As we go into the new year, I wanted to give a heads up as to a hiatus on any future speaking engagements. Given that I do all of these pro bono (completely unpaid) and they take a lot of time and effort, I am unable to do any more at this time. I have just changed positions and my new one is much more demanding than my last, which leaves me no free time at the moment to engage in any extra work. Thus, I will have to forgo any new ones for the foreseeable future while I focus on getting settled at the new gig.
That said, I will hopefully be updating this blog with all of my presentations from the last 18 months so that the content (including commentary) is accessible to everyone. Since I give all of these talks for free and I do all of the work myself, this will be me giving back to the design and research community. Once they are posted, feel free to share! Side note: I can’t guarantee when they will be posted as this is always a hectic time of year for a family of 5. If there is something specific you’re looking for before I post it, please reach out to me.
Considering blog updates, I’ll continue to post about research including part two of the Breakdown of a User Research Project as I have time. Beyond that, the posts may be few and far between. If you are a college student/new to industry person looking for mentorship, please feel free to use my contact form (don’t email me directly as it will likely end up in junk). I am always happy to help people out and of course there is no cost to that. We only excel as a community by lifting each other up and helping others along the way. I am happy to do what I can to promote design and research as much as possible and there is never any charge to do so.
If we don’t chat before the end of the year, here’s to a great 2020!
So, a lot has happened since my last post. The most important of which is that I have changed jobs and have moved out of the tech space and into the hospitality one as a Director of Experience Design Research. I am looking forward to lots of new, beautiful, and exciting challenges ahead working in a space I’ve never been a part of before.
That said, if you want to see something I worked on while I worked in the blockchain space, check out this Business Insider article on the work my team and I did for Coca-Cola. I was the design consultant that led the research/design thinking portions of the project and I did the designs and prototyping for the application we created that pulled data directly from the ledger for reporting insights.
DFW Beyond: November 18th 2019 in Plano, Texas
In addition to that, if you missed my talk on Inclusive Design at Big Design I will be giving it again at DFW Beyond this coming Monday November 18th at 1:45 pm.
If you can’t attend, or you attended in September and are still waiting, my slides will be posted either late next week or just after Thanksgiving. I appreciate your patience!
Ahead of the conference, I want to give shout out to the three women who helped contribute to my presentation on Inclusive Design for Big Design this coming weekend. As a fully-abled person, I know that my experience and understanding is minimal when it comes to the needs, experiences, thoughts, behaviors, and beliefs of people who have to navigate a world very different from mine. With that in mind, I reached out to see if any people who were differently-abled had a story they wanted to share to help show how powerful inclusive design can be. This resulted in three interviews with three amazing women all doing what they can to help inform the rest of us about what it is like to live in a world with, stealing the phrase from Kat Holmes, mismatched experiences.
Lauren Taylor and her dog Buchanan
Lauren Taylor – Ms. Wheelchair Texas 2019
Lauren was referred to me through Facebook via a mutual friend. She is a master’s student in the UNT – Department of Rehabilitation & Health Services rehabilitation counseling program and is studying to receive her license as a certified counselor. She wants to specialize in physical disabilities. Lauren was diagnosed with Congenital Muscular Dystrophy at the age of one and has been in a power chair since the age of three. In her spare time, she volunteers with Canine Companions for Independence alongside her service dog, Buchanan, by raising awareness about the necessity of service dogs and educating others on service dog fraud. Lauren works closely with UNT to make it more universally designed for all students. Her work with Classroom Support Services has enabled her to personally create desks for fixed seating classrooms that are inclusive to every student and are permanently installed, rather than a temporary and separate accommodation. She currently works at REACH, Inc. of Denton as a Youth Transition Specialist, helping youth with disabilities transition into and navigate the adult world. Her platform is Universal Design for Inclusion because of her passion to create a barrier free world where people with and without disabilities can coexist with ease. She hopes to bring the concept of universal design across Texas to businesses, schools and communities to create environments of equal benefit to all members of society. (src)
She provides a great introduction to herself and her platform in this video. Please, if you have a chance, take a look!
Svetlana Kouznetsova
Svetlana Kouznetsova
I met Svetlana back in 2012 at an Information Architecture conference in New Orleans. I found her to be charming and funny and really enjoyed the little bit of time we were able to hang out. She is an author, a speaker, and a consultant as well as the founder of Audio Accessibility, a captioning and communication access consulting firm. She wrote a book on captioning as an art form, which you can find here. She also hosted her own TEDx talk on the same topic where she explains that being inclusive accessible is not only good for people, but it is is also good for business.
Ainslee is a fellow anthropologist who lives in Australia that I have known for about a decade. She uses her anthropology background to consult with businesses on accessibility.
In her own words “[h]aving a lived experience of disability gives me an insight into the issues faced by people with a disability. It also gives me an insight in to some of the problems faced by disability service providers and businesses outside of the sector, in providing appropriate services. As an Anthropologist, I have the tools available to provide disability service providers, and other businesses that wish to utilise my services, access to consumer insights that will not only help improve services but will strengthen relationships between businesses, both within and outside of the disability sector, and consumers.”
She is also a power lifter who jokes that she “skipped leg day 1 too many times”.
Thank you to all of you!
I feel honored and privileged that you all took the time to work with me on this. I learned a lot from all of you and really appreciate all that you do.
I am a presenter at the Big Design conference next month in Dallas where I will be doing a presentation on Inclusive Design beyond Accessibility. There just so happens to be another talk on Inclusive design at the same conference, so I am changing my tactics a bit from presenting research I’ve done on my own to reaching out to the masses to gather stories of people affected by exclusive design that the general public has no knowledge of, is not affected by, or completely ignores either out of ignorance or inconvenience.
Inclusive Design Presentation, Saturday, September 21st at 4pm at Gilley’s in Dallas, Texas
As an anthropologist and a designer, I feel this particular intersection of people and design is a perfect fit for anthropological work. I am interested in learning more about people’s experiences around exclusive design concerning cognitive, emotional, mental, physical, environmental, economic and financial, as well as gender and race (and any combination). The exclusion can be either physical or digital (or a combination). All exclusive design is important to me. I am also interested in learning about inclusive design that has greatly affected people or even design that came close or tried to be inclusive but missed the mark.
To that end, I am currently recruiting people to share their stories. If you would like to share your story, please contact me. At the moment, I am doing email interviews but I am open to communicating in what ever way is easiest for you. Please note that any information you share with me will be data I will potentially share in my presentation. You can choose to remain anonymous or attach your name and image, what ever is most comfortable for you. As a note, there is no compensation associated with this research. However, if I use your stories, I will attribute you in anyway you see fit and you will receive access to my presentation to share as you wish.
All of my research needs to be completed by September 14th. So please reach out to me as soon as possible. I look forward to hearing from you!
Just a quick update to inform those who follow me due to my work on Fedora. A version of my masters thesis will be presented in Brazil (via video) on July 5th at the International Free Software Workshop.
You can find more information here: http://softwarelivre.org/wsl I’m in Session 4.
You can find my full paper as submitted here: http://tux.gseis.ucla.edu/WSL2013_papers/Harrelson-fedora03.pdf
There may be edits to this paper as a result of this workshop.
More to come!
Edit: You can now cite my Fedora research using this APA citation
Harrelson Hubbard, D. (2013, July). An Exploration of Fedora’s Online Open Source Development Community. Paper presented at the Free Software Workshop, FISL, Porto Alegre, Brazil. Retrieved from http://softwarelivre.org/wsl/blog/wsl-2013-schedule
