Inside Adobe's Product Equity team - part 1

Welcome to the Made For Us newsletter, which you can now listen to! Just tap the ‘Listen online’ link above and you can have the newsletter read to you - alas, not by me but by an AI voice called Matilda.

Today I’ll be bringing you an interview with Es Braziel, one of the early members of Adobe’s Product Equity team in charge of equitable research. Not familiar with the term ‘product equity’, or curious to know how it’s different from inclusive design? Then you’ll want to dive into the conversation below.

Thanks to everyone who voted for Made For Us in the Signal Awards. If you haven’t cast your vote yet, today is your last chance! Please support the podcast in the Listener’s Choice Awards here (just a heads up, after voting you’ll need to click the verification link sent to you by email for the vote to count).

When Es Braziel started working in tech seven years ago, talking about inclusion in product design felt "a little controversial." Fast forward to today, and Es - now a researcher on Adobe's Product Equity team - sees a real shift: there’s finally recognition that "not all users experience technology the same way."

In the first part of our conversation, we discuss how Es leveraged an anthropology degree into a career in research, how Adobe’s Product Equity team got its start and why the company is focusing on developing products for historically overlooked communities. Next week, in part two, we’ll explore some of the projects the team has worked on and the challenges of building a new practice from scratch. (Part two will be available only to subscribers so make sure you’re signed up here.)

TS: I'm curious about the journey that led you to Adobe and this particular team. I understand you have a background in anthropology. Did you think this was the path you'd end up on?

EB: You know, I wasn't sure in the very beginning, but I read an article about people using their anthropology degrees in business settings in my sophomore year of college and said ‘this is what I want to do.’ My interest in anthropology, specifically cultural anthropology, was really around understanding people, how they act the way they do.

And then as I progressed in my degree, I was really interested in the way technology mediates our social relationships. And so it naturally led me on a path where, when I was doing projects in market research and in user research, I was always looking for the angle of how can we learn from the folks who are most likely to be excluded from this work, but also most likely to be experiencing the most exacerbated impacts of the technology itself and how can we make it better for everyone through looking at them.

TS: When you started working in tech, were there many people who shared your view of the world, people who were thinking about exclusion and inclusion in technology?

EB: There was some private conversation around how inclusion showed up in technology, but you didn't have as many forums that were even publicly talking about ethics and user research or ethics and tech. So there's been a real progression in industry where people are becoming more comfortable looking at the fact that not all users experience technology the same way and that we should be paying closer attention to who we're including in design processes in order to design more for everyone. 

So I would say that now there are significantly more people, companies that are coalescing around this topic of what is product equity, how do we make our products more equitable for folks. I see a lot more events than when I was beginning, say in 2016, 2017, when it felt a little controversial to bring these topics up.

TS: I guess that's what led you to Adobe and your current team. Can you tell us about your team, how it got its start?

EB: At Adobe, we've followed this trajectory where we started with accessibility and focusing on how to build that into our products and then realized that those principles applied more broadly. I came on to the team around that time. There were just a few of us and we were trying to set the groundwork of what does this even look like to extend to communities of folks with disabilities and beyond, thinking about race and gender and all these other factors in our products. 

So about two and a half years ago, our team became the Product Equity team. Since then, we've expanded to a whole practice. We sit within the design org at Adobe, but we have folks who are designers, researchers, content strategists, PMs who are all looking from different angles, whether it's education, research, specific design interventions, to be able to put all the different pieces together that are necessary to build a product and to build a product differently.

TS: How do you actually define product equity? Because I think for some people this is a relatively new term and in other companies it will be called something slightly different.

EB: We're still in the beginning of the industry coalescing around common definitions. We think about product equity as looking at how every person can access and harness the full power of a product without harm, bias or limitation. The way that I see this differing from inclusive design is that inclusive design is considering who was included in this process and thinking about who was left out, but that doesn't always mean that someone can meaningfully use the product at the end of the day. It may be that they're included, but there isn't necessarily accountability toward that outcome of usage. 

TS: Why this is a priority for Adobe now. What's the opportunity that the company saw in having a dedicated team focused on making products more equitable?

EB: Product equity is really important in fulfilling this mission of ‘creativity for all,’ which is one of Adobe's core values. That ‘for all’ part is really important. We can't just be designing technology that only some folks can use or that some folks can access. And so it really helps us to expand what it means to be a creator, who can become a creator and what sort of visions are even possible to see in the world.

TS: Could you talk about what this looks like in practice within Adobe? Who are the main stakeholders that you work with and how do you work with them?

EB: It depends on the specific engagement that we're working on. We have teams that we become really closely embedded with and work with over the span of months. We have teams where we may have a shorter session or two with them to be able to work on a project. 

We work with a broad number of folks ranging from content teams to product-specific teams, from thinking about features to new products or new product areas and how to make what they're creating more inclusive. We think about the opportunities that exist within under-invested-in communities, as opposed to a more “traditional” way of doing product, which is how do we design for the average and then slot in these more “edge cases” into what we're designing. 

Thanks for reading! Look out for part two next week and if you know someone who would enjoy this please share the newsletter with them and the sign-up link below. By the way, season 2 of Made For Us is coming soon. If you haven’t caught the first season, you can listen on Apple or Spotify.