Why we gave up on our product’s UX/UI design in order to solve diversity and inclusion issues.

Joonko
Joonko
Aug 23, 2017 · 3 min read

User experience and user interface design are common terms in the product world. There isn’t a single tech company in Silicon Valley, or the world for that matter, for which UX/UI isn’t a significant part of its product strategy. Simply put, it is about making it quick and easy for the user to learn how to use the product, and then have them continue using the product regularly. UX/UI is such a key element that there are countless competitions, websites, courses and blogs devoted to it.

But UX/UI design can also greatly affect the chances of successfully achieving diversity and inclusion.

We, and many others, have talked more than once about the role unconscious bias plays in the lack of diversity and inclusion in companies, despite all the money and effort invested.

Unconscious bias is part of the way our brain works. No exceptions. It’s part of a bigger mechanism that isn’t there to create bias, but rather to allow our brain to work quickly and efficiently. In fact, 99.999996% of our brain processes are unconscious. And — you can’t prevent it from happening. This attempt to force on the human brain certain behavior that would prevent unconscious bias is a lost cause. It is a war on evolution, and the chances of winning are virtually nonexistent.

Contrary to industry beliefs, we’re not trying to prevent unconscious bias from happening. Instead of trying to prevent unconscious bias from happening, we do the exact opposite — we let it happen. But once it happens, we identify it and offer immediate action to correct and change it.

This decision had an impact on our product’s UX/UI design. UX/UI is a crucial part of successfully doing just that. Since unconscious bias is, as the name suggests, unconscious — it requires a super user-focused design, and the UX/UI has to be simple, intuitive and engaging in the most possible way, with a minimal learning-curve.

And we made a decision that (we think) no other company has ever made — we won’t have a UX/UI design!

We realized that in order to solve diversity and inclusion challenges, we can’t ‘force’ ourselves on our users. We can’t try to change the way they work, much the same as we can’t force the brain to change the way it works.

That’s why we designed and built our product with the goal of having companies achieve diverse and inclusive workplaces without changing how their employees/managers work or their daily routine. Our product’s user experience is built around the guideline of not having it’s own user experience. This isn’t something you see very often. We utilize existing habits and behaviors to our advantage, and to help solve diversity and inclusion challenges.

We developed our solution without a dashboard or the need to log anything, and without (almost) any interface. We base our product on platforms employees and managers use daily and are familiar with. There, we analyze the actions employees and managers take using different business platforms (e.g., Salesforce, Greenhouse, JIRA). When an event of potential bias has been detected, Joonko engages the relevant employee, manager or executive via regular communication tools, such as email (and Slack in the future), with the suggested action to take — on the same business platforms they are currently using.

Our User Experience and User Interface is not ours. Our design is not ours. It’s what the user is already used to seeing, using and following.

For us, this is a significant statement — our product isn’t what’s important. We forfeit any claims or attempt to build an amazing UX/UI, simply because it’s not what matters. The way to solve unconscious bias is in using the user experience offered by other platforms, and what matters is the end result.

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Written by

Joonko

We’re harnessing the power of technology to streamline the traditional talent cycle and advance organizations towards achieving their D&I goals. www.joonko.co

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