys, and behavioural patterns that influence when and how people will use your product or service.

By following an approach to product strategy and service design that is more inclusive of your entire customer base, you have the opportunity to open up market access while reducing risk across your organization.

While this approach may shift your product and service teams away from familiar design and marketing processes by doing away with archetypes and personas, this shift offers a significant opportunity to reshape your organization as an operational and customer experience leader.

Get started with inclusive design

We have established processes across both the public and private sectors for realizing the impact of designing for market diversity across your organization.

As the diversity of the markets you serve continues to grow, there’s no better ROI than inclusive design. Let’s connect to discuss how we can help bring these practices—and their bottom-line benefits—to your organization.

Get in touch

The post How designing for market diversity helps your bottom line appeared first on Say Yeah!.

With 40% of people having brains that work in neurodiverse ways that can impact comprehension, learning, and engagement, understanding how to accommodate neurodiversity is an important part of your product strategy and service design work.

What is neurodiversity?

At its most basic level, neurodiversity describes the differences in how people’s brains work, solve problems, think, and process information. This can include the impact of various neurodiverse conditions like ADHD, Dyslexia, Dyscalculia, and Autism.

In design, all of these ways that people’s brains differ from one another also affect how they will interact and whether they will enjoy using your product or service. Benton et al in “Diversity for Design: A Framework for Involving Neurodiverse Children in the Technology Design Process”, 2014, note that children and people with diverse needs are “at risk of growing frustrated or bored with existing interactive technologies because their needs…are not well understood or identified.”

When designing for a neurodiverse population, consider these factors to minimize frustration with your product or service.

Tactical approaches to accommodating neurodiversity

• Avoid flashing images, excessive animations, and rapid changes to the interface or pictures. These changes can be both distracting and disorienting for people.
• Use highly-readable typefaces, such as sans serif typefaces like Open Sans, to increase readability and clarity (particularly for people with Dyslexia)
• Ensure you show information in a range of different ways to accommodate for different ways of learning. This includes a mix of text, images, video, and audio.

The ROI of inclusive design

As with many accommodations related to what have historically been defined as “edge cases”, planning for neurodiversity affords a series of benefits that include improving your products and services for everyone and reducing long-term development and maintenance costs.

Making products and services work for neurodiverse customers makes it easier for everyone to engage with your product or service. Alternatively, designing without considering neurodiversity risks alienating part of your market.

When 40% of people have brains that work in neurodiverse ways, not considering neurodiversity in your work limits your success and negatively impacts customer experience.

Whether it’s choosing colours that are less distracting to read or look at or avoiding disruptive animations or images, to making more fun, dynamic experiences, changes and designs that build on neurodiverse needs ultimately benefit all users of your product or service.

Let’s get started

Looking to bring inclusive design considerations to your product strategy and service design work?

Get in touch

The post Improving products and services by embracing neurodiversity appeared first on Say Yeah!.

Free to everyone, the event will host over 4000 attendees for talks, fireside chats, recruiting sessions and more.

The conference will focus on creating a welcoming tech space for Black and LatinX tech professionals to get inspired, network, and get connected with new opportunities, as well as enabling companies to level up their inclusive outreach and internal practices.

Full conference details

Talks we’re excited about

• Advanced UX: Managing the Designer and Researcher Relationship: How to Strategize and Build Together with Renee Reid and Harrison Wheeler
• Tech For Creating Social-Economic Impact, with Justin Samuels
• Inclusive Outreach – Where Action Meets Your Diversity Intentions, with Maasha Kah
• The Digital Divide and the Future of Work, with Geoffrey Starks and Kathryn Finney

Sign up for your free spot!

To get access to the four days of talks, networking events, and more, register for free on Eventbrite.

Register now

The post The Black Is Tech conference spotlights Black and LatinX tech professionals: September 22nd-25th, 2020 appeared first on Say Yeah!.