Mansi Gupta

 

Uber rolled out SOS functionality only after there were sexual harassment cases
reported on their rides, originally overlooking safety (which often matters more to
women). Yoga apps, even with an overwhelmingly female audience, fail to acknowledge menstruation. Pension funds, failing to acknowledge that women live longer have contributed to gender financial gaps.

 

Our products and services continue to overlook women’s key needs and create unintended consequences for them. Chances are that most of us are not only using products and services that overlook key needs of women, we are also creating them. Research shows that our current design methodologies are biased—that under the guise of being “genderless” or “gender-neutral,” they continue to produce one-size-fits-men outcomes. Businesses have failed to design for and create impact for women–and women continue to remain invisible and overlooked in a world traditionally designed for men.

 

Mansi Gupta says “As a women-centric behavioral design lead for several years, I observed that projects across domain, culture, and geography often run into the similar unique barriers that specifically women face. Safe access, time poverty, non-linearity of their lives continues to go unacknowledged. At the same time, brilliant gender-driven design practitioners have been solving these problems in different contexts for years with, and alongside women. There is room for their learnings, insights, and design principles to be amplified; and cross-learning to be had.”

 

“Design for Women,” a methodology and toolkit, is the culmination of key themes, design principles, and tools from several hours of research interviews with gender experts–so that we can shift the way we approach our projects, and widen our lens in research and ideation to meet women’s needs. This talk will introduce designers to the Design for Women methodology and help incorporate an inclusive, women-centric lens in their thinking, ideation and creative toolkit.

 

Attendees will leave with:
● An increased understanding of how our current gender-neutral design
methodologies overlook women
● Tools to evaluate products, services and experiences with a women-centric design lens and a tactile way to frame design conversations, ideation sessions and
problem definition with women at the front and centre.
● Applicable key themes, insights, and design principles to ensure a women-centric design approach both inside and outside of work.

 

As the founder of Unconform, Mansi partners with organisations to help them incorporate a women-centric design lens across products, programs and processes. She is the creator of Design for Women–a methodology focused on intentionally and actively designing for women; the author of Unconforming, a newsletter advancing dialogue at the intersection of women and design; and the curator of Design for Women Conversations, a monthly event series bringing together gender and design practitioners.

 

Mansi has 10+ years of experience applying behavioural research & design strategy in social impact. Previously, she led projects at Women’s World Banking to increase financial inclusion among lower-income women in developing nations. Prior to that, she designed games to research reproductive healthcare in rural India as a designer for Final Mile Consulting.

 

Mansi holds a BA in Computer Science & Economics from Bryn Mawr
College, and an MFA in Products of Design from the School of Visual Arts. She grew up in India, and is now based in Amsterdam.

 

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