design |

By AJ Penrose, Multimedia Developer, Digital Learning, RMIT University Library. Contact: amanda.penrose@rmit.edu.au

The world might not actually be any more diverse than it’s always been, but goodness, doesn’t it seem that way?! Thanks to increased visibility, advocacy and celebration of our differences, diversity has become an important part of our digital lives.

retro housewife waves at husband and child from kitchen doorway

Fortunately, we’re becoming more aware that what we see around us shapes our expectations of society. We’re getting better at representing diversity (it’s been a while since I’ve seen a white, tie-wearing male kiss a housewife goodbye as he heads to the office… WandaVision excepted!) but we can do a lot more.

Image by ArtsyBee https://pixabay.com/illustrations/retro-housewife-family-greeting-1321068/

Here are some examples of inclusive practices that you can incorporate into your digital projects right now.

Inclusive language

Use non-gendered and non-Western names for the characters in your examples and activities. Online baby-name lists are a fabulous and readily available resource.

Include they/them pronouns along with she/her and he/his. You can do this when the gender of the person you’re referring to isn’t relevant, when you want the sentence to be inclusive of all genders, or if you want to represent a character as non-binary.

Representation

Describe or illustrate your characters using diverse:

physiological or mental functional capacities
genders, sexes and sexualities
cultures and traditions
ages
socio-economic backgrounds
body shapes, skin colours, hair and clothing choices

The great news is, with a little effort and a bit of practice, we can create inclusive, safe and welcoming digital environments, which benefit everyone.

Here are just a couple of screenshots from animations I’ve created recently. See if you can identify the ways I’ve included representation from the list above.

Female student with trans flag hair-clip using a laptop

Excited Indigenous student says he'll get on to them now

Red-haired woman holding up a picture of a woman wearing a mortarboard and hijab

Aqua-haired, tattooed tutor with glasses talking to blonde student with a prosthetic leg

Indigenous student being helped by a pink-haired librarian wearing a rainbow lanyard

Note that diversity itself isn’t the focus of any of these projects, it’s just there.

Why not review the project materials you’re working on right now and have a think about how you’re representing diversity? If you can do more, go ahead and make a change today!

By Sarah Fennelly, Digital Designer, Deakin University Library

Our problem

Deakin University Library’s Digital Experience (DX) team is charged with delivering high-quality, consistent and scalable digital solutions across a range of library platforms and channels. However, we found ourselves with multiple challenges in delivering good on this:

There wasn’t a library-specific design reference for our developers, designers and digital content managers to help them manage consistency of look, feel and functionality across our digital library ecosystem, and to maintain accessibility, brand and design standards.
We often ‘reinvented the wheel’ when it came to digital design; library staff presented with differing design requests and needs, and the DX team often ended up creating bespoke designs to accommodate this.
At other times, librarians created their own design elements with little or no input from the DX team, and with limited understanding of design best practice, accessibility and brand requirements.

Our Solution

Our solution was to create the Library Design System (LDS), a website that provides the source of truth for library-specific design elements used across our digital ecosystem. The LDS references and extends upon existing university-wide design guidelines and tool kits to provide targeted and more library-focussed design direction.

The LDS is divided into two main areas:

Referencing guide for the library’s professional designers, developers and content managers to use across web interfaces and systems.
Design assets and templates created to specifically help librarians and library staff without professional design expertise.

Referencing guide

The sections used predominantly by the professional design, developers and content managers are:

Components: These are a selection of interface elements that can be reused across the library’s digital ecosystem. These elements include buttons, colour, forms, grids, headers and footers, logos, navigation, tables and typography.
Interface inventory: A table that identifies library systems, platforms, products and applications with a student and/or researcher interface.

Design assets and templates

The sections used to help librarians and library staff without professional design expertise are:

Deakin Library page showing example of characters and graphics that can be used. character posing in different postions, with both professional and student attire and with different versions of character.

Characters: A suit of characters developed to represent our Deakin cohort.Graphics: Multiple sets of library and faculty specific graphics.
Graphics: Multiple sets of library and faculty specific graphics.

screenshot of various graphics available to be used from the learning design team.

Iconography: Currently 189 icons in branded accessible colours in both SVG and PNG formats.
Templates: D2L banners, photographs and the advanced search graphic.
Print: Deakin printer details.

example of scenes with 4 steps.
Step 1 adding background
step 2 add second layer image (information desk)
step 3 add third layer image (bookshelf)
step 4 add fourth layer image (couch)

Scenes: A series of PNG graphics that staff can use to build their own images or scenes, by layering the graphics in provided H5P, PowerPoint or Adobe Illustrator templates.
Video and audio: Deakin branded top and tail videos, videos created by the DX team, in conjunction with the library Learning and Teaching team and the library communications manager.

The future

The LDS is not a ‘set and forget’ resource; it will continue to adapt as a design resource to support all library staff. We will continue to maintain, update and grow the LDS to reflect changing university and library brand needs and changes in the library’s complex digital ecosystem.

Good design is imperative in our complex digital ecosystem. Design that reduces cognitive load through visual and functional consistency, allows our students to focus on learning and understanding the course content we deliver.

By Sarah Fennelly, Digital Designer, Deakin University Library, s.mccormick@deakin.edu.au

Tag Archives: design

Delighting in diversity in the digital domain