Designer Bias in Inclusive Design
Key Contributions
Extensive literature review on biases, cognitive biases and product design.
Conflict management within the team regarding convergence of the topic
Translation of research findings into language that is easily understandable and actionable by all team members.
Card design
Problem
Inclusive design toolkits enable designers to promote greater awareness of biases and provide guidance for designing products that are accessible and usable for a broad range of users. However, designers might not be explicitly aware of their cognitive biases during the inclusive design process.
Our Goal
To enhance the inclusivity of product designs by integrating a tool with the Microsoft Inclusive Design Toolkit, which will help designers explicitly recognize and address cognitive biases that may hinder accessibility and accommodation for a wider audience.
Our Response
'Bias cards' based on common cognitive biases like false consensus bias, confirmation bias, status quo bias and framing bias that can be used before the ‘Ideation’ phase of the Microsoft Inclusive Design Toolkit to make designers aware of possible biases.
Catered Bias questionnaires to our problem statement and designed a rubric fro analysis.
Designer’s bias existed in theory but hard to find research on it, especially in product design
Convergence as a team was challenging due to different areas of interest. Building empathy was crucial.
Bias cards are based on Design Heuristic Cards by Shana Dally et al.
Key Project Highlights
For the scope of the project, pivoted to a topic that could be operationally useful
As a team, we resolved conflict through games
Design Methods
-
Toolkit Evaluation
Exploratory research of Inclusive design toolkits like Cambridge Inclusive Design Toolkit and Microsoft Inclusive Design Toolkit which enabled us to find gaps and delve into the relationship of inclusive design and cognitive biases.
-
Down selection
This study used a qualitative approach to identify common designer biases by conducting a systematic literature review. Search terms "Bias_Name" AND "design*" were used in online databases limited to English-language articles related to product and user-experience design.
-
Survey Analysis
Bias Questionnaire score for objective questions and Thematic Analysis for subjective questions which enabled us to understand user attitudes, user choices and unconscious bias that may occur. It also helped us think about diversity of ideas and bias.
-
Card Design
The bias cards were designed based on the Microsoft Inclusive design toolkit theme (Purpose, Materials, Activities) and Design Heuristics cards (pictorial representation of the bias) to better inform users about each bias.
-
Toolkit Validation
Toolkit validation through expert interviews, user feedback questions and survey results. This enabled us to reiterate over our design and make it user friendly.
-
Results Evaluation
Comparative Analysis between Group A (Microsoft ‘Ideate’ phase cards) and Group B (Bias cards and Microsoft ‘Ideate’ phase cards. This helped us understand that there are notable differences in each group with regards to number of ideas generated, diversity of the ideas and bias before ideation as well
Solution
Bias cards that will enable designers to explicitly be aware of the common biases that can occur during the ideation design phase.
Key results:
Hypothesis I: Bias cards are effective in reducing personal biases. Group B who received the bias cards had lower bias scores than Group A except for False Consensus Bias.
Hypothesis II: Cognitive biases are present in designers. Evidence of status-quo bias was observed in the comments made by a participant in Group A. Higher bias scores were also observed in Group A.
Hypothesis III: The bias cards help in generating a diverse set of ideas. Group B generated more ideas than Group A, indicating a proxy for diversity. However, the thematic analysis did not provide clear evidence to support this hypothesis.
“Does this design prompt even need addressing?”
Key Takeaways
-
Team dynamics
Developing healthy team norms and dynamics, including clear role assignments and prioritizing project timelines, is crucial for the success of any project.
-
End to research
It is important to conduct thorough research to obtain reliable and valid results, but it is also important to know when to stop and conclude the research within a reasonable timeframe.
-
Results can vary
It is important to be open to unexpected results and acknowledge that they can differ from initial assumptions and hypotheses in research.