The issue of race in Product design and Tech.

In my last post, I spoke about how UX and Product design has made everyday tasks so much easier and democratised life especially when it comes to apps like Uber and Air BnB, and that is true for the majority of users, however, minorities can sometimes have a very different experience.

Now I want to delve into the part that race and bias have to play in Product design.

Let’s jump in.
From a personal point of view when I talked about the democratisation of UX on apps, Uber, in particular, sprung to mind, as a teen it was well known among the black population in the UK that hailing a taxi at night would be near on impossible for a black person, I would try to hail a taxi after a night out on the town, I would see a taxi approaching, the hire light would be on, the taxi driver would see my black face, turn off the hire light and drive-by, only to pick up a white passenger a few meters down the road. This was a regular occurrence not just for me but for all of my black friends. In order for me to get a cab, I would have to get one of my white friends to hail the cab for me while I waited in a shop doorway then step out at the last minute to jump into the cab before it was too late.

Uber changed the landscape for me, no longer was my getting home based on the colour of my skin, because I could now anonymously order a cab safe in the knowledge that I was to be treated equally based on the colour of my money because Uber allows the user to go anonymous or post a profile pic if they choose. While this doesn’t solve the issue of racial bias in people it eliminates the possibility by giving the user the choice.

My parents arrived in London from the West Indies Back in the 50’s. When their parents tried to get accommodation they were greeted with signs saying no blacks, no dogs, no Irish, harsh I know, but things have changed and although it’s not as overtly racist, minorities still face prejudice when trying to find accommodation.

Jump forward 50 years and the world was introduced to Air BnB which was supposed to democratise accommodation and make it easy for everyone to book, but it has had its own issues with racist hosts refusing to rent to minority guests. Black and other minority customers have reported being refused service by hosts, Air BnB initially didn’t accept that it was based on racial bias but having conducted an investigation and examined the data they have now put measures in place to address this. Firstly by not allowing the host to see the profile pic of the guests until the guest has accepted the booking, they also introduced a new Instant Book feature, if a listing has Instant Book turned on, you can book it without having to wait for the host’s confirmation. So now when you book accommodation via Air BnB you face fewer racial barriers to your experience.

These racial biases also pop up in many aspects of tech, in some cases, if left unchecked racial biases in tech products can even destroy peoples lives, like in the case of Amazon’s facial recognition software which was employed by law enforcement agencies, potentially helping to wrongly arrest people of colour because there is a bias towards white faces being accurately identified vs black faces, whether it’s a chatbot or facial recognition, the effects of racial biases can range from reducing usability to wrongfully imprisoning innocent people. If Amazon had done extensive user testing with more black participants for their facial recognition software, maybe they would have discovered the problem before the product went to market.

To help to overcome these racial biases in tech we need to increase the number of black voices, perspectives, and talent to create products that cater to a diverse and inclusive range of user needs.

We should always consider how the different cultures of POC might change the way they interact with products. The first step is to bring the conversation to the table and ask those questions during white-boarding sessions, brainstorming activities, and design roundtables. When giving feedback to fellow designers on your team, ask them to think about race as a factor — don’t hold back, just ask “how do you think a black person’s experience might differ from yours when using this?”. While these tactics might seem simple, they’re not being used as often as they should and as a result, tech products often have racism literally built into their code.

Research and testing should be conducted with inclusion in mind. It’s difficult to conduct user research and user testing, especially with time and resource constraints. However, it is key to building inclusive products. You won’t know if your product is likely to be exclusionary unless you test them with a diverse range of users.

Here are some ways we can make user research and user testing more diverse? When starting a user research journey, set benchmarks for yourself and/or your team for what you consider to be a diverse range of participants and strive to meet those benchmarks. If your company doesn’t have the resources, conduct in-house testing with POC within your company. There are lots of ways to test consumer-facing products with POC, and although they might not yield perfect results, it’s a step in the right direction.

Someday we will look back on this and say why wasn’t this just done as routine, but until then we all need to strive to eliminate racial bias in Product design and tech.