Online Workshop hosted by: Genevieve Fry, Business Development Director, Fjord Copenhagen Katrine Rau, Group Director, Fjord Copenhagen

1. Service Design Global Conference 2020
Inclusion by Design
Hosted by:
Genevieve Fry, Business Development Director, Fjord Copenhagen
Katrine Rau, Group Director, Fjord Copenhagen
Summary:
COVID-19 unmasked some dark corners of humanity and shed light on lingering inequalities.
We are seeing the effects of our collective unconsciousness around racism, financial
inequality and climate change. As designers, we try to make the invisible visible, and the
practice of design is increasingly visible across organisations and industries.
Our goal for the workshop was not to provide the answers to this very complex problem,
but to inspire and facilitate an honest conversation about our strengths, our challenges and
our shortcomings - as humans and as designers.
We wanted to ask ourselves and the participants one central question: How can we leverage
our own visibility to maximize inclusion – to consciously surface and address the hidden
realities of the un-seen and un-heard – in our own organizations?
In order to do so, we took participants through 4 activities in a collaborative manner using
Mural. The first step was to think about a past project and identify a point in time during the
design process – pre-project, project or post-project – where the participant had
experienced or witnessed bias. Examples included narrow data in the design research phase,
staffing processes not allowing for diverse teams, “average customer” bias, and technology
or software creating a barrier for inclusion.
After they had identified their area of focus, we moved on to the second activity, where
participants each filled in a card outlining their thoughts on what activities, tools or
conversations could have helped reduce the bias at their chosen stage of the design process.
Once completed, participants shared their thoughts back to the group and we had a brief
discussion around the different dilemmas raised.
For the third and final activity, we asked participants to revisit their previous card, but this
time rethink the challenge and potential response across all levels of influence – so for
example, what can you do as an individual in the given situation? What can the team, the
client, the leadership or the company do, to prevent or solve the situation and avoid bias?
This last activity allowed us to get very specific on how to solve challenges around bias, and
how to involve and influence our wider network and teams. We finished the session with an
in-depth discussion on some of the challenges and potential solutions. There were many
brilliant ideas, but overall the key take-away was that in order to create change we must all

2. have the courage to call out our own or others’ biases when we see or experience them. For
that to happen, it is vital that companies and leaders actively create a safe space for calling
out bias, for providing constructive feedback, and for teams to continually have this topic
top of mind. Creating strong processes and structures for identifying and talking about bias
could be one solution to this. Creating a common understanding and a comfortable and safe
space will help bring issues around bias into the light.