Designing for Equity
Both the COVID-19 pandemic and the recent rash of highly publicized police killings of Black Americans have re-illuminated the racial fissures in our society. The business world responded with a flurry of statements of solidarity and action plans. Here at the +Impact Studio, we too have made equity a cornerstone of the work we’ve been undertaking this summer. As we all must re-evaluate our work in the name of racial equity, we hope to share some of our contributions to Studio projects in hopes that they may be starting points for your own work.
- Team Composition
Although advancing equity is a common goal among startups, our work has revealed some of the challenges startups face in actualizing the noble goal. One example of the challenge of designing for equity is tied to team composition. With so many startups hoping to harness the innovative power of tech, they’re impacted by the overwhelmingly white and Asian world of tech and its feeder academic programs in computer science and information.
During a review of a new social support platform that sought to allow users to anonymously find mental and social support in various identity or issue-based groups, we saw a group noticeably missing. While there were groups for the LGBT community and students of Asian descent, there was not a group for Black/African Americans. Given the ways in which Black-identified people are significantly and disproportionately impacted by discrimination and racial stress in the United States, their absence exposed a real gap for a product-focused on mental and social support. After going back to the slide deck where a photo of the product team, we noticed that there were Black faces missing from the founding team.
Starting a venture is an incredibly vulnerable prospect. You’re sharing your dream with a group of people when self-doubt and seemingly insurmountable obstacles emerge regularly. Accordingly, founders often find support and comfort in a group of close friends and associates that contributes to homogeneous teams, the type of teams that lend themselves to blindspots on the equity front. Cultivating a diverse team from day one is critical. The solidification of a company’s culture correlates with its success. It’s harder to pivot later and diversify a team than it is to invest in navigating the discomfort of diverse teams early on.
2. Language choices
A second example of designing for equity, racial equity specifically, is tailoring your language to the appropriate target audience. Moving along the continuum of racial awareness is a journey, and it can be hard to assess where people are. Additionally, doing anti-oppressive work often means explicitly naming the harm. When you’re unable to know someone’s racial awareness, and you choose to name the harm you’re working to address (i.e. dismantle white supremacy, eradicate anti-Black racism, etc.) you run the risk of alienating those who are turned off by the accurate, though discomforting language. Although watered down, “diversity and inclusion” or “racial justice” may be the more appropriate language to use to spur participation on a project or in a program. Language is power, and also marketing. Striking the right balance so you’re able to engage and attract the right audience is an intentional and delicate decision.
“True equity lies in growing the pool.”
3. Growing the Pool
To go slightly further in-depth on this topic of identifying the right audience, in a time where finding “early adopters” seems like the rule of thumb, who are the early adopters for racial justice? When optional diversity and inclusion training is done, it’s often critiqued as preaching to the choir, a choir that is often made up of non-Black people of color and progressive white women. True progress hinges on converting previously unaware individuals to becoming active participants in advancing equity. A tension can emerge between establishing early success by attracting early adopters and engaging people who need to hear your message of equity the most. By defining success with early adopters of an equity initiative within a team, or clients on an initiative, we run the potential of all fishing in the same pond without growing the pool. True equity lies in growing the pool.
We look forward to updating you on our work in the course of the summer as we accrue insights worth sharing. In the meantime, we want to share some resources to support you on your designing for the equity journey. These two toolkits, one on racial equity impact assessment, and a second on liberatory design can be a great jumping-off point as you design — or redesign — for equity.
