 In this video, you'll learn how you can make your design practice truly more inclusive because even with the best intentions, when you're designing for everyone, you're often excluding some and even harming others in the process. Here's the guest for this episode. Let the show begin. Hi, I'm Jaren and this is the service design show episode 176. Hi, my name is Marc Fontaine and welcome back to the service design show. On this show, we explore what's beneath the surface of service design. What are those hidden and invisible things that make all the difference between success and failure, all to help you design great services that have a positive impact on people, business and our planet? Our guest in this episode is Jaren Miller. Jaren is the service design manager at Headspace, where he works to design a healthier, more equitable and enjoyable world. We've said it often, but it's so important that I'm going to say it again. The average user doesn't exist, but in most projects, you're still designing for the majority, the average user. And that's a problem because that way, you're not only excluding certain groups, you're potentially causing harm. Our guest in this episode, Jaren has seen up close and personal what this approach does to something like the healthcare system in the United States, and it doesn't look pretty. So he's working actively to change it, to make the system more equitable and decrease disparities. In our conversation today, we're going to explore the challenges with our current design practice and which barriers we need to overcome if we want to make it more inclusive. So at the end of this episode, you'll know how you can recognize situations in your own design process where you're potentially excluding people or even causing harm. Next to this, you'll have learned about some practical tips that you can apply in your day to day practice to include the voices of the people who usually are left out and finally get some tips on how you can convince clients to make accessibility and inclusivity a best practice. It's really up to us to drive this forward in our community and advocate for it. That about wraps it up for my introduction. Now it's time to jump into the conversation with Jaren Miller. Welcome to the show, Jaren. Hello, I'm happy to be here. Nice to have you on. We're going to chat about a topic that is I think very dear to your heart. Before we dive in, I always love to do a short intro and get to know you a bit better. The first thing we start with is sort of the professional side. We'll get into the personal side in a second, but maybe it will be awesome if you could start with a short intro. What do you do these days? That is a question I get a lot. What do you do? Because most people don't even know what service design is. I'm sure that's a question you have to answer a lot as well. I am a service design manager at Headspace. We are a mental health and mindfulness company. We have mindfulness based content that people can go on and use whenever they want. Then we also merged with another big company called Ginger to create Headspace Health. They came with therapists and coaches and psychologists and all the kind of more standard true mental health services to help people when they're in need of those. What's wonderful about working at Headspace is we get to figure out what do these things look like together as a more merged company. It's awesome to see service design sort of, it's not emerging, but trickling down into virtually any organization these days. It's almost hard to find an organization that isn't interested in service design and also that Headspace is as well. I was surprised when I saw your profile on LinkedIn and I was like, I need to know more about that. I need to get this guy on the show. I was surprised when they reached out to me when they were hiring. I said, really? Service design there? But yeah, it's great. I think my own career kind of reflects the growth of service design in the US. I started in the government where it's a little bit bigger here. It's a little bit more well known in the government spaces and then also in healthcare and then now it's spreading more into the tech world and the startup world. So that's kind of how my path has been as well. Let's hope this conversation contributes to even more growth of service design in the tech space. We also have a lightning round, five questions that I didn't prepare you for to get to know you as a person, a bit more next to the professional. Just the first thing that comes to your mind, not hard questions. Well, we'll see if they are hard questions, but not complicated questions for sure. Ready? Yeah. All right. First question is if you could recommend one book for us to read, which book would you recommend? I am a bit of a nerd. So my book is going to be the cradle series. It's basically this kid grows from nothing to having superpowers and taking on people that are fighting intergalactic wars and it's a trip. It's a wild ride. Nice. Second question is if you could work from anywhere in the world, what would you like to work for? Great question. That's a more real question nowadays. I have a couple of friends that live in the Bahamas and Jamaica or are from there and so I would choose one of those. What is always in your fridge? What is always in my fridge? I have a kid who's obsessed with ketchup. So ketchup is always in there. Gotta keep it stock. Yeah. All right. What's your hidden talent, which won't be hidden anymore after you share it here? Oh, hidden talent. I'm a serviceable gymnastics coach. My kid is also obsessed with gymnastics and I think I do a pretty good job of coaching her through it. Fifth and final question is a tradition here on the show. Do you recall the first time you sort of learned about service design? Yes, I do. I was graduating from Savannah College of Art and Design, getting a degree in industrial design and I knew it wasn't quite the right fit and on my way out of the door, I saw this brand new thing called service design and I was very, I was elated and very disappointed because I wanted that thing. Awesome. Thank you for sharing this already. Gives us a bit more context. I think now is the right moment to dive into today's topic and one of the questions I have prior to our conversations here is like what is the design challenge? What is the main theme that we want to address and you shared an equitable healthcare system, correct? Yeah. That's the dream. That's the dream. Yeah. Now I'm from the Netherlands. I do this in the Netherlands. You're in the US. We have different cultural backgrounds. I don't know anything about the healthcare system in the US. Maybe we need to start there. What do I and somebody who's listening right now needs to know about this situation? I would say there's two big intersectional things that I tend to focus on in regards to healthcare inequality. My personal draw is on race and culture and ethnicity and how that plays a role in your healthcare and then also how income and class and all that plays a role in your healthcare outcomes as well. And I would say the short thing to know is they're very unequal. The richer you are, the better your outcomes are and the darker your skin, the worse your outcomes are. That's the general trend and there's, I'm sure, fluctuations throughout. But black women are three to four times more likely to die from childbirth and that's kind of the running statistic of the headline statistic of showing those inequalities and interesting enough for that one, it goes across income. That one is regardless of your income. You still have those disparities. I'll be asking a lot of stupid questions and beginner questions again because I don't know the situation there so excuse me but I'll try to make them sound a bit smarter than they probably are. The first thing I'm very curious about is not everybody has a passion to create an equitable healthcare system. Could you describe your story? What made you tick around this topic? That is a great question. Actually, no one's asked me that in quite some time. For me, I grew up in the suburbs of Philly and so I grew up in a middle-class home surrounded by middle-class folks going to a middle-class school and got a great education. And at the same time, most of my friends and family were not middle-class. My family grew up in a lower economic standing and so I was able to see both sides of that. I was able to see what does it look like to have an education over here that's completely different than the education that I'm getting just because my parents were able to move across a different zip code. And I saw how that played out throughout people's lives and how that, you know, you get asthma because you're more exposed to traffic and how does that show up when you're trying to learn in school or when you're trying to excel in athletics. But now you've got asthma because of whatever's happening at home. And I think I've just always been exposed to... I've always known that fundamentally we're all born with advantages and disadvantages. But I saw how the environment really shaped how people were able to become their best selves. And I didn't enjoy it. And so now I worked really hard to try and change it. I did a project where I worked with a company called Tipping Point, which is a nonprofit in the Bay Area in the U.S. And they're focused on eliminating poverty. And the project that I worked on was around low-income, improving kindergarten readiness for low-income parents in East Oakland. And while I was on that project, I learned a whole lot about brain development. I learned a whole lot about trauma. I learned a whole lot about things that combat trauma. So mindfulness is something that combats trauma. Having healthy relationships in your life is something that combats trauma. And I learned about the disparities of healthcare as well. And that project was really transformative for me. I always knew I wanted to work in something that was meaningful to me. So whether it was healthcare or something else that would have stood out. But that project is what really focused me on healthcare specifically and on mental healthcare specifically as well. Because I just learned about it. You really can't one of the things that we look for in kindergarten readiness is just the academic side. But more important is the social-emotional side. And so the key phrase that I always took from that project was you can't learn your ABCs if you're in survival mode. So if you're going through trauma at home or in school or wherever the trauma is happening, it's really hard for you to focus and learn at school. And that happens throughout the rest of our lives. And that has an impact on the rest of our lives. If you're having trauma while your brain is being developed, then that's obviously going to shape things. And so yeah, I've always had a passion for doing things that were meaningful to me. And that project I would say steered me in this particular direction. Now, as you said, there were always inequalities and depending on where you were born, like you sort of benefit or face the consequences of that. With regards to a healthcare system and then the US situation, how did you get to the point where you are today? And the question is coming from the fact that I'm making an assumption that the people who started out thinking about the healthcare system, hopefully didn't intentionally create these inequalities and these disparities, but that we are apparently they emerge like what what is your take on that? I'm less sure that they didn't intentionally create inequalities. I'm not a historian, so I won't speak to how we got here. But I would say a big factor in it is racism. It's something that is just kind of embedded in lots of the organizations and lots of the systems that founded our country. And I think something that I personally something that a lot of times the one I'm learning more about medical history, I'll find that the father of this thing, what someone calls the father of gynecology was extremely racist. So the father of gynecology did experiments on enslaved women. And that's how he learned about gynecology. And I don't, that's a lot to take in. That's that's a lot for me as someone who just happens to be having a passing interest in learning more about healthcare and about supporting birthing people. And what do we do right? And then, okay, let me look into the history of it. And then I find, oh, racism again. It can be tough, honestly, it can be really tough as a black person navigating the system to realize that the system was designed in many ways to keep you out and to keep you oppressed. What what helps in that is that there are more people now that are fighting to remove those biases and remove those those things that are that are designed to oppress you. And I'm happy to count myself as one of them. Can you just to for me to try to understand what people are going through? Like, how do these biases and disparities like manifest themselves? Yeah, so one example is there are myths that black people don't feel pain the same way that white people feel pain. And so there were some studies where they looked at actual results and and people were given lower pain medications than someone who had a similar issue but had different skin color. In particular, there's lots of stories of black women complaining about just extreme pain, you know, specifically around childbirth, and the doctors not really accounting for their needs. Or the more positive stories is that they have they have that same pain and they have a dual or they have a partner or they have someone who's advocating for them to really draw attention to that so that they get the the medication and the the care that they need. But unfortunately, I hear a lot more of the stories of those things being ignored. And so that's one myth that was rooted in again, rooted in enslavement but has now showed up in our in our context today that we you know, we need to work on getting rid of. Yeah, pretty loaded and pretty important, usually important topic. Now, you're you mentioned, you're a service design professional. What is the role of design and service design and design nurse in all of this? For sure. Yeah, we've spent more time talking about historic racism than I intended to, but it's a it's a good topic. I think the way that design comes into play is that often, these things are encoded in in things that we interact with throughout the day and don't even really notice. So one example is color cameras. Color cameras were were developed to pick up kind of lighter skin tones. And so often, black skin tones don't show up very well. And so designers and technologists came in later to figure out how do we change the lighting, how do we change the design of this thing that we all interact with every day, so that it's more equal so that it can actually work for different types of people in different ways. And I think that's a lot of what I do in the day to day, but applied to services. So, for example, if you were looking for a therapist, some things that might be important to you are the training that they have the education, how long they've been providing care, what type of care is it, is it CBT or ACT or those are just different types of therapy. And but for someone like me, one of my main things is I would like someone who can relate to my identity experience. And so I would love a black therapist. There are very few black therapists. If I wanted to be even more specific and say I want a black male therapist, there's even more, even fewer of those. And so those are some structural inequalities that show up in how do we actually get you to that person. But in my day to day, it's also how do I identify what's important to you? And how does that vary based on different things, different factors? It might vary based on your readiness for change. Are you really ready to get into therapy? Or are you just kind of thinking about it? It might vary based on your age. It might vary based on demographics. So for me, I look across all those different demographics and all those different factors and figure out what is important to different folks. So, okay, for this person over here, care matching to them means finding someone who has a shared identity. For this person over here, care matching means finding someone who's going to give them homework because they really, really want actionable takeaways from their care. Which you just described about empathy and trying to understand who you're designing for and catering for that. And that sounds like a best, a good practice every design professional should do. Is it because you maybe have a different perspective or different background or different experience that you see areas where white designers, male designers don't necessarily even aware of? And like, can you have a more diverse and holistic and different perspective on these things? Wrong question. I know, sorry. No, it's a yes. It's a good question. In some ways, yeah, I think being growing up, growing up as a black person in a white dominant society where I grew up, I grew up as an other. And so I'm more aware of the ways that in which I am in the other. And so I think about, okay, it may be here, someone might be standing out because they're more athletic. And the rest of the crowd is very unathletic. Over here, it might be because they're tall and everyone else is short. There's so many different ways for all of us to be othered. Sometimes it's your immigration status. Sometimes it's your size. There's so many different factors. So it's something that everyone can relate to and everyone can identify with. But because I grew up with it, I'm very aware of it. And so I think I might just be more prone to thinking about those factors and thinking about them in different ways. But yeah, every design professional, the one thing that we all know is everyone has different needs. Every designer knows that. Yeah. And the thing you mentioned is maybe because you were in, maybe in multiple ways, part of a minority, you have a different antenna or a different sense for how people might be different. And I think that's a very interesting observation, which we touched upon in other episodes as well. But when you're part of the majority, it's really hard to step outside that. And it's maybe not even that you don't want to, but it's just very hard to understand that reality. Yeah, it also can be terrifying to be honest. It can be terrifying to talk about a topic that you're not familiar with. It can be terrifying to talk about a race is a very terrifying topic to talk about, especially publicly. And so I give myself grace for fears around it. I give other people grace for fears around it. So yeah, I think there's a lot of different things that come into it. You might just not be aware of it or you might be aware of it, but not feel like you're the person that should be talking about it. Or yeah, maybe you don't feel like you know enough. There's a lot of different reasons to try and avoid it. So if we take the current system and say, okay, it's an equal, I think you also mentioned that it actually does harm. There are disparities. What's the alternative or what does success look like? So what is the thing that we're striving that we're working towards? What's the North Star? Lots and lots of smart people disagree. And hopefully I have my answer. I think for me, one thing that's important is the more I learn about health disparities in outcomes, the more I try and look for different in health approaches. So if I can say Black women are three to five, three to four times more likely to have problems in childbirth or Black birthing people in general, then okay, what are we doing specifically for that group? What are we doing specifically to help with that group? Not with taking standard approaches? I think for me, what's important is what you mentioned, healthcare has done harm to many people. And I think a lot of times when we talk about improving inequalities, it's only talked about as an access issue. But I don't need more access to something that's harming me. I need you to fix the thing so that it's not harmful to me and then work on access. And I hear more focus on the access and less focus on changing the system to make sure that it is safe first and welcoming to people. And then let's invite them in. And again, just for me to understand in which ways do you feel or have you probably seen that the system is doing harm to people and communities? There's a lot of examples, unfortunately. One that comes to mind is trans health care. If your provider doesn't believe being trans exists or going into that care environment is harmful to that person, that can be scary, that can lead to direct harm to them. Just to bring it back to mental health care, if you go on to see a therapist and your therapist is telling you that you should pray your gateway, that's terrifying. And that's awful. So I think making sure that we have communities that feel supported in the care that they're getting and feel accepted and welcomed in the environment is really important. Again, I'm just going to reiterate, it's such an important but also feels loaded topic and I'm happy that we're having this conversation and exploring and learning from you. How do you feel that this influences your craft and your practice? What are you trying to do on a day to day to remove that harm and to create more equality within the system? And I can imagine that it might be big things, but it's maybe also very small things. I'm really curious. Yeah, my favorite thing is actually the small things. So because it's just easier to digest. So anytime we're kind of talking about a user story, I try and use a name that is kind of not European centric. So I used one that was David, another one, it's Yacenia or whatever. I try and choose a name that is different than what the standard would be, which is called this person Bob. And I think that's important. I think that's important because we all know who Bob is. Bob is a straight white male who's kind of middle to upper income. Like we know who Bob is. And Bob needs to be designed for two. I love Bob. I know many Bob's. They're great. But I want David to be designed for as well. I want David to feel included. And I think one of the things for design is we talk about kind of one size fits all. And a lot of people grow up knowing that they're not included in that all. If you're too fat, then you're not included when they say one size fits all. If you're a different religion than the group is talking about, then you're not included. There's so many different ways for if you have a disability. And so one of the small ways that I counteract that is by just introducing that small thing of a name change. Yeah. And it's so, you said one size fits all. I'm not sure if I'm seeing that in the design practice as in we're advocating for something like completely different. We're advocating for empathy and trying to understand the needs, desires, fears, behaviors of people and advocating to design for the person. But apparently it's not working well enough. Or is it that designers just haven't trickled into the right areas of the system? Yeah, I don't know. I think we had this industrial kind of revolution where we started to crank out manufacturing lines where it was really trying how do we make the most of these things that look exactly the same that can serve the largest amount of people. And it made sense. It saved money and it got more things out to more people. And I think now we're in a different revolution where we are trying to account for different people's needs and interests. What's the biggest objection you hear when you share this story and this vision and your approach? I would say the biggest objection is avoiding it. Yeah, for the most part, no one wants to be harmful. I'm not going to say in a room, hey, let's do this thing that's less harmful and someone say no to it. I would say in my career in the past, I would say the biggest hurdle is just being the first person to bring it up. And for me, often, I was the youngest in the room. I was the darkest skin in the room. And so for me to have to come from a place of discomfort to say, hey, maybe we can do things a little different, that was really challenging. So for me now as I progress in my career and in my own skill set and in my company, I'm less hesitant to be the one to voice the concern. And I also, I think the industry as a whole is stepping up more. So I'm not the only one in the room saying that. But it's an awkward topic to talk about. And it's hard to know what the right thing to do is. And so I think in general, people try to avoid it and not think about it. It makes things more complicated. It reflects reality in a better sense, but people in general try to avoid things that make things more complicated. Another thing is it can be slower as well. I would say that's another big hurdle is that it's more difficult. You have to go outside of the normal practices that you're already using. So you're having to learn a new thing, you're having to focus. If you're just trying to do research recruiting, it's really easy to, for example, speak to folks that are elderly because they're retired and they have more time. They can talk to you during working hours. They're a really easy group to recruit to interview. Try to talk to a single mom that that's going to be a lot more difficult. Who's working and like, it's just harder to find time for them. And it's harder to do it in a more equitable way. So there's some practical differences where it's just more difficult and more, more slow that come into play as well. But and it's, I think what I mentioned, it's learning a new skill. So as we learn more about accessibility design, that's a different discipline than I learned in school. I didn't learn how to design for accessibility. And so it's a whole new skill set to build as well. Yeah. And I guess as an organization, as a company, you have to be in it for the long game and sort of realize that although it might be slower today, in the long run, you're doing not only the people who are serving as servers, that's going to reflect on you as well. But that takes like courage, that takes perseverance. Yeah, yeah, leadership, that's, that's probably the things a lot of organizations, unfortunately lack. Yeah, that's and that's what's been great for me at Headspaces that I found all of those things. It's been one of these standout places in my career where I have all of that behind me. The leadership wants more of it, they bring it up. They, you know, when I bring it up, they don't feel awkward and try to avoid it. They're, yes, let's, yes, let's do that. Or, you know, they're bringing it to the table themselves. I think the company as a whole, where it's a wellness company, where we're all in it to try and make a better world. And so it's really a supportive environment where it's, it's pretty fantastic that we're all intentional in what we do, and we all bring it in our own different ways and in our own different roles. And I haven't, I haven't had that in most of my, my past companies. I think Headspace is going to get a lot of applications after this episode from the Serbs design community. So if you're hiring, I think, I think you were hiring quite recently. I was, I was hiring an intern. We, we selected one. They're fantastic. Please don't DM me for an internship. I got, I got plenty of those. But yeah, that's actually been a really pleasant surprise is seeing through our application, seeing how service design has grown. Because, like I said, when I graduated, I barely even knew what it was. And now, yeah, we get 200 or 300 applications of people wanting to be an intern. It's really, it's really exciting to see the talent that's out there. If you look back at the work that you've done, and you had to pick one thing that you're most proud of, what's the first thing that comes to your mind? I worked on a project. I'm, I'm not struggling to find the project. I'm struggling to figure out how I can talk about it publicly. I worked on a project where we were specifically focused on how do we create mental health care that's targeted at Black men? And how do we learn more specifically what their interests are, what their needs are, what their hurdles are? And it was, it was really fantastic. And excuse me, it, I thought it would be really interesting to have that be focused on, on my actual demographic. And that was fun, honestly. I can't lie. That was really cool. But what was more cool than that was really just making someone feel seen. So we created a thing and we tested it. And at the end of the test, the person said, you know, this is, this is really amazing. This is, it feels like it's for me. I mean, it's for everybody. But when people say it's made for everybody, usually that doesn't include us. And you know what I mean. And I did know what he mean, what he meant. I've, I've experienced that personally over and over and over again. And it felt so amazing to be able to create something with a team of other folks that helped someone feel seen in that way that I, that I'm, I want to feel seen by the products that I use. I want to feel seen by the services that I use. And it was amazing to be able to create that for someone. It's, thank you for sharing publicly. That's, and we need those inspirations. And in some ways, I don't know how to express this, but sometimes it's, it's a disadvantage for me because I, I don't recall actively seeing services or products where I feel, okay, this isn't designed for me. Like, sure, I don't know if we look at gender, like I, that I can probably name a few services that aren't for me, but I, I don't recall moments where I've been actively on the other side and probably experience the thing that a lot of minorities in general experience. So yeah, that's one thing that might help. Sometimes it can help to think of the inverse, think of, of times when you have feel seen because I think those are the times when it stands out to me. So there was one time I was listening to a podcast and I was just kind of in the car just cruising. I'm old. So I listened to NPR while I'm driving. It's whatever. It's fine. I accept it. It's fine. So I'm used to the normal NPR intro and there was a different one. And they said they were getting into the topic and they said, you know, it all popped off when, and then they went on with the topic. And my ears were popped off. That's how I talk. They didn't say it all began when this thing, you know, they were just talking to me how I talk and how I speak to my friends. And that's when I noticed, oh, these other ones aren't made for me because I noticed that this one is. That's a really good point. Yeah. That's a really good, that's a good exercise. Yeah. Yeah, it's fun. Pay attention to it in your day to day. And I think there's another important lesson in there, which is I love listening to podcasts. I love NPR, even if it's not designed for me. It doesn't, everything doesn't have to be designed for me for to, for me to enjoy it. I can love lots of things that are targeted at a different person. But it's important to have some things that are. And it's, so yeah, of course, this is a spectrum like most of the things will be middle in the middle of the road, like there aren't specifically, like you don't feel especially hurt or seen in those products, services, podcasts, video clips, whatever. But the ones that do that strongly resonate, you can pretty easily identify those. And the opposite is true as well. The ones where you sort of definitely feel excluded after hearing the first few words or seeing the symbols or yeah. Yeah. You know what actually is another good example is there every once in a while, there'll be a new movie coming out and they'll they'll cast someone as black who in a book was white or whatever. And the moment people who are used to feeling included feel excluded, they're they notice it so quick. You made a black mermaid? What? What? Because they're so used to everything having them at the center that they can't imagine. You know, I didn't see lots of black mermaids growing up and I was still able to see myself in these characters. And lots of people will be able to see themselves in a black mermaid. And it'll be beautiful and wonderful and it'll it'll challenge their their assumptions. And yeah, it's gonna be great. So you've been on a very interesting journey that hopefully will continue for a long time. What has this learned you about yourself? I would say my my professional journey has been finding comfort in myself. It's been yeah, it's been a really wonderful journey of feeling comfortable being the one challenging the norms feeling comfortable being the only in the room feeling comfortable venturing into this new world of service design where I didn't really know what it was or what it meant. But I know I kind of want to know more about it. And and yeah, I think it's been a journey to figure out what my own voice is and what I like and what I want to focus on and what I want to bring into the world and finding other people that have similar interests and finding community with it. It's it's been a journey and I'm excited to see where it goes. And when you mentioned like finding your voice, what have you learned about your voice? Like, where have you landed upon today? This is gonna be a good therapy session. Can we go for another hour? I've learned. Yeah, I can say I'm gonna say this publicly too. I've learned that I'm exceptional. And I grew up in an environment where standing out even for good ways did not feel good to me. And so now I'm at a point in my career where I'm I'm standing out in different ways on doing things like this. I'm getting promoted at work. And it feels very strange, honestly, standing out and being exceptional and being being invited into rooms that I didn't even know existed. It's it's been difficult. And so standing in that and kind of owning my own skill, my own talent, my own unique perspective, and owning that I have a voice and that it is important and that it should be shared and that people want it to be shared has has been it's been hard. It's been great. But it's been hard. And so I think the more that I perfect my craft of service design, and the more that I am seen in spaces like this, and the more that I'm talking about these things publicly, the more I have to check myself and say, yes, you should be the one doing that podcast. Yes, you should be the one hiring these folks. And yes, you should be doing this. It's and this this comes back almost in every conversation. But it's the imposter syndrome is right around the corner always and owning your role owning who you are living up to your full potential, like all these things are super scary. But like there is no alternative. Yeah. And for me, it came in embracing that I am an imposter. I'm not supposed to be here. This system is not designed for me to be here. And I'm here anyway, because I'm great. And that feels that feels cool. That feels nice to step into and to recognize. I feel like an imposter because I am and that's okay. And but I'm here. So I will have so many good titles for this episode that will be hard to choose. If we if we sort of extend the trajectory that you're on and this topic of creating an equitable healthcare system in the ideal scenario, where are we in five years? What has happened that isn't here today yet? Well, I would say some very practical things. There are more black, brown, queer, disabled. The list goes on doctors, therapists, nurses. There's just more of us in the industry and in my roles to in service design in the tech field. Everywhere. There's just more of us. So creating a pipeline for more of us to be in the industry. And there's meaningful change in outcomes and meaningful change in approaches to make sure that they I see companies like folks health care that's health care specifically targeted at trans and queer folks. And I want more of that. I want health care to be designed for the people that it's meant to serve and specifically tailoring to those needs. And I want more of that. So that's that's what I would say there's more often five years. More people more groups feel represented and feel hurt, feel seen and less people feel scared, harmed. Yeah. Yeah. And companies are less afraid to talk about it too. Maybe that's the other side. Yeah, it's okay to say I'm designing this for queer people. That is that is great. Fantastic. That doesn't that thing doesn't need to benefit me for it to be a wonderful thing to bring into the world. Yes, please do more. And that's I think the sort of the underlying thing theme that I'm getting out of here is there needs to be a needs to be more diversity in sort of the offers presented to the world that different people have options, right? If you just have one option that is going to be designed for the majority by default, like if you if you are a commercial company that's going to be designed for the people with the most money, where there's the biggest group and you want options, you want diversity and give people the ability to choose what fits them. Yep. That's it. Personalization. That's the that's the ultimate promise of technology. That's what all of the companies like mine talk about is personalization, personalization, personalization. And so, yeah, let's do it. Let's do it all the way. Let's actually tailor it to the needs of the people. If somebody listens to this episode in three or five years, who knows? What do you hope is the one thing that they will take out of this? I hope that they say, wow, I didn't know it was that bad for specifically for the maternal health of people like my wife. I hope they say I hope that's a memory. I hope that statistic is a memory. One other question I have, and we're sort of heading towards the wrap up of our conversation, but I'm assuming that you also have questions. Probably many. What are the questions on your mind right now that maybe the community, the people who are listening to this episode could pitch in, think about, reflect upon? How do we do it better, I guess, is a question. How do we come together in smarter ways? Like I mentioned earlier, for me, finding community amongst designers has been something that's really helped me personally. How do we facilitate that in useful ways? We all have the Slack groups, we have the conferences, there's lots of things going on. For me as an introvert, they don't work that well. It's not something that I don't really want to go to a conference if I'm being honest with myself. How do we build that community in a more natural way? That accounts for the introverts of the world. I want to hang out too, just not as often. Well, not go into that topic, but I have some ideas about community building for introverts, for sure. People who have been following the channel know what I mean. Is there anything that you feel we should have addressed that we haven't touched upon so far? This is not the conversation I intended to have in the most wonderful way. Yeah, it was fantastic. No, I think we went where we went, and it's beautiful. That's how the time process sometimes goes. Thank you for being open. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for being vulnerable. I think these are the stories that we need, that we need to hear rather than the polished, I don't know, perfect examples. Thanks again for being open and coming on and addressing this topic. Thanks for inviting me, and thanks for you being open and vulnerable and asking the questions. I can tell you it takes as much vulnerability to ask the questions as they answer them, so thanks for creating space for it. Do you have a tip for us how to make our design practice more inclusive? Leave a comment down below and let's learn from each other. It was a real privilege to have Jaren here on the show today. If we want to further mature our practice, we need to address its inherent flaws, and intentionally causing harm in excluding people is certainly one of them. Finally, if you enjoyed the conversation, please click the like button if you haven't done so already. This lets me know that we're on the right track by addressing topics like this. My name is Marc Fontaine and I want to thank you for spending a small part of your day with me. It was an absolute honor. Please keep making a positive impact, and I look forward to seeing you very soon in the next video.