From Women 2.0
Tech’s Other Diversity Problem: Inclusive Product Design
By Anna Lauren Hoffmann
The consensus in the startup world is that diversity and equality are mission critical to an individual company’s success and the future of tech as a whole. Still, tech companies continue to fail in recognizing and supporting diverse bodies and identities....
But while hiring and representation is no doubt important, it is equally important that we recognize the many other ways diversity is relevant to the design and development of products, platforms, and services, as well as recognize and supporting diverse users. Though designers and developers may set out with the best intentions, implicit biases and a lack of foresight generates problems—from racist bots to transphobic dating apps.
Take, for example, recent controversies surrounding Amazon Prime’s same-day delivery service. Though the company prides itself on a certain kind of equality—they readily note that demographic data like race and ethnicity do not figure into how they distribute their goods and services—the roll-out of their same-day services have, however inadvertently, doubled-down on established racial and ethnic divides in certain areas. Until very recently, for example, same-day delivery service in Boston excluded the predominantly Black neighborhood of Roxbury while simultaneously serving neighborhoods on all sides of it....
Anna Lauren Hoffmann is a lecturer and postdoctoral scholar at the School of Information.