Building for Everyone Lib/E: Expand Your Market with Design Practices from Google's Product Inclusion Team

by Annie Jean-Baptiste, Janina Edwards (Reader)

Establishing diverse and inclusive organizations is an economic imperative for every industry. Any business that isn't reaching a diverse market is missing out on enormous revenue potential and the opportunity to build products that suit their users' core needs. The economic why has been firmly established, but what about the how? How can business leaders adapt to our ever-more-diverse world by capturing market share and building more inclusive products for people of color, women, and other underrepresented groups? The Product Inclusion Team at Google has developed strategies to do just that. This book makes publicly available for the first time the same inclusive design process used at Google to create user-centric award-winning and profitable products. Author and Head of Product Inclusion Annie Jean-Baptiste outlines what those practices look like in industries beyond tech with fascinating case studies. Listeners will learn the key strategies and step-by-step processes for inclusive product design that limits risk and increases profitability. Building For Everyone will show you how to infuse your business processes with inclusive design. You'll learn best practices for inclusion in product design, marketing, management, leadership, and beyond, straight from the innovative Google Product Inclusion team.

Genres: Design, Nonfiction, Business, Leadership, Audiobook, Technology, Art Design

Audio CD

Published September 29, 2020

Reviews

[Kendall · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh maaaaaaan. I wanted so much more from this book. The basics: Jean-Baptiste is the Head of Product Inclusion at Google, codifying the team’s processes and pushing for Googlers to embrace inclusive design in their projects from the outset. Product inclusion is a discipline that asks developers to expand the user of a product from an “average” person (often white, maybe male, usually able-bodied) to a dynamic population of people with varying racial, gender, ability identities (and more).

Product inclusion asks “who are we missing here?” and “how can we invite more people in to using this product?” The problem of re-staffing NASA spacewalks because of ill-fitting space suits on women could have been solved by product inclusion.

I was so excited about this book because this is what I want to do with my career as a product manager, but I found it disjointed, hastily-edited and unfocused. Did the publisher push up her due date and rush it to publishing without a full edit? I’d be remiss not to mention that I loved Jean-Baptiste’s examples of projects at Google that have been made better by thinking about product inclusion. However, I think the discussion of these projects was surface level and a lot more space in the book was given to other voices—sometimes she had more “testimonials” (both from other Googlers and leaders in inclusion in other fields) than content of her own in a chapter.

I was disappointed because the testimonials weren’t well-edited—I found one error where the author meant to say “Black people” but instead wrote “lack people,” which has a terrible connotation when you can figure out what the sentence is supposed to say. The testimonial authors seemed to think they had to reinforce the case for product inclusion in the intro and conclusion of their already short essays, which meant we heard over and over again the lofty “why” behind product inclusion without much in the way of concrete strategies for implementation.

I would have rather consumed this content as a webinar or in a collection of fleshed-out essays by the many voices involved, with narration and guidance from the main author. I was so excited about this book and will definitely seek out more speaking and writing by Jean-Baptiste, because I love what she's doing and think it's important.

[Rebecca · Rating 2 out of 5]

Consult people with different characteristics at all parts of the product lifecycle. That’s it. That’s the whole book. You’re welcome.

This book was frustratingly repetitive and poorly edited. The ebook was a mess. There have to be better books about inclusive product design out there - and I’m going to find them !

[Veena Rangaswami · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m really leaning into the 3.5 stars this year...

This book had a lot of great points, and I underlined a good bit throughout, but there were also a lot of places where it either meandered or glossed over topics I would have liked covered in more depth.

Also: the editing. I don’t know if the publisher rushed this to print or if the editor had one foot out the door, but this has to be one of the laziest editing jobs I’ve ever seen. So many misplaced commas, parentheses in the wrong places, and other glaring errors were incredibly distracting as I read.

Did I learn a lot from this book that I would like to implement in my own work? Absolutely. Do I think it could have been done better? For sure. I love following AJB and will continue to do so, and I will take what I learned from this book and do my best to live it every day.

[Navin Valrani · Rating 3 out of 5]

A skim through book that states the obvious while constantly trying to tell the reader that Google is the best thing since apple pie. Anyone remember Google glasses?

[Todd Bullock · Rating 5 out of 5]

Building for everyone is foundational for everyone who is looking to transform their organization. The book is very well written and extremely comprehensive. It’s easy to read and understand for a novice, but also offers strategies and insights for experts.

[Felicity · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am new to the inclusion space, but really enjoyed this book. It's very easy to digest and gives practical tips to get started. I enjoy that other companies were featured as well, since I am not in the tech space.

[Kelsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a gem and a must-read for anyone building consumer products or services. Annie Jean-Baptiste shares valuable lessons she learned from starting Google's Product Inclusion Team and gives concrete examples of how other organizations can incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusion not only into the workplace culture, but also into the product development process. I also appreciated the snippets of insight from people with different backgrounds sharing what product inclusion means to them.

I'm looking forward to the day when inclusive design is practiced in every organization! 🙌

[Paweł Rusin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Profound topic but the book itself lack substance. It doesn't really cover much beyond the content of the typical business book or some Google methodologies written about in depth in some other books, such as: OKR's or design sprints.

[Ada · Rating 2 out of 5]

What I liked: The author is clearly very knowledgeable and passionate about DE&I efforts.
What I disliked: Very repetitive - for someone with a short attention span (that's me), this makes it really hard to get through.

I was looking forward to reading this, but overall it fell flat for me on several important aspects and it was a slog to finish. The book has decent bones but ultimately the editing of this book really lets this book down. Baptiste clearly has great experience and expertise in this area and I would give another book from her a chance, but this one didn't resonate for me. If you're new to Product Design and/or Product Management, you have no exposure to DE&I and don't understand why it's important or how to consider it, this might help you as a stepping stone.

The content in this book is incredibly repetitive. The same concepts were repeated over and over - not necessarily a bad thing if you're layering on concepts and getting into more details, but nearly every example was very high level. Much of the content was a high-level repeat of: We wanted to do X. We consulted with a diverse group of people and specifically reached out to people we found marginalized. Based on marginalized feedback, we did Y, which benefited everyone. If we didn't get that feedback, we wouldn't have done Y.
A few examples of this are great, but so many examples were generic and vague. There were some other odd repetitions, like saying three times "Jake Knapp, inventor of the design sprint." Great to give him credit, but not needed to say it every time his name is used.

Baptiste also had some contradictions in her book that really should have been addressed. One example is that she talks about how hard it is to get DE&I efforts started because so many people don't know what to ask and where to start, and talks about the importance of making DE&I accessible by having a strong support network and making your DE&I team available to help absolute beginners to bringing DE&I to daily processes, to working on specific projects with more advanced goals. She follows that up by going into detail about refusing to meet with people about DE&I until they can list out exactly what they need to know, what their questions are, and what they want to get out of the meeting. If you have experience with the the topics you can probably piece together that requiring specifics when people have defined projects they want help with makes sense; if someone just doesn't know where to get started, keep the communication open. These are things that the editor really should have caught for clarity and consistency.

Specific to the audiobook, the narration for me was fairly flat. It made a repetitive book harder to get through. Not a huge factor overall though.

[CalebA · Rating 2 out of 5]

Find better advice elsewhere...

I'll start with what I enjoyed learning. I liked learning the process of an Inclusion team. I like that there is intentionality in the process. I do believe that is important. It might be unattractive to other teams as more red tape and slower cadence, but can prove valuable. I felt drawn to this practice since it's so similar to having user empathy found in UX research.

However, the book lacks detail, insights, and for a long while felt like reading a repetitive HR manual. I really wanted to learn more about accessibility and thought this would be the main aim of the book, but instead many words were used toward preaching a list of ethics.

Then comes a side tangent: The title and theme of this book, "Building for Everyone". Let's start with business. The author only paints a happy outlook on inclusion and explains it's always good for business and marketing. UX and PM know that products are not built for "everyone". They have targeted and prioritized personas and markets. There isn't money to go around for "everyone". "Everyone" might be more important for B2C-type products/services, especially in global markets, and many of Google's products fall into this category...

Then there comes the ethical question. Do companies (Say Google) really prioritize "everyone"? What about hate groups, specific political parties, specific religions, ISIS, hostile governments, hackers, etc. What exactly is a "hate group" then? Who gets to define that? And which minority groups will you favor in which order? Trending minority groups? The largest minority groups? Google seems to play God by choosing what is "hate" and which groups are most ethically deserving, etc. My wife and I both belong to nationalities and minority groups that have not, and probably never will be represented. It's just not possible to build for everyone without showing bias or favoritism, and the author spent most of the book discussing her own. Ethical ideas clash. We have seen this recently when businesses push ideologies and values through their product lines. The consequences are in the billions of dollars. There are very delicate ways to market to the majority of ideologies at the same time.

For the record, I feel Google's advertising lately is awkward and forced. The scenes are confusing and strange. They draw attention to the different minority groups instead of focusing on the products themselves. I don't see distractions like these as effective marketing to "everyone".

[Lexi Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was so looking forward to this book, but unfortunately I was not impressed. The book was highly repetitive and covered its main points in a shallow manner. It was not well edited - I think there were more typos in this book than my grandfather’s self-published autobiography and he’s an 80 year old whose first language was Mandarin. Beyond typos, I was disappointed to read instances of exclusionary language even within this book; for instance, when speaking about sizing in fashion, the book says “smaller women and men are also excluded” excluding non-binary individuals unnecessarily.
There were not a lot of actionable tips or frameworks covered, though I appreciated the few that were mentioned. Perhaps it is because I have been raised in a later generation with an eye on these issues my whole life, but most of the ideas in this book - “considering underrepresented groups helps everyone!”, “have diverse teams!”, “inclusion is good for business!” - seemed entirely obvious. Much of the book was in the form of sidebars from various industry experts, which would be interesting if not for the fact that each one felt the need to reiterate the same key points as to why inclusion is important. I would think very few people would be reading this book if they didn’t think inclusion was important. I only hope that this book was practicing what it preached and was written in this repetitive style in order to consider some particular demographic that I am not a part of.

[Rai · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you’re already in the field of product management and product inclusion, this book may be too surface level for you. I found 80% of what Building for Everyone to be things or processes I already know about from working, but I still enjoyed some of the examples and testimonials in the book. I wish there were more in-depth knowledge or how the PMs went about an actual launch, measuring the success of product inclusion, but alas! That is probably hidden behind NDAs.

This is a good book to begin with if you’re new to product inclusion as a whole and need examples of why it is important, but it may be too entry level for experienced folks. I’m simply happy she was able to write a book about product inclusion and am glad that there is a beginners guide for people looking to get initial buy-in and highlight the business and human impact of product inclusion.

[Conor Triplett · Rating 2 out of 5]

A thorough look at product inclusion in tech/business. Centers on a few ideas reiterated in multiple ways throughout, but all good ideas to be reminded of... including:
- failing to actively include at any step in the development process will lead to accidental exclusion
- inclusion takes buy-in from the top as well as the bottom; executive buy-in allows teams to feel empowered and grassroot buy-in allows teams to build together
- it never hurts to slow down and think about the people involved; from employees and developers to guests and people using the product, keeping a human-centered design approach in the front of your decision-making process encourages more perspectives to be considered and fewer “oh man, we never thought of that”

[Brandon Morse · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really giving this a 3.5
There was a lot of good information in this book. Definitely going to borrow some soundbytes from earlier on in the book to help solidify the argument to clients and non-technical team members of the importance of inclusivity and accessibility when building products.
The one thing that did hurt this book is the fact that there were a two or three different parts where it was referencing an image in the physical book - being that I was listening to the audiobook, I only got the spoken word of "shown in figure 1.1" rather than a description of what the image was. It could have had an "off script" description of the image to support the context of the copy, specifically for the audiobook version.

[Pablo · Rating 3 out of 5]

The subject matter of this book is extremely important and I've heard interviews of the author that were great, but the book left me a bit disappointed. It felt like a lot of the book was written in the style of statements like "to have partners that care about inclusion, select partners that care about inclusion to work with".

The book gives you a lot of tools to sell inclusion, to show how inclusive companies do better. If that's something you need to convince your boss, this book can be of help.

I think it also has some important strategies to run the department of inclusivity at a very large company, but I'm not sure how many people would need this. For those that do, this book might be worth its weight in gold.

[Liz Possee Corthell · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book for work as someone working to build a product inclusion practice. It has some really helpful knowledge in it! I took tons of notes on the early chapters and reference these frequently in my work. This book suffers a problem that many non fiction / product / design books do- which is that it has a good idea that could probably best be conveyed in around 50-75 pages but since that’s not a full book- it gets stretched really thin towards the end. The same concepts and ideas are repeated over and over again towards the end, which made it a bit hard to finish even though it’s relatively short.
The ideas are great, the practical advice is even better- I just think this could have been half as long and twice as powerful!

[David Nguyen · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really wanted to love this book. From the surface, it has all the creds for the selling. Written by a WOC, VP at Google... But from cover to cover, it's just a long long long long list of bullet point with no cohesive story line.


What happen to story telling? I found no connection to any of the....hummm point or points she trying to communicate. Product Inclusivity should be more emotional appealing and deeper connection to the audience. If I need to decolonize my mind, or seeking out for a more contextual vs linear Westernized style of communication, then this book does not offer it to me.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book had a lot of tips around running focus groups and how to incorporate OKRs into companies. Measuring equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) can be seen as being very difficult and this book gives great examples. The author also talks about how in retail settings you should make sure to give EDI training to their employees. I am curious if companies are doing this on a regular basis. This book goes beyond tech and talks about healthcare, retail and everything in between. It is a must read.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Somewhere between 2 and 3 stars. Like other books on my "business" shelf, I think most readers would prefer a 5-10 page magazine article covering this content vs a 200+ page book.

The main adage of the book- "Build for everyone, with everyone" - is a powerful one, and principles of inclusive design go way beyond the tech sector. That said, I found myself skimming much of the content, as various sidebars and case studies seem to mainly illustrate the same (very important) points.

[Marshall · Rating 3 out of 5]

Useful nuggets thinking about inclusive design, but not as well written as I hoped. Heavy applicability to software environments but attempts made to bridge to other (or universal) industries.

As I’m early in my REDI journey, this read was worthwhile even as I search for better in the future.

[Lakshman · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Amr Swalha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book, I want more than just experience

[Savannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was one of the better business books I've read! Lots of good info and tools to build accessibility/inclusion into your products! I'll be bringing these ideas into my work!

[Autumn Kotsiuba · Rating 2 out of 5]

A book with great points, but feels unedited.