Kat Holmes shows us how to make inclusion a source of innovation. An important read for anyone who aspires to build great products for the greatest number of people.
Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft
Design shapes our human experience. As software changes our world, inclusive thoughtful design will be even more important. In this absorbing and important book, Kat Holmes lays out clear steps and the role we can each play to overcome bias and create inclusive design.
Victoria A. Espinel, CEO of BSA | The Software Alliance
Kat Holmes's approachable book, Mismatch, calls to tech industry leaders and designers to create inclusion by making a world that invites all of us to participate and benefits everyone. Designing for the future, Holmes convinces, requires designing for human diversity. Mismatch is a manifesto, a primer, and a rousing invitation for everyone in the design and production process to become inclusion experts who will collectively make a better, more effective, and more just world for us to share.
Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Professor of English and Bioethics at Emory University, author of Extraordinary Bodies and Staring: How We Look
Design at its best gladdens our lives, and shapes the way we experience the world—but it can limit that experience, too. Counters may be too elevated for someone in a wheelchair, and playgrounds built solely for able-bodied children a trial for those who can neither run nor climb. Even a magical faucet, built to flow at the wave of a hand, is ill suited for the blind. In Mismatch, a crusading and important look at how design can frustrate and even alienate users, Kat Holmes compels us to be more inclusive. She shows us that design requires not only ingenuity but humility. It must solve problems, yes, but it must also work with those excluded to reimagine and improve their experiences.
Caroline Baumann, Director, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Mismatch is a powerful read that not only has the potential to change the way we approach design but also serves as a strong check to our ingrained assumptions about how and why people move, act, speak, and interact (or dont).
Gray Magazine
Designing for inclusion is not a feel-good sideline. Holmes shows how inclusion can be a source of innovation and growth, especially for digital technologies. It can be a catalyst for creativity and a boost for the bottom line as a customer base expands. And each time we remedy a mismatched interaction, we create an opportunity for more people to contribute to society in meaningful ways.
800-CEO-READ
One-of-a-kind...Take[s] inclusive design out of an academic setting and into the working world. Nobody really wants to exclude people from their designs and this book shows you how you can avoid doing that.
Fast Company
[Does] a very good job of tearing down the blinders we wear and helping to expose designers to the impact of what we create....with a practicality that is refreshing and encouraging.
Tim Kadlec
Winner of the 800-CEO-Read Awards for the Innovation and Creativity category.
