Rosenverse

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

Beyond Methods and Diversity: The Roots of Inclusion
Gold
Tuesday, March 26, 2024 • Advancing Research 2024
Share the love for this talk
Beyond Methods and Diversity: The Roots of Inclusion
Speakers: Victor Udoewa
Link:

Summary

Most efforts at advancing research to be more inclusive focus on methods or methodologies or participation. Though helpful, those efforts have unfortunately not been sufficient for inclusion and we continue to be constrained by stronger forces which go to the root of what research means and the definition of inclusion. To be fully unconstrained and reach true inclusion we must learn to let go. Do we have the ability to do that? Let's talk about that. Join us for a half-hour of becoming undone, joyfully.

Key Insights

  • Diversity in research teams does not inherently guarantee inclusivity or counter systemic oppression.

  • Awareness of power and identity positionality often leads to feeling stuck without clear action steps.

  • Our ways of being deeply shape our epistemologies and methodologies in research.

  • Colonial Western ways of being emphasize objectification and individualism, limiting emancipatory knowledge production.

  • Indigenous knowledge systems, like those of the iBio people, view knowledge as relational and emergent from relationships.

  • Songs and oral traditions can serve as valid research methodologies tied to indigenous ways of knowing.

  • Systems of value influence which knowledge is considered legitimate or beneficial, often marginalizing community knowledge.

  • Immigrant communities bring preserved ways of being that produce measurable health and social benefits.

  • Positive deviance in communities reveals untapped local wisdom that can guide effective interventions.

  • Radical participatory research requires researchers to relinquish control and let communities define methods based on their own ways of being.

Notable Quotes

"If diversity alone made research inclusive, then police could never be anti-black because they include black officers."

"Whiteness isn’t about color; people of all colors can reinforce white supremacy."

"Awareness leads to feeling stuck because we don’t know what to do or don’t feel empowered to act."

"Our ways of being are roots that grow into ways of knowing, doing, and methods, all nourished by systems of value."

"In Western modernity, if something is not an object, it is not real research or real knowledge."

"For the iBio people, knowledge is relational, not objectified, emerging from relationships like songs."

"Songs become methodologies—the way you identify who is at the door is through the song they sing."

"Colonial ways of being, knowing, and valuing will never produce emancipatory methodologies."

"Community-rooted wisdom like the Mexican 'guana' practice reduces postpartum depression without traditional research."

"Will you learn to let go? Better yet, will you let go?"

Ask the Rosenbot
Miles Orkin
Creativity and Culture
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
Nathan Shedroff
Double Your Mileage: Use Your Research Strategically
2020 • Advancing Research 2020
Gold
Lena Shenkarenko
Collaborative Wireframing for Creating Team Alignment and Shipping Better Products
2020 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold
Angelos Arnis
State of DesignOps: Learnings from the 2021 Global Report
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Giff Constable
Financial fluency for product leaders: AMA with Giff Constable
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Maria Giudice
Becoming a Changemaker by Leading with Design
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Harry Max
Prioritization for Leaders (2nd of 3 seminars)
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Joel Branch
Humanizing AI: Filling the Gaps with Multi-faceted Research
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Julie Norvaisas
Back to basics, or start from scratch?
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold
Catherine Blizzard
Using Integrated Insight to Drive Growth
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Chris Govias
Perspectives on Civic Design
2021 • Civic Design Community
Jane Davis
Strategic Shifts and Innovations in User Research: Navigating Challenges and Opportunities
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold
Chris Geison
Theme Two Intro
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Prayag Narula
HCI 2.0: Humanity Deserves the Attention that UX Research has to Offer
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Laurent Christoph
Scale the impact of DesignOps in 3D: Diligence, Decision, Discipline
2025 • DesignOps Community
Vasileios Xanthopoulos
A Top-Down and Bottom-Up Approach to User-Centric Maturity at Scale
2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Gold

More Videos

Mackenzie Guinon

"Not everyone can become a great UX researcher, but a great UX researcher can come from anywhere."

Mackenzie Guinon

M.C. Escher’s UX Research Career Ladder

March 9, 2022

Gabriela Barneva

"Leadership buy-in is critical to champion inclusive design and drive product innovation and culture change."

Gabriela Barneva

Operationalizing Inclusive Design in Service Design

November 20, 2025

Sarah Rink

"It really pays off to prepare way more for remote than for in-person research."

Sarah Rink

Remote User Research: Dos and Don'ts from the Virtual Field

June 11, 2020

Maria Skaaden

"Google Design Sprint is the best inception strategy I know for design thinking."

Maria Skaaden

Continuous Design: One eye on the horizon and the other on the next wave

November 8, 2018

Taylor Jennings

"If we wanted to scale and continue to grow, we were going to need something to help us."

Taylor Jennings Joe Nelson Alex Knoll

Repository Retrospective: Learnings from Introducing a Central Place for UX Research

March 9, 2022

Jorge Arango

"Use clear and obvious terms in taxonomies—unusual acronyms won’t make sense to GPT or others."

Jorge Arango

[Demo] How to re-categorize content at scale using LLMs

June 5, 2024

Kristin Taylor

"Give teams permission to think about the whole service and solve the problem holistically."

Kristin Taylor

Building Bridges Across Organizational Silos

November 18, 2022

Anna Avrekh

"The transition from hands-on research to managing is a big mind shift where outcomes become more intangible."

Anna Avrekh Dr. John Pagonis Klara Pelcl Sina Schreiber

Expert Panel: Leading in and with Research

March 10, 2022

Ryan Matthew

"Annotate in Figma dev mode lets you provide accessibility details that AI models will implement automatically."

Ryan Matthew Alex Kurchev

Bridging Design and Code: AI-Powered Design System Integration

September 11, 2025