Mind the Gap: A Case Study on Addressing Gender Pay Inequality through a Mobile App

The Challenge

Our task was to collaborate with data analysts on a cross-contaminated project. We were asked to listen to the data analyst’s proposal for their midterm project and use their data for our app.

I worked with Leo, and we chose to focus on the gender pay gap in STEM. We thought it was an important and interesting problem that affects society as a whole.

The data analyst’s research involved scraping over 62,000 salaries from levels.fyi. After cleaning, they had 19,000+ entries including information on company, title, total yearly compensation, years of experience, years at the company, gender, education, and state.

The data analyst asked the question: “Is gender an actual predictor of salary discrepancies, and to what extent?” She analyzed factors that should influence salaries and added gender as a factor that shouldn’t cause discrepancies.

The data she provided showed that gender is indeed a predictor, but the effect was lower than the average pay gap in the USA, likely due to the fact that some data had to be removed due to cleanliness issues.

Secondary research

We began our research by diving into secondary sources. From the beginning, we recognized the breadth and complexity of the gender pay gap, and tried to avoid a superficial treatment of the topic.

Key factors perpetuating gender STEM gaps:

• Gender Stereotypes: STEM fields are often viewed as masculine, and teachers and parents often underestimate girls’ math abilities starting as early as preschool.
• Male-Dominated Cultures: Because fewer women study and work in STEM, these fields tend to perpetuate inflexible, exclusionary, male-dominated cultures that are not supportive of or attractive to women and minorities.
• Fewer Role Models: girls have fewer role models to inspire their interest in these fields, seeing limited examples of female scientists and engineers in books, media and popular culture. There are even fewer Black women role models in math and science.
• Math Anxiety: Teachers, who are predominantly women, often have math anxiety they pass into girls, and they often grade girls harder for the same work, and assume girls need to work harder to achieve the same level as boys.

Pain point

Women are underrepresent, which mean that it’s hard for them to have some role models. Helping them to reach the top positions, will as consequence other woman to have gender models to aspire to and will help to normalize for men, that STEM field would improve without a gender driven approach.

When woman ask or try to have career advancement, they are adreesed like bossy or too agressive.

Networking and information is important when it’s about to have transparency about money or how to negotiate salaries in all the carreer stages.

Access for woman to safe places and to a more healthy environment where to work, places where they could ask for parental leave without having any repercussion in their career.

Common practice to help woman

We then started to understand what are the common practice that help woman to reduce the gender pay gap:

• Pay audit
• Help woman to negotiate
• Equal opportunity to advance in their career and get feedback
• Teach companies to have fair promotion processes

Quantitative and qualitative research

To further investigate this, we created a quantitative survey, making sure to start with demographic screening questions, and then getting more specific.

We then saw that the element we defined where confirmed by both of the researches.

Competitive analysis

As part of our research on networking in the workplace, we analyzed several companies that provide tools and resources for job seekers and employers to connect and evaluate each other. The companies we chose to focus on were Bumble Bizz, Glassdoor, Great Place to Work, and Gender Fair.

Bumble Bizz is a networking app that started as a dating app but expanded to the business world. It allows users to find possible investors, employers, or other professionals in their field who they can learn from or collaborate with. We included Bumble Bizz in our analysis because it offers a unique approach to networking that is not typically associated with professional settings.

Glassdoor is an American website where current and former employees can anonymously review companies. We chose Glassdoor because it addresses a common pain point for job seekers, which is the lack of transparency in the hiring process. Glassdoor allows job seekers to evaluate potential employers based on the experiences of other employees, which gives them more power in their job search.

Great Place to Work is a data-based model that quantifies employee experience based on 5 factors: credibility, respect, pride, camaraderie, and fairness. Companies that meet the criteria are given a label that signals to future employees that the company has a healthy and positive work environment. We included Great Place to Work because it offers a unique perspective on the importance of company culture and how it can impact employee satisfaction and retention.

Gender Fair is a platform that allows users to find out which companies support gender equality and make informed purchasing decisions. We included Gender Fair because it addresses the problem of gender inequality in the workplace from a consumer perspective. By choosing to buy only from companies that support gender equality, consumers can influence company behavior and create a demand for change.

By analyzing these companies, we gained insights into different approaches to networking, hiring, and evaluating companies. We also learned how each company addresses the issue of gender inequality in the workplace in a unique way.

Empathy map

An empathy map is a collaborative visualization used to articulate what we know about a particular type of user and help us in the empathizing fase to understand more about our users need.

We then tried to empathize more with our “Woman in a male-dominated industry”

These insights were then transferred to the Empathy Map, which helped us understand:

• Who are they?
• What does our user want?
• What forces motivate them?
• What can we do for these users?

Ideation of the crazy 8

We then started the Ideation phase with the crazy eight ideas. We dot voted what would be the best we could work with, and our choice was: “Stinkedin, jobs you definitely you DON’T want and here is why…”

We flipped this question, and we asked ourselves what are the important factors that turn a good workplace and job into a perfect one.

Furthermore, we created a detailed scheme to organize and categorize our ideas about what’s important and what it would be nice to have and between these two categories we divided the factors in feedback driven (so opinion and elements that are based on the worker perceptions) and the data driven one, so all the elements that can be measured and evaluated statistically.

We tried to have a more equal evaluation possible, we thought that having just a data based driven app, it would have been too sterile, because the work environment is also about atmosphere and common values.

MoSCoW diagram

After the ideation phase, we had many ideas, so we used the MoSCoW diagram to understand and prioritize the main flow and features of our app. However, our pain point definition was still too broad and complex, so we had to decide which point was most important for us.

Using the empathy map, we identified the most critical elements for our target users. The keywords we focused on were “find open-minded companies” and “talk to other women about the problem.” In other words, we aim to help women be informed about companies and have a conversation about gender-related issues in the workplace.

User persona and User journey

Through our ideation process, we clarified our goal and created a user persona, Nadia, a software engineer who is struggling to advance in her career.

Using Nadia’s persona, we developed a Journey Map that outlines her daily routine at work, her frustrations, and her goals. This exercise helped us identify the touchpoints between our product and our customers. For example, we discovered that our customers are interested in accessing information about companies, including their policies and commitment to gender equality.

Creating the Journey Map was a valuable tool because it allowed us to visualize the user’s experience over time and identify areas where our product can provide the most value.

Problem statement and how might we

User flow

We created a user flow for Nadia, our User Persona. Here are the steps she takes when using the app:

• She enters the app and inputs her data if it’s her first time accessing it.
• She searches for a company she wants to work with, using filters such as job type, location, or corporate topics.
• She selects a company from the search results and clicks on its page to view its data.
• She can scroll down to read comments, like them, or participate in the related topics on the forum section.
• In the comments and forum sections, she can expand the sections to get more details.

Mid-fi prototype

UI PART

Visual competitive

Before creating the High Fidelity Prototype, we looked closely at the visual aspects of the apps we studied in the Competitive Analysis. We identified the features that worked well and considered incorporating them into our app, while also deciding which features to exclude.

One observation we made is that our competitors use mostly neutral colors with one or two bright accent colors to create brand recognition.

Moodboard

We assembled our ideas and inspiration for the future insight and overall feeling of the application using a Moodboard, as well as defining the main adjectives for our brand:

• Business casual
• Action-oriented
• Trustworthy
• Collaborative
• Inclusive
• Informative

Style tile

Hi-fi prototype

Next steps

The networking part was originally just a touchpoint for our app. Although we did not prioritize this part, it still accounts for 50% of our evaluation and is based on feedback from users.

We have not yet determined the format for this section or how the categories will be sorted, but it will primarily be a forum-based platform. We hope to improve this section in the future.

The second part involves workshops that educate users on negotiation skills and dealing with workplace discrimination. These workshops could also be organized for companies to increase awareness of these issues.

Another feature is the ability for users to improve their interactions with data by comparing different companies and applying filters to identify which factors are most important for their user profile.

I hope you enjoyed