In technology, inherent bias can be hard to root out. Our tech tends to reflect the people who create it — their perspectives and experiences shape how products are designed. Whether you’re talking about a smart city or a smart speaker, the systems that underpin our lives are the sum of designers’ decisions; inequality and exclusion are often the unintentional consequences of those choices. To address this, organizations, experts, and regulators have worked to make technology more accessible for people with different physical and cognitive abilities; the tech industry has taken meager steps to diversify its workforce. But technology products and services are still largely built by a narrow slice of society, and it shows: from racial prejudice in artificial intelligence to the harassment of Black, Indigenous, and people of color, as well as gender minorities in digital spaces, technology often exacerbates exclusion.
To Build More-Inclusive Technology, Change Your Design Process
Lessons from Microsoft, Airbnb, and Oracle.
October 19, 2020
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Summary.
In technology, bias and inequalities are quite literally products of design: the design choices of a product reflect the people who make it, and who those people chose to design it for. To fix this, companies need to redesign the design process itself. Companies from Microsoft to Airbnb to Oracle are striving to do just that. There are five principles companies aiming to follow suit should follow: 1) design with excluded and diverse communities, not for them; 2) foster belonging through representation; 3) strengthen culture, training, and processes; 4) promote accountability; and 5) normalize inclusion at a system level.