What’s Your Bias? — Realize the Unintended Consequences
Who would have known that the iPhone could result in physical neck problems, or that Facebook (intended to connect people) could be used as a platform for fake news and such hatred? If the product teams had discussed these potential (then) unknown consequences, and understood their own role in them — could they have been avoided, or minimalized? Many of us want to create a product that will change the world, but for better or worse — what happens when it actually does?
Creating Ethical Products with Andre Plaut
First Tuesday of the month, the Service Design Network (SDN) in New York City gather to learn, collaborate and network. SDN is the leading non-profit institution for expertise in service design, a driver for global growth, development and innovation within the field.
The topic for the evening was, ‘Creating Ethical Products’ with Andre Plaut on stage. With the intention to support creators of products and services and increase awareness of potential ethical consequences to help make better decisions for companies, employees, and users.
Many of us want to create a product that will change the world, but for better or worse — what happens when it actually does? — Andre Plaut
Andre spent his entire career at the intersection of technology, design, and education. He has worked as a learning designer, facilitator, and product lead at Apple, General Assembly, and Huge Inc. and most recently founded human machine, a consulting group that helps companies make more ethical products.
A key message throughout the evening was the substantial impact technology has on our lives today, just as it does for the environment, and society-at-large. Because of this, we’re experiencing unintended consequences that we never took the time to predict, many of them sometimes detrimental. However, on a happier note, within this article we learn ways we have the power, opportunity and responsibility to stop this trend.
What makes a product or service ethical?
There’s no universal criteria for what ethical products and services are, but some supportive principles Andre introduced in his keynote are seen in the image below. These principles focus on the areas to be ‘Safe for Users & Employees,’ ‘Accessible & Inclusive,’ and ‘Positive for Society.’
How can we increase the ethical-standard of the solutions we create?
During the workshop we went over two different ‘games’ Andre uses in his work: ‘Malicious MadLibs’ and ‘The Game of Externalities.’ These two games force us to ask questions which bring light to ethical issues. Let’s go over them so we might use them, as well.
Malicious MadLibs
In Malicious MadLibs we explored ways in which different ‘bad actors’ (those with malice) could leverage a specific technology to do harm. The goal is to find feasible ways bad actors can take advantage of the tech and thereafter ensure a process is in place to mitigate that risk.
My group simulated how ‘Hackers could recruit individuals using Google Maps’ with a variety of intentions and different ways to go about these activities. Most were fairly unrealistic, but I can’t say I’m a skilled hacker nor recruiter, so what do I know? What it did do, however, was to enable us to look at this from different views. Thus, interesting as an exercise, definitely worth a try in your product development process.
The Game of Externalities
In this game, we considered the potential consequences of a product’s impact at scale in the following areas:
- Societal
- Economic
- Behavioral
- Environmental
More specifically, we discussed things like, how the increased usage of smart homes’ technology, like Amazon’s Alexa in the collaboration with Whole Foods, will affect local businesses. The second topic was what autonomous cars could mean for the environment? Or the ability for different countries to adapt their infrastructure and laws accordingly? To consider the future impact of emerging technologies is fascinating and this exercise was my personal favorite!
Why should we care about this?
Listening to Andre reminded me of the controversy of late 2019, when the new Apple credit card offered higher limits to men, over women of the same household. Was this sexist? And if so, can it be that a credit card algorithm is chauvinistic? Increasingly, this is our reality and we need to understand that we are the ones designing these solutions. Whatever biases we have, we will develop within the technology, E.g. an Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithm in the mentioned Apple instance. We need to create practices which make apparent our beliefs, so they don’t negatively influence the products we design.
With the increased use of technology, the consequences on a small scale might be less substantial, but in our global world with scalable tech, risk increases. Consumers, more than ever, pressure companies to be ethical. Though this topic is of upmost importance for Generation Z, the well-recognized management consulting firm, McKinsey states that it’s vital for other generations, as well.
‘Gen Z consumers are mostly well educated about brands and the realities behind them … members of the other generations we surveyed share this mind-set … 65 percent try to learn the origins of anything they buy — where it is made, what it is made from, and how it is made. About 80 percent refuse to buy goods from companies involved in scandals.’
Increasingly, we seek out ethical companies, just as we remember and avoid the ones who have been known to be involved in non-ethical activities.
‘Trust takes years to build, seconds to break and forever to repair.’ — Dhar Mann
Are we willing to identify our own biases?
The definition of bias on dictionary.com is: ‘prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair.’ Often, but not always, biases are considered to be negative. Biases are also what help us ‘navigate complex environments that bombard us with far more information than we can consciously cope with’. The problem is when the biases negatively influence our behavior towards others. Or in this case the products and services we create.
Harvard University has led Project Implicit for 30 years, which offers 14 “implicit association tests” which are designed to uncover participants’ unconscious biases of demographic groups.
As with anything we do, it starts with ourselves and facing our own behaviors and beliefs. Two things I encourage you to do:
1. Include uncovering potential unexpected consequences solutions you design (using the Game of Externalities or Malicious MadLibs).
2. Uncover your own biases at: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html. Realizing the first aspect of improving something is being aware of it.
So you want to create a product that will change the world? Before we do, let’s start with ourselves. At the end of the day, any product and service, biased or not, was created based on the beliefs of people like you and I. Let’s be aware of those biases and create a system to address them.
Join the next Service Design Network event on (February 11th) on the topic of ‘Learning to Navigate in Times of Flux’. Our speaker is Joan Ball, Assistant Professor and researcher in the Tobin College of Business at St. John’s University and founder of WOMBLab.
This article is intended as a summary of the event as well as my own personal reflections and research on the topic.
