My Path
From an
Triggered by a “·”
To Designing from/for/with Margins
As a Uyghur, I regularly experience exclusion in everyday digital life.
Our names use a middle dot (·), which many real-name authentication systems in China treat as an illegal character. If I include it, the system rejects my name. If I remove it, it no longer matches my official ID, and verification fails. This happens not only in commercial apps, but also on government and essential public service platforms.
In Chinese passports, our full names are often placed entirely in the given-name field, leaving the surname field blank. As a result, we technically have no recognized surname. In countries like the UAE, some Uyghurs have even been denied entry because of this.
All of this exclusion stems from a simple fact: our naming system is different. The fix is simple too - acknowledge our existence. Sometimes, simply acknowledging marginalized communities is enough to remove unnecessary barriers.
