iGIANT Seal of Approval Launched!

I’m happy to announce that we have launched the iGIANT Seal of Approval. As part of a team within the iGIANT®’s Design Advisory Council, I’ve (we’ve!) been working on developing a Seal of Approval program that enables organizations to self-evaluate design processes using 1 of 3 selected methodologies:

• Empirical Studies by Gender of Sex

• The GenderMag Method

• The Williams Design Process Recommendations

We spent a good part of the second half of 2019 designing and piloting this program and are excited to now have launched!

The Seal of Approval has 5 levels that indicate how extensively an organization and/or its divisions have integrated gender/sex-inclusivity into their operating practice.

Kudos and gratitude to the early adopters, who went through this approval process with us and gave us valuable feedback throughout. To date, we have focused our launch primarily on IT organizations and plan to expand out to health, transportation and other sectors.

• The GenderMag Project – congratulations to our very first Level 5 Hall of Famer!

• HazAdapt (Level 3)

• Revel (Level 1)

• BootUp PD (Level 1)

• Wonder Workshop (Level 1)

If you know me, you know that I spend much of my professional and personal time in activities that seem to be very male-dominated (tech, aviation, extreme environments, etc.). As a result, I frequently run into examples of products and processes where the “default” (seemingly neutral) design seems to be more slanted toward being optimized for men rather than being inclusive or specific. This happens even when the products / technologies are used by both men and women. As a result, I have come to really appreciate iGIANT®’s work to make technology design and policy more inclusive. See also my earlier post about the iGIANT AI Summit I co-hosted in San Francisco.