Client

As my final projects for my MS program, my team and I worked with Carina Care, a non-profit organization that matches health care providers with those needing care (similar to an Uber to Airbnb but for care providers).

Problem

Carina approached us asking how their platform could do better in terms of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Our job was to figure out (1) how to evaluate the Carina platform in terms of DEI as it existed at the time and (2) determine what opportunities existed for the company to grow into a more inclusive space.

Understanding the problem space

First, we needed to understand more about the company, the problem, and the users. My job as a researcher was to gather and synthesis this information through the following steps:

• Literature Review - Looking at DEI policies, interaction guides, monitoring strategies, product evaluations, etc.

• Competitive Analysis - Compare 7 similar companies and understand how they handle DEI topics.

• Stakeholder Interviews - Understand the team’s goals, projects, concerns, and ideas.

• Expert Review - Once we had compiled a set of DEI heuristics from the above steps, we piloted them with DEI experts in industry.

From these initial research efforts, the team and I landed on a couple of key findings:

• DEI frameworks exist, but not really for UI evaluation purposes.

• Anti-discrimination policies exist but rarely work.

• The usefulness of progressive disclosure is context-dependent.

• Lots of companies document their discrimination policies but there is little evidence of action.

Understanding the User

It was clear to my team that any impactful changes that could be made on the platform would be in the profile or messaging section of the app, as that is where you had the most amount of interaction between users. For our next phase of research, we wanted to get user input on how they utilize these sections of the app and what could be improved through the following:

• Survey (n=277) - gauge how many of the users on the platform had experienced some sort of discrimination or harassment.

• Interviews (n=5) - understand how care providers are using the platform, how they set up their profile, and interact with potential clients.

recommendations

Speaking with users and understanding the way they behave on the platform made me and my team focus on highlighting the human aspect within the platform. These providers are human beings and should be given the opportunity to showcase themselves and their personality, building connections with potential clients that go beyond just the services they can provide. In a potential re-design, we recommended that profiles should;

• be rearranged so that information that makes providers stand out is surfaced earlier.

• highlight unique skills that go beyond basic requirements

• allow providers to speak in their own voice about their personality, hobbies, and skills.

As I am not a designer, my other teammates took over the potential redesign based on the recommendations we had made. My fellow researcher and I then conducted a small UserTesting.com study to test the usability and flow of the new designs with real users.

Impact

Once our designs were finalized and our findings were synthesized, we met with our client team and walked them through everything we had done and uncovered. As this was a graduate school project, we handed all materials and designs back to the client and provided them with a plan of how they could measure and reevaluate their platform in terms of DEI in the future to track progress.