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
Steve Portigal
Discussion
2015 • Enterprise UX 2015
Gold
Alberto Ferreira
Making it Count: Developing a custom digital metric framework that works
2021 • QuantQual Interest Group
Erin Weigel
Get Your Whole Team Testing to Design for Impact
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Cennydd Bowles
Exit Interview #2: Rediscovering the ethical heart of design
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Smitha Papolu
Theme 3 Discussion
2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Gold
Josh Clark
Sentient Design, AI, and the Radically Adaptive Experience (1st of 3 seminars)
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Bria Alexander
Day 1 Panel: Up to the Minute: The latest in AI’s impact on UX
2025 • Designing with AI 2025
Gold
Maria Skaaden
Panel Discussion: Methodologies and Work Environments
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
Jim Kalbach
Jazz Improvisation as a Model for Team Collaboration
2019 • Enterprise Experience 2019
Gold
Libby Maurer
Treating Diversity & Inclusion in Hiring as a Design Problem
2019 • Enterprise Community
Niko Laitinen
Adaptable Org Design for Resilient Times
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Charlotte Vorbeck
Pipeline to Civic Design
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Chris Chapo
Data Science and Design: A Tale of Two Tribes
2015 • Enterprise UX 2015
Gold
Jane Reid
Self-care in User Research
2020 • Advancing Research Community
JP Allen
Navigating the UX Tool Landscape
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Amy Evans
How to Create Change
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold

More Videos

Sarah Brooks

"People implementing policy see the problems with the policy long before anyone else does."

Sarah Brooks Jennifer Pahlka

Fireside chat with Sarah Brooks and Jen Pahlka

October 21, 2021

Samuel Proulx

"I kind of use headings to get an overview of what's on a page, like a table of contents."

Samuel Proulx Laur Baek

Inclusive Research: Debunking Myths and Getting Started

March 12, 2025

Dane DeSutter

"Four me gestures happen in that personal gesture space and serve as thinking tools for the speaker."

Dane DeSutter Stephanie Scopelitis

What co-speech gestures reveal about users’ thinking during interviews

June 30, 2023

Sarah Fathallah

"Arnstein’s ladder reduces participation to delegating decision-making power, ignoring goals like safety, well-being, and satisfaction."

Sarah Fathallah

A Typology of Participation in Participatory Research

March 28, 2023

Toby Haug

"The consolidated view is really the invitation in to help get people excited and also help them see that we've created documentation that didn't exist previously."

Toby Haug

Discussion

June 9, 2017

Tatyana Mamut

"Everyone has a different perspective and partial knowledge, and all are right—but that creates silos."

Tatyana Mamut

Opening Keynote: Breaking Conway's Law--or How to Work Differently and Not Ship Your Org Chart

June 3, 2019

Trisha Terhar

"Give non-researchers some applause when they run a test even if it's not perfect, then help them do it differently next time."

Trisha Terhar

Empathizing with the Empowered: Non-Researcher Responses to Democratization

March 10, 2022

Lavrans Løvlie

"Europe has leaned more into public sector service design work, which impacts the kinds of metrics and approaches seen in the book."

Lavrans Løvlie Ben Reason

Ask me anything – Authors of Service Design: From Insight to Implementation

November 19, 2025

Sharon Bautista

"It's commonplace for at least two browsers to be available because some critical web-based tools work on some browsers and not on others."

Sharon Bautista

Time to Make the Donuts: How User Research Helped Bridge Disparate Teams

January 8, 2024