Lara Portman  
Hi, T hank you for being here.

Lara Portman  
I'm Lara and I want to talk about the impact of our work as information architects. And in particular, I want to talk about how our own background affects the work that we do, and how it might sometimes cause negative impact without us even being aware of it. Because I believe that while there have been great efforts in the design industry to address inequality recently, we're often looking at others but not at ourselves.

Lara Portman  
And so with this talk, I invite all of us to take a look in the mirror and to consider the ways in which we often unthinkingly and unknowingly recreate social power structures through our work. And because I don't want to just criticize what we're doing and make big claims about what one ought to do. Ideally, you I would also try to offer something that we can use as a starting point for understanding our own privilege, assessing how it impacts our work, and eventually find ways to change and alleviate negative impact that we might call. And I will use myself, my own mistakes and the lessons that I've learned from them as an example. So, in many ways, this will also be a rather personal talk. But let's start at the beginning. What do I even mean when I put up these three words, language, structure, and privilege? Let's start with the first to language and structure. As information architects we deal in structuring or categorizing information and using language to give meaning to the categories we create. This quite literally shapes the world around us. The categories we create determine what will happen when People use a design that we've contributed to. And I have a very simple but concrete example of this from my own work to illustrate how especially choices in language can change how people perceive something. So to give you some context, in this project, we have an agency, we're working on a public transportation app. Or more specifically, it was about the registration flow for people to set up their Travel Card on their smartphone. And there was this one step in the registration flow, where we ask people to upload a photo of themselves so that we could use that to verify their identity. Now, one decision that we had to take was how we label or what we'd call that photo towards users. And before you Now tell me, well, that's easy. You call it photo right? Let me show you something. If you ask me To show you a photo of myself, I might give you this photo or this one. Or if I'm trying to be funny, maybe even this one. After all, those are all actually photos of me. But they might not work super well for verifying my identity. So we have to find a label that was a bit more precise. And we eventually narrowed it down to two options. Sophie, and possible to the app was in German, and this as you might have already correctly guessed means something like a passport photo.

Lara Portman  
And we try to both these terms and lo and behold, we got quite different results for both of them. So for selfie, we get things like this, you know, selfie And four possible to we'd get in the extreme case, this. Now, I don't want to get into details about which of these is better or worse or if another option all together with a friend better. What I want to show with this is simply, the language that we choose in our work is not just simple words, it changes what happens after it has consequences. And I have another more sinister example of how words matter too. And this is where we get more to the negative impact that I want to talk about. So this time, we were, again as an agency working on a backing. And there was this one screen where we or rather, our client, the bank, had to ask users for permission to store and use their data and I was asked to help improve this library. text that originally read, awesome bank would like to use your data. And my colleague basically came to me and told me, Look, this sounds really scary to me. Can you make it sound less scary? And I did. Here's what I propose instead help us improve.

Lara Portman  
We constantly work on improving our services. But we need your help to know how and why give us an awesome back. by adding a picture, you allow us to access that picture and use it for analysis. Don't allow access, and I provided the following explanations along with my suggestion. Note, we may also want to pay special attention to framing and word choices. For instance, use data Information etc. Now, this is where I think things get problematic because look at what I wrote next. Let's remove any mention of data because of negative connotations. But we shift the focus from data usage to helping with improvement. Essentially, we're very much talking about labeling here again, because in simpler terms, you could summarize this as, look. Let's just not use the label data. Let's be fuzzy around it and work with something like how you use this app. Because giving away my data is scary. But helping improve an app but telling you how I use it. Sure, no problem. And as you can see, this is all done by changing a simple label. It's just language But it can and does have consequences. You know, when I wrote these explanations, I felt pretty clever. I was thinking to myself, wow, look, you've studied critical discourse studies, which is about how language shapes reality. You've studied that. And now you can use. You can use what you've learned to not just analyze and describe how words impact what people do. You can actively shape that you can make, give us your data sound, not scary.

Lara Portman  
I was proud of myself. But that lasted for maybe a day. And the further back that immediate success was, the more I realized the impact by changing a simple label, I was tricking people. into giving away that data. It felt wrong. And I think that's good.

Lara Portman  
So since then I've been meaning to use, what I know about how language shapes reality, to all try and create positive change. And essentially, that's why I'm here today. I'm far from having it all figured out. But I might have a few things that I can share today that could be useful from critical discourse studies, but also just from my own experience of trying to get to grips with this. And with this, I want to turn to the third of these words in my title. privilege.

Lara Portman  
I'm a Privledged person. I'm white. I'm educated. I'm middle class. I'm young I'm able bodied, I'm cisgender attributes that often go unnoticed because they're unmarked, they're considered average or even more problematically normal. And whether I wanted or not these attributes of my identity influenced my work. I mean, with some of them, it's pretty easy to see that if I didn't have them, I probably wouldn't be doing the job that I'm doing today in the first place. But they also influence my day to day work. The example from before shows how that can happen in a very conscious way where I use my educational background, and what I've learned through that to call a certain impact. But even more often, these aspects of my own privilege impact my work in a way that I myself am not even aware of.

Lara Portman  
Because I simply work with what I know Because I assume that everyone else is like me too. Because I to assume that my own experience is the norm. For instance, when I started this job a few years ago, I didn't realize that just because I don't mind clicking flow. So indicating my agenda when signing up to a newsletter, just because I don't mind. That doesn't mean that others have the same experience. And it certainly doesn't mean that I should just copy this without questioning why I'm doing it and if I should be doing it in the first place.

Lara Portman  
Now, I think these obvious examples of gender design are something that many of us are aware of right now. But there are other aspects of privilege and inequality that might be less conscious to us. The way you designs take up and mirror certain societal use, or for instance, age, or race, or social class. There's a study from 1994 by rhetoric and cultural scholars center yourself and Richard self, who back then already talked about the politics of the interface.

Lara Portman  
Looking at standard desktop interfaces, so think windows 95, or, you know, the version before that, looking at that they showed that what too many so called average people might look innocent, was in fact entrenched with what they called ideological and material legacies of racism, sexism, and colonialism. For instance, they show that the metaphors that are used in desktop design are washed With what people and icons of middle and upper class white culture. In fact, the whole metaphor of the desktop is actually based on this. Think about it, who typically sits at a desk? who works at it. A manager, perhaps an executive. Overall, it's much more an upper and a middle class environment than a working class environment. Or think of this icon here. A folder. Where does it come from? What does it make you think of? What profession is it in its physical form, process typically associated with? You might think of a lawyer now. A doctor abroad, perhaps, but probably not, let's say, a construction worker or a florist. There is a connection here between this metaphor and certain procedures, and let's face it, also higher paying jobs. There is a class nature to this. And have you ever questioned these metaphors in our daily work? Change them? There have been cosmetic changes to these icons show, but I don't think we've ever question the metaphor as such. And I don't mean that as an accusation. What I want to point out is simply that some of these assumptions are so deeply embedded in our own experience both immediate and historic, that it can be difficult to become aware of them and resist them. Another example that self and self bring up are keyboard shortcuts are based on English. Think about it, control us, say Ctrl C, copy Ctrl P. Paste. Now, if you speak English, that's super easy to remember. If you don't, well, then it's basically a bunch of random letters that you need to learn by heart. You are by design at a disadvantage.

Lara Portman  
And again, have we ever questioned that? Do we care?

Lara Portman  
I can talk about my own experience here. I speak English as a second language. And I actually don't remember ever having struggled with these shortcuts. But then again, I've got a middle class background went to good I have parents who cared a lot about my education. And I actually started learning English at the age of seven. So it's very likely that I'm simply privileged enough to never have had any issues with these shortcuts.

Lara Portman  
But if I look, for instance, even just on my own parents who learned English much later in life, they know pretty much only the shortcuts Ctrl C, and Ctrl P. Now that just because of the language barrier, I don't think so.

Lara Portman  
But I do think that the language barrier also contributes to it. Now, overall, I think we as design practitioners, have made progress since the 90s. And we are thinking about the way we construct information spaces in a much more critical way. But I believe that we're also still sometimes not To aware of how we often unthinkingly reproduce certain norms. At least, I know that I'm not. And I think there are others who might be struggling with the same. Because the other day, I was trying to find out if my local pharmacy chain carries bone broth. I checked their website and after Well, I found out that Yes, they do. Now, it took a while for me to find it because it was categorized under the concept, women pregnancy. This was the navigational structure, mother and child pregnancy and breastfeeding, postpartum period. So the period after having him birth, that's not entirely obvious. And in many ways, you could say that this is bad information architecture, because It took a while for me. And I really do mean a wall to find what I was looking for. But I want to make the point that it's not just bad. It's also potentially harmful. Because there's something hidden in this navigational structure. In some ways, this navigational structure here says it's a woman's job to take care of children. After all, the top label says, mother and child, not parent and child. And just to be clear, pregnancy was not the only subcategory hit. There was for instance, also a section on just children's medicine in general containing information relevant to really anyone taking care of a child, not even necessarily a parent. But this top level label says, mother and child, mothers, women. Take care of children this navigational structure normalizes one way of living while obscuring many other ones. And I don't want to shame whoever made this either because I said, I do the same. I don't want to, but I myself, so copy certain societal views that are so ingrained in my cultural upbringing that often I don't even realize that they're not some kind of unquestionable.

Lara Portman  
But the work, I as an Information Architect do create distinctions. The categories are create determine what has been possible and impossible, real and unreal, natural and unnatural. And I see it as my responsibility to become aware of how this works, and to act accordingly. Because critique is, I believe, only one step. We critique, we also need to know how to change. And so what I want to try and do in the remainder of this talk is choose a framework that I myself have started to use in order to become more critical of my own work. And framework is actually a bit of a big time. It's, it's more of a heuristic or guiding statement that I use. It goes. Recognize, assess, change. Let me tell you what I mean with this. But first, just to be clear, it's not about doing everything perfect all the time. It's not about ending up in front of this wall of grief, thinking back home, even use the word x anymore. I hope that with these examples of my own work that I'm sharing here, I can show that I myself, don't have it all figured out. I'm constantly learning and adapting But I really think that this is what it's all about. It's about becoming more aware, and choosing to change, step by step. So let's look at this. Recognize, assess, change. With recognize, I really just mean that the first step is recognizing what's going on. You know, the kind of stuff that might have happened in your head when I walked up self and stuff was point about class and the desktop metaphor. It's about starting to see these things. And that's, especially when it comes to your own work really not easy. So, to try my best to do this in my work, I have two simple questions that I asked myself. When I look at my work. Who is addressed and who is not addressed? What can they do? And what can they not Importantly, it is often the second part that who is not addressed and what can they not do that is quite revealing. As people who make things, I believe we're quite often focused on what's there. But as the school scholars will tell us, what we leave out, can and is often equally meaningful. Think of the pharmacy navigation from the fall. It's quite clearly tailored to biological mothers. And because of that excludes, for instance, adoptive parents.

Lara Portman  
The next step, then, is to assess how these things are happening. And again, I have two questions that I use for that. How are other people in other actions excluded, and why are they excluded? So here's about digging deeper into the inequality that we're perhaps creating. With the first of these questions to how I think it's okay to stay rather abstract and really think about how a particular label structure or design in general in an expert's people, so to look at things, decoupled from the concrete, real life project that they're saturated. And the fact that we all have different life experiences will make it easier for someone more difficult for others to assess how our own background might lead us to copy things that we take for granted, but that disadvantage other less privileged groups. And what is I believe helpful in this case, is to go back to the big identity categories that critical scholars often work with, and just ask ourselves. Okay, so what does this design artifact do with regards to gender, race, social costs, age, disability, ethnicity or sexual orientation. And while this is still somewhat high level with the second question, then here, I'm really thinking about the concrete real life context of a specific design artifact. Because let's face it, we're not working in an empty bubble, coming up with grand plans about how one should be doing things without considering business realities is a good step. But it will only get us so far. So this is about really asking, why is this happening? Right now? Right here is the case of my initial example of the banking app. And the question of omitting the label data. There, for instance, I might perhaps have answered this question with Well, our client wants to access or uses data in order to the day make money and they're trying to access the same for free, perhaps without wanting their customers to even really understand what's going on.

Lara Portman  
And after assessing things in such a manner, the last and hardest step is that of change. What should I change? And what can I change? This is the part where we stop theorizing and ask what we should do and how we can make that happen. And I know that's not easy.

Lara Portman  
As long as the spank up example, I myself do stupid things. And truth be told, if I'd realized what I was doing, I'm not sure if back then I would have been brave enough to stand up and say, No, I'm not doing this. I'd like to think that I would out but there's no point in thinking about what might happen. What I can't tell you What I did change, I decided to be more critical about my own work, to not just accept the task, but to ask why. And I shared that with our team, and a text that I titled, self reflection about words manipulation and power, where I wrote I know that smart people are quite able to see through the message and understand that this is plain simply about accessing private data that belongs to them. But I also know that there's quite a lot that's concealed through this new text. There are people who will be fooled by it. I'm not at ease with this text. I know that from an objective perspective, it's good. But I don't believe in tricking people into giving up data.

Lara Portman  
In the end, this boils down to power. We end being the ones who design this app, hold an exercise power through our designs. For my part, I want to use that power consciously. And the next time I encounter such a situation, I want to think about it more critically.

Lara Portman  
I haven't figured out the perfect solution yet. Yes, awesome backers our client. Yes, they pay our bills. But I hope I believe that there's room for critical thinking and criticism in our work.

Lara Portman  
What I'm trying to do by sharing this text is not to build up my own ego or to tell you that it was totally okay that I wrote to see for labels, because this made it all better. What I want to show with this is simply that there is always something you can change, even if it's just to take stocks. It's not about doing everything right and doing it right now. It's about assessing the concrete context in which you're working. And within that context, context asking, what should change ideally? But above all, how do I work towards that? What can I change now? And what can I change now? Because at the end of the day, our work is entirely about us. We're the ones creating things and we cannot pretend that our own background and experience doesn't influence that. And our work should also be about anything but us. We shouldn't just create things that mirror our own, often professionals. The trouble with talking about how our work intersects with privilege, really is that we're all implicated in it. We are privileged, but I believe that what we can do is become aware of how this is the case and act accordingly. We can take a look in the mirror. Yes, it's uncomfortable. But if we want to get the full picture of how our work impacts people, then it is, I think, necessary. Thank you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai