The progress we have seen in the last decade in terms of making our discipline more accessible to up and coming designers is undeniable. Really great. Still, quite slow. Digital product design remains an elitist discipline: hard to break in, overshadowed by unnecessary jargon, lacking organizations that genuinely represent all of its professionals’ best interests, and not as diverse as we all have dreamed it to become. At the end of the day, if design is not actively working to dismantle established exclusionary systems, it is merely perpetuating them. And that goes to how much we include or exclude people from our industry.

In the age of social distancing, local events/meetups — one of the most powerful tools we have at our disposal to welcome and onboard new designers — start to disappear or turn into Zoom panels with limited interaction and little space for valuable side conversations. On the other hand, larger design conferences are still trying to figure out a way to bring new voices to the conversation, stop the celebritization of the design speaker, and offer tickets at a lower price point than Coachella’s. And when you don’t lower the barrier to entering the design industry, only a particular type of designer with a really specific background is able to get in.

When you don’t lower the barrier to entering the design industry, only a really specific type of designer with a really specific type of background is able to get in.

With courses and bootcamps there is a similar challenge. It’s not that there aren’t great classes out there — but those classes can be cost-prohibitive for a lot of people. Especially people who are still considering design as a potential career, in which case signing up for one of those courses can be a risky move. You have probably seen one of those “get a job in UX” bootcamps around.In the age of social distancing, local events/meetups — one of the most powerful tools we have at our disposal to welcome and onboard new designers — start to disappear or turn into Zoom panels with limited interaction and little space for valuable side conversations. On the other hand, larger design conferences are still trying to figure out a way to bring new voices to the conversation, stop the celebritization of the design speaker, and offer tickets at a lower price point than Coachella’s. And when you don’t lower the barrier to entering the design industry, only a particular type of designer with a really specific is able to get in.