Bin the binary: Creating gender-inclusive forms & convincing stakeholders
Empower Identity expression
While this post stands alone on this topic, there were two preceding it in the Bin the Binary series:
#1 How to be a gender-inclusive UX writer
#2 5 Steps to write a more gender-inclusive UX
Before pivoting to UXW, I worked as a Copywriter and Creative Head. During the shoot of one of the ad videos starring transgender people from India, I asked them if there ever was a place or interaction with commercial entities (businesses, products, etc.) where they felt accepted and validated. The answer was, “It’s hard to remember…never (felt accepted), I think!”
Then, I asked what changes they wanted commercial entities to make to change that response. You wouldn’t believe their response and how low their expectations were.
“Just give us forms with ‘prefer not to identify’ or a ‘custom’ write-in field.”
It felt like a slap. I mean, how hard is it for us to do that? Adding an extra option means not forcing them to avoid the ‘binary’ conflict and feel validated.
But they’re edge cases.
1% of 8 billion people is 80 million people!
So, no, the LGBTQIA+ community is definitely not an edge case. Its members are humans who have been marginalised for so long. Side-lining them as ‘edge cases’ is saying that their problems are not worth solving.
Let’s not do that. Let them exercise their agency the way they want.
Creating gender-inclusive forms
There are a few fundamentals that you need to be mindful of while creating gender-inclusive forms:
Maintain transparency → To provide context and a sense of safety
Make space for all kinds of experiences → To treat everyone as equals
Respect people’s agency → To make them feel accepted and validated
Saddle up, inclusivity warrior!
Everything from this point on will be a fight you’ll be putting up, sometimes with the designers, sometimes with the product managers and sometimes even with the C-suite. It’ll all be worth the results.
#1 Maintaining transparency
Before acceptance and validation, what non-binary people want is their safety (and anonymity if they’re not out yet).
To inspire that sense of safety, let people know that their information will not be shared with anyone. If the platform’s characteristic is ‘public’ like Facebook, then allow people to control the amount of information shared and who it’s shared with.
Always, always advocate for a tooltip for personal information:
Give people a legitimate reason for asking for their information.
#2 Making space for all kinds of experiences
Placeholders
“Why a man’s name as default?”
“We could toggle between Jane & John Doe.”
“Still not inclusive!”
“Ummm…then what?”
“How about using gender-neutral names like Alex, Robin, Ollie, Ash, Charlie, and Remy? Or use names of colours like Google Assistant? Or weird word combinations like Reddit?”
“Not a bad idea.”
“You could skip placeholders entirely, though. They’re not all that great from a usability point of view!”
That’s one conversation I had recently.
However, what about the fields in themselves? Having only one field for a name is not very inclusive since many non-binary people change their names after they’re openly non-binary or in transition.
To make space for their experience, consider adding an option to write ‘Another name’.
Please don’t call it a ‘Preferred name’ or ‘Preferred title’ as they’re inherent to one’s identity. They’re not a preference or an option but one’s ‘true’ name and title.
Gender identity
Making space for intersectionality means creating our gender identity options a little differently. You could have a typeahead (left, like Tinder) or a multi-select (right). Both allow for variations without compromising the data structure.
Avoid using ‘Other’. It sounds like an afterthought and can be pretty alienating, especially when you don't give them a chance to tell you their true gender.
Another way you might alienate your intersectional audience is by placing ‘non-binary gender’ under ‘additional options’. Once again, not conforming to binary is not inferior or something ‘optional’ like an add-on phone number in case yours is out of reach.
Although OkCupid recognizes commonly-heard non-binary genders, they have an interesting way to showcase it on their app.
Gender-inclusive pronouns
Since I covered quite a lot on this topic in the previous post, I’ll take the conversation forward from there.
Misgendering during interviews and formal emails is one of the least-mentioned pain points. People fear that correcting and insisting on using one’s correct pronouns might offend the interviewer, leave a bad impression, waste time, or drive the interview in a less desirable direction. So, it was refreshing (and encouraging) to see companies like Booking.com include such a wide variety of pronouns and an option to ‘use name only’ in their job application form.
I just wish the sentence at the bottom was written next to ‘Pronouns’ so that the form does well on screen-readers (more accessible).
It’s interesting how Facebook doles out non-binary basics to the cis folks while making space for the non-binary.
#3 Respecting people’s agency
It means giving them the freedom and choice to be themselves and decide what’s best for them.
Maybe even after reading your ‘legitimate reason’ for asking about their gender, they don’t want to disclose it. Would you mark that field as ‘optional’ and allow them that agency like Etsy?
The most important form fields for gender inclusion are name, title, pronouns, sex, and gender identity. However, relationship status and family structure can also use gender inclusion since many countries don’t support marriages, adoption and families of choice that we see in the LGBTQIA+ community.
A resource to explore: Co-parenting arrangements in lesbian and gay families: When the ‘mum and dad’ ideal generates innovative family forms
Fighting the fight: Convincing stakeholders
Founders: Is gender inclusivity really that important? We’re doing fine without a plethora of genders.
You, a gender-inclusive UX writer: We can do even better. I quote, “In addition to designing more reliable products, diverse teams can be financially profitable. In a 2015 McKinsey study, companies in the upper quartile of either ethnic or gender diversity were more likely to have financial returns above their industry mean, while those in the bottom quartile lagged behind the industry average. The relationship between diversity and profit was linear: every 10% increase in the racial diversity of leadership was correlated with 0.8% higher earnings.”
Marketing team: How are we supposed to set our campaigns with so many gender identities?
You, a gender-inclusive UX writer: First, don’t consider it a roadblock to promotions. Look at it as adding richness and more focus.
Feel free to group the gender labels on the back end per your campaign’s needs. I cannot burden my product’s users with picking market segmentation for you.
Product team: But we’re gunning for a foreign market next year. How will we tackle the whole spectrum of genders?
You, a gender-inclusive UX writer: Let me worry about that. As I translate and transcreate, I’ll ensure the new market’s language and cultural nuances around gender are appropriately represented so that our product is received warmly.
You, a gender-inclusive UX writer: Okay, I’m worried about my remark above. How do I approach internationalisation/localisation?
This is how → Understand the difference between the display gender and grammatical gender. They don’t have to be the same. The problem you have to solve is visibility (display gender).
Approach 1: Male, Female, Prefer not to state, Custom; Choosing Custom opens up a type field where the user can mention their preference (Refer to Etsy’s example above)
Approach 2: Male, Female, Prefer not to state, Custom; Choosing Custom opens up a pronoun/gender selector with an example sentence. (Refer to Facebook’s example above)
Under the hood, you can club Custom per your internal company policies.
You, a gender-inclusive UX writer: What do I tell my translators?
Non-native translators might get confused by a singular ‘they’ since most languages have gendered verbs and versions of ‘you’. So, it’s best to give them sentences with male/female pronouns with instructions to phrase them gender-neutrally or in a way that avoids mention of gender.
For example, Do you need xyz? → Is there a need for xyz?
You, a gender-inclusive UX writer: No one is a know-it-all. What if I can’t find a way around gendered verbs and you?
Of course! With language and identities evolving at such a fast pace, it’s hard to keep up with the exact context of words.
So the best way to approach this is to connect with the relevant communities. Pick their brain, get feedback and ensure your forms have appropriate and respectful language. Tell them your mission; they’ll open their hearts and doors for you.
What else can you do?
Proactively advocate for inclusion in product decisions and push for genuine workplace inclusivity.
Advocating for inclusion in the product
Heard of deadnaming?
It's when you use someone's old or birth name instead of their current name, which can be really emotionally devastating and even dangerous.
Here’s how you can minimise such instances:
Allow renaming - Airbnb has implemented policies that allow them to keep their review histories intact.
Create processes to change names - Much like marriage-related name-change procedures, changing names should be possible without legal documentation.
Allow modification of related identifiers such as username, web/email address, and profile URL.
To see how deadnaming affects non-binary individuals, check out this article by Max Masure. To learn more about renaming, listen to this talk by Emma Humphries.
When inviting participants from LGBTQIA+ communities to your research and review, don’t forget to appropriately compensate for their contribution.
Question your biases and blind spots. Use these flashcards by Airbnb as a starting point.
Get involved with the customer experience team to ask customers’ pronouns right after the greetings and use them religiously in all following conversations.
Pushing for genuine workplace inclusivity
Start with the job application forms and try to do what Booking.com is doing (see picture above).
Make it a habit to mention your pronouns and ask others’. You might end up meeting a few LGBTQ folks in your organisation.
When in a position of influence, hire people representing different lived experiences. But don't make your LGBTQ employees educate the rest of the team about LGBTQ experiences. Let the team learn how to be a good ally on its own.
Over to you
The ideas I’ve shared in Bin the Binary series are only starting points. It’s up to you how you create respectful space for the unique experiences of our non-binary friends.
Let’s band together, go beyond rainbow-washing and make an actual impact that adds more colour to digital products.
A handy pdf version of Bin the Binary series is in the works. If you’d like it for future referencing, hit me up on Instagram @UXWritingBud.
Note: While trying my best to write inclusively, I’m only human. Please feel free to reach out to me to point out my biases and blindspots and share resources for everyone’s education. I’d be highly grateful to you.
Further resources:
Such a useful and insightful series, thanks so much. Looking forward to the PDF version.