Making technology more equitable

Though some may see technology as objective and therefore not subject to racial bias, a growing body of evidence suggests otherwise. Woodrow W. Winchester III, former director of engineering management in the mechanical and industrial engineering department of the UMass Amherst College of Engineering, is the director of professional development and continuing education for the American Society for Engineering Management (ASEM). Winchester has been studying and writing about this issue for many years. In a recent article for Fast Company, he looks at racial bias in technological design and discusses what can be done to dismantle it.

From “Black-centered design is the future of business”:

Many wearable heart rate trackers rely on technology that could be less reliable for users with darker skin, which negatively impacts people of color whose employers incentivize employees’ use of fitness trackers with extra vacation days, gear, or even lower health insurance premiums. Recent studies on facial recognition technologies find that many of these systems perform poorly on Black faces, “compounding the problem of racist policing practices and a deeply flawed and harmful criminal justice system,” Joy Buolamwini of the Algorithmic Justice League writes on Medium. Even within the sectors of the tech community that advocate for human-centered design, such as human-computer interaction, little has been done to grapple with racism. [. . .]

To move forward, designers of emerging technology have to prioritize the needs, values, and desires of Black bodies and lives. [. . .]

Black-Centered Design approaches offer a framework by which the nuanced complexities of the Black identity can act as an ethos for creating more equitable and just emerging technological solutions. [. . . ] In the editorial “Diversity is Not Enough,” [MIT professor Ceasar] McDowell writes that: “The idea here is that if you design an intervention or change to work for (and with) those who are most marginalized, then you inevitably cover them and those who are in the majority.”

Read the full article in Fast Company >>