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Summary
What's one thing that prevents our designs from truly serving and uplifting as many users as possible? Implicit bias. While design has the power to drive positive change in the world, it's much more likely to uphold oppressive systems (such as racism, ableism, sexism and classism). This leads to harmful and exclusionary user experiences that fail to deliver on design's promises of usability, delight, relevance and accessibility. In this session, Sandra explores how implicit bias shows up in our designs by examining real-world examples across various design disciplines, including graphic design, UX, service design and product design. She then reviews practical techniques you can apply to start to root out bias from your designs, including: Evaluating designs for patterns of implicit bias (such as racial bias, gender bias, language bias and beyond) Interrogating the root causes of these biases across the design process Addressing bias both preventively (before it happens) and reactively (after it happens)
Key Insights
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Implicit bias often manifests as non-neutral or dominant defaults, privileging certain identity groups unconsciously in design.
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Systemic bias is embedded in institutional procedures and practices, reflecting broader power structures beyond individual prejudices.
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Technology, such as algorithms and facial recognition, can reproduce and amplify racial and gender bias with serious real-world consequences.
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Design solutions focused only on surface changes miss deeper cultural norms and beliefs that sustain inequality.
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Inclusive design requires questioning who the 'default user' is and broadening personas to include marginalized groups.
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Accountability involves recognizing the gap between designers’ intentions and the actual impacts of their work on exclusion and harm.
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Intersectionality is key to understanding overlapping social identities and how they affect privilege and oppression within design.
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Design artifacts like user journeys, personas, and feature prioritization embed systemic biases and need reflexive examination.
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Socioeconomic bias in design shows up in assumptions about internet quality, device types, and user accessibility globally.
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Small actions toward inclusivity must be coupled with organizational culture changes addressing incentives and power dynamics.
Notable Quotes
"If you’re in tech, you are in social change, whether you realize it or not."
"Bias is a tendency, feeling or opinion for or against something without reason or evidence."
"The Twitter algorithm favored lighter skin tones when cropping images, reflecting racial bias in tech."
"White supremacy is the belief system of the superiority of whiteness that can embed itself in algorithms."
"Designing for the dominant default ignores people whose identities are marginalized or excluded."
"We can’t solve systemic problems with surface-level solutions or checklists."
"The Reflexive Compass helps us discern bias patterns early, take accountability, and measure impact."
"There’s a gap between intentions and impact; humility is needed to close it."
"Many smartwatch designs assume male hands as default, excluding smaller wrists and diverse body types."
"Cisgender binary options in onboarding flows exclude non-binary and gender-expansive identities."
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