Designing for Diversity, Equity, & Inclusivity

Dr Diana Albarrán González

Taking an inclusive approach to CX design is more than just creating products that are accessible. It’s about embracing cultural diversity in both processes and outcomes, and actively avoiding cultural appropriation that can unintentionally exclude or stereotype.

Many of us have entered the CX design field from customer service, marketing, sales, research, UX or product design, or business strategy. These roles often come with an industrialised and linear approach, meaning our processes can be centred around deadlines, efficiency and productivity.

But at the heart of every experience is a human being, with an identity, a culture, and a history. Designing with inclusivity is about creating experiences that are co-designed with communities and collaboration that creates outcomes that feel authentic, respectful, and deeply connected.

At our upcoming Craft Conversation, Dr Diana Albarrán González will explore beyond conventional design thinking and discuss her expertise on how nurturing and evolving design practice embraces diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).

Real Collaboration vs Token Collaboration

In her work, Diana challenges the conventional design mindset, emphasising the importance of ethical collaboration with indigenous people to avoid cultural appropriation, power imbalance, and recognition of indigenous knowledge and contribution.

She advocates for a transformative approach to design that respects and uplifts marginalised voices and communities. She critiques the Eurocentric approach where we borrow from cultural aesthetics while ignoring the histories, knowledge systems, and lived realities behind them.

In business, that might look like an organisation celebrating diversity in its marketing, while overlooking how inclusive or equitable their actual services are. For example, from a New Zealand context, this could be running a marketing campaign for Matariki without consulting with Māori, or forgetting to acknowledge te ao Māori's contribution in an award-winning project. 

It’s not about using cultural differences to enrich your design practices; it’s about centring your processes around diverse voices and ensuring equity in perspectives and attribution to shape the outcome.

The Threads of Equity

“The communities taught me other ways of seeing, feeling, and doing design.” – Quiroz Flores.

Diana believes that creativity and design collaboration (co-design) can improve people’s mindsets, communities and businesses. Her PhD research focused on Decolonising Design in collaboration with Indigenous (Mayan) communities and ethical-sustainable consumption.

She worked collaboratively with Mayan weavers in Chiapa, Mexico, using loom weaving as a methodology to create a more ethical and community-centred design approach, with the goal of dismantling Western-based design practices that often profit from indigenous communities without proper compensation or acknowledgement.

She collaborated with weavers to understand their approach and used a Mayan backstrap loom as a guiding metaphor and methodology for her research, drawing on indigenous frameworks and philosophies with the aim of contributing to the collective well-being of the artisanal communities.

Diana’s research emphasises the importance of recognising indigenous knowledge and cultural contexts in design processes, and provides guidelines for ethical collaboration.

She advocates for participatory design methods that respect and empower the creator and qualities that make a customer’s experience more meaningful, such as valuing customer stories, giving space for nuance, and co-creating solutions with communities rather than for them.

Co-Designing Connection

Diana’s research reminds us that connection takes time. It requires respect and reciprocity. It reminds us that we can either serve to reinforce existing inequalities or help to shift them.

Indigenous cultures often tell stories through weaving, language, and imagery. Just as artisans must be recognised as co-designers (not just producers), customers should be included in the discovery, testing, and decision-making stages of CX.

Equity means redistributing focus and resources to those who are often left out. Even something as simple as how you gather customer information should be respectful of the customs and the people you’re engaging with.

Join the Conversation

Dr. Diana Albarrán González will be sharing more about these ideas at our upcoming Craft Conversation event next week. Join us as we explore how design can be a force for equity, inclusion, and connection.

Craft Conversation with Dr Diana Albarrán González