Subtitled “Expand Your Market with Design Practices from Google’s Product Inclusion Team”, Building For Everyone by Annie Jean-Baptiste is an excellent, valuable and thoroughly worthwhile addition to the technical library of anyone involved in digital product design and development. There are a number of reasons for this, some of which are alluded to in that subtitle.
One is that this book offers a remarkable and rare deep insight into how a huge global corporation focused on digital products operates. At the time of publication in 2020, Annie was the Global Head of Product Inclusion at Google. Having led programs related to diversity talent management and career development in Google’s technical product areas, in 2018 she founded the framework for product inclusion at the search giant. These days, her job title has evolved to Director, Products for All at Google. This is someone who has been a Google insider for a long time, understands both the company and the importance of inclusion, and has risen through the ranks by implementing inclusive policies that have benefited Google.
A key phrase in the subtitle is also “Expand Your Market”. A fundamental tenet of the book is that by adopting inclusive product design practices, it’s possible to “do well and do good”. Building For Everyone is a cogent and convincing argument for both the business case and the human case for inclusion. This is something that’s familiar to those of us who work in digital accessibility. It’s not enough to present a moral argument for inclusion because it’s the right thing to do, we have to convince the boss that it’s good for business.
The book has a much broader remit than just accessibility for people with disabilities, though. Annie is approaching inclusion from the perspective of all under-represented sections of the global community, based on race, ethnicity, sex, gender, age, economic status, culture, and sexual orientation – as well as physical, sensory, cognitive, and psychosocial abilities. There is less reference to legislative requirements and conformance demands than in most texts about accessibility and disability, which is something I found both sensible and inspiring. The arguments put forward are based on serving the largest market possible as a matter of pragmatism as well as principle. Even though the book was published six years ago, relying on market forces may well present a way of counteracting the current abandonment of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) regulations in the US and mirrored in many other countries. Market forces can over-rule enforcement rules.
Building For Everyone focuses on practical advice on how to approach this, with clear guidance on research, principles, objectives and key results (OKR), product development processes from ideation to marketing, and getting buy-in and support from ground level team members to senior management. The book is peppered with guidelines, checklists, examples, summaries, and catchy slogans to crystallise concepts: “People, Process, Products (the 3 Ps)”. At all times, understanding product users and user experience are centred as the key to successful and productive inclusion.
There’s a strong emphasis on research, collaboration, and documentation, but any potential dryness in the text is leavened by both the author’s engaging and very personalised writing style and the many breakout boxes quoting colleagues and mentors she’s encountered and referenced along the way. It was especially interesting to hear from both very senior management and people who had moved on from Google to start their own ventures. This makes the book neither overly academic nor crassly commercial in nature, just very pragmatic and informed by personal experience – and a damned good read.
Naturally, I read Building For Everyone through the lens of my own work in trying to make the digital world accessible to people with disabilities, but it was good to broaden and deepen my perspective into thinking about other under-represented people facing product barriers, not least their intersectional nature. All in all, a terrific book – highly recommended.
