Another Case for Diversity in Tech
I’ve worked in the tech industry for 5 years. In some slow-moving industries that level of experience would still make me a beginner. However , in tech with the amount of company, product and idea turnover, I’ve seen a lot. Through the last few years, I’ve played around with almost every new gizmo and gadget coming out of my company and others in Silicon Valley (and now New York).
Despite my best efforts to enjoy a lot of these new, “next billion dollar business” ideas, I just can’t do it. The only technologies that I love and use every day are my smartphone and company-issued laptop. I’m only 27, but I have the tolerance for new technology akin to someone in their 50s or 60s.
Why is that? I think about this a lot. I love technology (heck, I work in the industry!) and pray for the day I can get my own robot personal assistant (no Siri is just not enough). However, a recent experience with a smart watch I was given put into perspective exactly why I struggle to adopt a lot of new technologies: I am a girl.
To illustrate my point, let’s unbox the hottest wearable tech trend: the smart watch. When you open the box of an LG or Samsung watch (two of the leading manufacturers), a large black touch screen square and industrial rubber straps present themselves. When I added the rubber straps to the touch screen and put it on my wrist, the watch almost fell off. It was too big for my a-little-below-average female wrist. I felt like a kid wearing their dad’s watch.
While I knew this watch would not match my dress for the evening, I decided to just try to make it work and rationalized that this was me being fashion forward. Next, I had to connect the watch to my phone. Using bluetooth, I could get alerts and manage emails, phone calls and calendars on the watch instead of constantly checking my phone. However, the major caveat was the watch and phone need to be close enough to each other for the bluetooth to connect the two. This was the kicker for me. My pant pockets are too small and my dresses often don’t have pockets to carry the ever expanding size of phones, so how was I going to keep my phone in close enough proximity? No, carrying a purse with me through the office is not a reasonable suggestion.
My frustrating attempt to use this watch led to it sitting on my desk as a paperweight. This experience I am describing isn’t just mine, but many women I know feel similarly. Whether the concern is with a smart watch, fitness band or other technology, many of these new products were clearly not built for us, ladies.
I have the utmost respect for the concept of “minimal viable product”. I also believe that patience is one of the most important virtues we all must have as new, groundbreaking technologies are developed. But, let me pose a question: shouldn’t we have a higher bar for what a minimal viable product should be?
Whether engineers, product managers, or marketers know it or not, what they put into the world influences society. It influences who we believe technology companies are building the future for, it changes our conversations at dinner tables, it divides us into the tech-savvy and the tech-illiterate.
I work with amazing, free-thinking and supportive engineers and product managers. They aren’t discriminating on purpose. I’m sure many of them don’t even realize their inventions are not useful to many types of people. Tech is like most other creative industries such as literature and film; creativity comes from a place of experience. We create based on what we know.
The media has recently put a spotlight on the lack of diversity in Silicon Valley. From too few female-founded start ups receiving VC funding to not enough women applying for engineering jobs, there are a lot of situational and deep rooted customs in the technology industry that need to change. Many of these changes may not happen tomorrow, even though this industry can make a new device or software update in a matter of days.
So what can we do now? Well there is a lot. We could be diligent about using focus groups to rate and review products before they are put out into the world (Apple is one of the few companies in the valley that is rigorous with user testing). Senior leadership could require each product to go through a more user-centric design review before shipping. More women and men in tech companies could speak up and question the status quo.
Cultural norms can take generations to change. However, we should all push to raise the bar on what we think is minimally viable — if not for us, for those next generations of women and men who likely wouldn’t find the tech industry of today accessible for them in the future.
