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Accessibility is often treated as a technical problem. Does it meet standards? Is it ergonomic? Is it safe? Those questions matter, but they are incomplete. Many products fail not because they dont function, but because they make the user feel singled out. Shame is one of the most powerful barriers to product adoption, and it is rarely discussed in design reviews. People delay using canes, grab bars, hearing aids, or mobility supports even when they would meaningfully improve daily life. Why? Because many products still communicate something the user does not want to say out loud: Something is wrong with me. If we want accessible design to succeed, and we want people to get the utility of these products, we have to design beyond function. We have to design for dignity, and we have to recognize that design has the power to remove stigma. ADOPTION IS EMOTIONAL A product can meet every ergonomic benchmark and still sit unused. Emotional adoption determines real adoption. When design feels institutional, clinical, or stigmatizing, it does not matter how useful it is. The user experiences a cost that is not in the price tag. The cost is identity. Great design reduces that cost. It normalizes support. It invites pride. It says, You belong here, not You are an exception. We have seen this shift before. Years ago, eyeglasses were considered medical devices. Kids were teased as four eyes. Glasses signaled something was wrong. Then design and culture evolved. Frames became expressive and stylish. Today, glasses are fashion accessories, and many people wear them without prescription lenses because they like how they look. A stigmatized object became a form of self-expression. The same pattern played out with bicycle helmets. They used to be awkward Styrofoam brain buckets, worn only by the most concerned riders, who were often teased for their appearance. Over time, design improved and so did perception. Helmets became lighter, sleeker, and more personal. Colors got bolder. Styles emerged, including playful options for kids like watermelon themes, mohawks, and distinctive graphics. Today, many children and young adults would never consider biking without a helmet. What was once stigmatized became normal, even a point of pride. This is what design can do. It can shift the cultural meaning of an object. WHAT SHAME LOOKS LIKE IN DESIGN Shame shows up in visual language and cues: Products that look medical, cold, or utilitarian Aesthetic choices that communicate equipment instead of object Forms that feel like warnings rather than invitations Branding that talks down to the user or overexplains This is not about hiding disability. It is about refusing to equate disability with ugliness, awkwardness, or compromise. We have found that most people do not reject support, but many reject what the support implies about them. DESIGN FOR PRIDE Design that reduces shame does a few things consistently. It respects the home. Accessible products should feel like they belong in a thoughtfully designed environment, not like they were borrowed from a hospital. It respects identity. People want tools that fit their aesthetic, their personality, and their sense of self. Options matter. And since no single brand can ever create the perfect widget for every body, real options only become possible when accessible design becomes cost of entry across categories, not a special edition for a small audience. It respects emotion. The experience should feel affirming. A product should make someone feel capable, not corrected. This is the heart of emotional accessibility. When people feel good using a product, they use it earlier, more often, and for longer. That improves independence, safety, and quality of life. REDUCING SHAME IS A BUSINESS STRATEGY There is a direct business consequence to stigma. If people delay adoption, they are not only losing out on joyful life experiences and often putting themselves in danger, but brands lose demand. If products are purchased reluctantly, loyalty erodes. If the category feels embarrassing, growth slows. Design that reduces shame expands markets. It turns an avoided purchase into a desired one. It transforms I need this into I want this. That shift changes everything. It also creates a new kind of brand equity. Companies that design with dignity earn trust, and trust is the rarest currency in consumer experience today. THE NEW GOAL FOR ACCESSIBLE DESIGN The future of accessibility is not compliance. It is cultural. It is designing products that support human vulnerability without amplifying it. Design is on the verge of destigmatizing aging and disability across our activities of daily living. When we get this right, we do more than make products usable. We make them desirable. We make them typical. We make them something people are proud to bring into their lives. The real test is not whether a product can be used. It is whether people want to use it, openly, confidently, and without shame. Ben Wintner is CEO of Michael Graves Design.
Category:
E-Commerce
At 12, I was walking around a very affluent neighborhood with my father and he said, Mikey, all these people in these nice houses, not one of them could run a gas station. That stuck with me. The gas station test isnt about intelligence or ambition, its about aptitude for running a successful business. As a strong student, then an investment banking analyst, then a private equity associate, I was in this jetstream towards a career in investing. But can investors run gas stations? Does it matter? This concept was always in the back of my mind. I dove so deep into business details as an investor that my interest actually inhibited my performance. I was propelled into the operating world. As someone who made the transition from the investing world, albeit relatively quickly after four years, I get asked a lot about what attributes make someone successful in an operating role versus in an investing one. OPERATORS GO DEEP What stands out to me as the most basic difference between operating and investing comes back to the gas station. Most people in those nice houses I walked by at 12 years old probably werent interested in details like convenience store inventory. When you work in the operating world, you are in the weeds of your business. For example, at SoFi I knew all the nuances of different types of student loan forbearance programs and at Brex I knew the minutiae of the Mastercard transaction chargeback rulesthough not an expectation of my role at either company. This contrasts with my experience as a private equity investor where I look at purchasing a business ranging from a chain of laundromats to Ancestry.com within the same month. In private equity, success often came down to three things: underwriting growth, paying the right multiple, and adding leverage. There is no way to distill what it is like to run a business, especially one as complex as Figure, into such a simple framework. The most successful operators enjoy going deep. PROACTIVITY VERSUS PROCEDURE In terms of behaviors that make someone successful in the operating world, proactivity stands out. My experience in fintech has been that everything is breaking all the time. I wake up each day to problems new and old. While high-growth industries like fintech exacerbate this, all operating roles have all kinds of changing dynamics and customer issues that create challenges. The way to combat this chaos and thrive is to proactively anticipate issues. The moment that most exemplified my proactivity was at Brex when I managed the Silicon Valley Bank fallout. I had been tracking the issues at the bank early, and I was able to swiftly reduce almost all of Brexs exposure, enabling the company to be offensive in the wake of the crisis, and add over $1 billion of deposits in a weekend. On the investor side, work life is a lot more procedural. There is an investment processand that itself differs across private and public investing. But regardless, there is a relatively defined set of steps investors take. Evaluating an investment in a gas station or chain of them is very different than actually operating one. The former allows you to calmly consider the supply and demand dynamics, commodity price forecasts, etc., but there is almost no chance you will be screamed at by an unhappy customer or feel the visceral worry about the liquidity to fund your business. The process is much calmer and more controlled. That doesnt make investing easier, but the challenge is more intellectual rather than operational. PEOPLE MANAGEMENT IS THE JOB The operating world is all about people. The people who get to the top are most often the best managers of people. They know how to set goals and mobilize large teams towards those goals, because, at scale, leadership is less about individual contribution and more about creating the conditions for an organization to succeed. This seems very basic but its at the core of what differentiates operating roles from investing ones. My time as an operator meant managing a range of teams from accountants to mortgage loan officers to executives. The common approach I have taken is to understand peoples motivations and how I can help the company and role best fulfill them. Contrast this to my investor experience, where people management was a very small part of the picture. Most of the people were highly motivated and compensated in a competitive environment. Feedback was rarely given and what determined promotions was opaque. THE POINT IS HOW YOURE WIRED If the idea of going deep on messy details, waking up to problems, and spending most of your time thinking about how to get the best out of other people excites you, you are probably wired to be an operator. You dont need a perfectly defined process to be comfortable; you need ownership. If, on the other hand, you enjoy pattern recognition across new areas of learning, structured decision-making, and optimizing within a defined framework, investing may be a better fit. Its a very real craft, and often very lucrative. Early in my career, I assumed that operating was simply a more hands-on version of investing. Its not. Its a different job entirely. Running a business, whether its a fintech company or a gas station, requires a willingness to live inside complexity rather than analyze it from a distance. Not everyone wants to run a gas station, and thats fine. But if you find yourself drawn to depth over breadth, proactivity over procedure, and people over process, you might want to step out of the jetstream, and into the operators seat. Michael Tannenbaum is CEO of Figure.
Category:
E-Commerce
During his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Trump made a bold claim about diversity, equity, and inclusion. We ended DEI in America, he said after touting his administrations record on job creation. The remark was an echo of previous claims Trump has made about DEI, which have been critiqued for misrepresenting his legal authority over DEI programs in the private sector. “I’ve ended all of the so-called diversity, equity and inclusion programs across the entire federal government and the private sector, and notified every single government DEI officer that their job has been deleted,” Trump said in a speech last year at the Conservative Political Action Conference. “They’re gone. They’re fired.” Its true that the Trump administrations repeated attacks on DEI have had a chilling effect on corporate America, and have more directly derailed DEI efforts in the public sector. Immediately after assuming office, Trump issued multiple executive orders that targeted DEI, which slashed DEI offices and roles across the federal government and threatened private companies with potential legal action if they maintained illegal DEI programs. The sweeping federal layoffs in 2025 ultimately affected about 277,000 workersincluding those culled from DEI teams at government agenciesand had a disproportionate impact on women and people of color. Under the Trump administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commissionthe agency tasked with enforcing anti-discrimination lawshas also adopted an anti-DEI posture. EEOC chair Andrea Lucas has set her sights on DEI-related discrimination, recently mounting an investigation into Nike over its DEI policies, claiming the company had discriminated against white employees and job applicants. Despite these setbacks, however, Trumps actions have not exactly ended DEIfar from it. Some employers, including Google and Meta, have moved away from certain types of DEI programs due to legal risk, whether that means cutting representation goals or no longer tying executive compensation to DEI metrics. But many private companies are still doing the work quietly, or have simply stopped using the term DEI, reframing their efforts as belonging instead. A benchmarking survey that culture and inclusion platform Paradigm put out last year found that federal contractors and large companies were more likely to make more drastic changes to their DEI initiativesbut many others were actually continuing to invest in DEI work; in fact, only 19% of the 400-plus employers surveyed said they were slashing DEI funding. Prominent companies like Apple and Costco have explicitly pledged their support for DEI, and pushed back on activist shareholders who introduced proposals that sought to end their DEI programs. And while public sentiment appears to have shifted on this issue, given the anti-DEI rhetoric from the highest levels of government, many workers still do support the tenets of diversity, equity, and inclusion. In a Gallup poll from last fall, 69% of Americans still agreed that it was important for businesses to promote DEIand that figure was far higher among women and people of color. Trump may believe his policies have ended DEIbut it seems few workers want to live in a country where thats the case.
Category:
E-Commerce
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