Designing for Everyone: 10 Things to Remember from Annie Jean-Baptiste’s NeoCon 2025 Keynote

When you design, whose perspectives are you considering—and who do you still need to bring into the fold? In a thought-provoking Monday keynote address at NeoCon 2025, Annie Jean-Baptiste—a business-disrupting tech executive and author of Building for Everyone—challenged design professionals to innovate by making people feel seen and thought of.

“Design, when done well, can allow people to thrive in the way they so choose,” Jean-Baptiste explained.

How can designers acknowledge people and create innovative spaces? It starts with these moments to remember.

10 Key Takeaways:

1. Admit that you don’t know everything. “Humility is really important in design,” Jean-Baptiste said. “We don’t know everything, and that’s OK.” This creates space for creativity to emerge.
2. Ask “Who else?” Who else needs to be in the room? Whose voices haven’t you heard during the design process? Who has a perspective different from yours? “We start to have different conversations that might have more friction, but we have a better end result because we’ve gotten that diversity of perspectives,” Jean-Baptiste said.
3. Design with people, not for them. Don’t just create something and give it to the end user. Bring them in earlier in the process so you can adjust throughout.
4. Reimagine processes. Just because you’ve done something over and over doesn’t mean you need to continue to do so. Beware the phrase “That’s how we’ve always done it.”
5. We all contain multitudes. No person is just one thing or a member of just one community. “One example I lovingly joke to teams about is I’m a black woman who’s left-handed. It’s not like I’m black on Monday, left-handed on Tuesday, and a woman on Wednesday,” Jean-Baptiste said. “How do we think about the multitudes of people we’re designing for and with?”
6. Go back up the funnel. Designers often think about their target audience or target customer, but this presents another opportunity to ask, “Who else?” For example, imagine your target audience for a design is moms. Is there an opportunity to bring in dads, grandparents, babysitters, or other caregivers?
7. Be proactive and intentional. “Innovation doesn’t just happen,” Jean-Baptiste said. “Think about how you’re creating the capacity and the constructs and circumstances for innovation to abound. How do you bring different types of people into the room? How do you ask who else? How do you question the system?”
8. Remember the new ROI—Return on Influence. “There’s a misconception that groups that have been historically at the margins don’t have power, and that’s simply not true,” Jean-Baptiste said. “When we look at who’s influencing the cultural zeitgeist, who’s setting trends, it’s those groups that are underrepresented. Who are the people who are setting the trends, who can highlight and celebrate the work you’re doing when they do feel seen?”
9. When you build for the margins, you get the center for free. Think about the people who are most affected by design that’s not inclusive. Design that accommodates these folks will benefit everyone. Look no further than the curb cut on a nearby street for an example of this—curb cuts benefit people with mobility devices and sight impairments, but they also are helpful for people pushing shopping carts or strollers.
10. Design for delight, not just compliance. “I want us to move from the bare minimum of an accessible entryway to delighting people and making them feel celebrated,” Jean-Baptiste said. “We can bring them into the fold much earlier in the process.” How do we design for delight? Designers must remember that there is no “they,” only “we,” Jean-Baptiste said: “You can’t build for a community without getting their perspectives into the fold.” Think about different facets of people, but also the entire holistic consumer; “When we think in silos, we build in silos,” Jean-Baptiste added. Remember, too, that profit and people aren’t mutually exclusive—thinking about underrepresented groups helps grow your target market.