User interaction dei toolkit
University of Washington
Jan - Jun 2021
A toolkit with digital resources to encourage more inclusive and proactive design choices.
For the toolkit, please visit our website.
Problem
During my graduate capstone project, my team and I worked with Carina, a care matching platform, to evaluate their product from a diversity, equity, and inclusion standpoint. The goal was to figure out a way to become more proactive in tackling these issues and mitigate any discrimination or harassment that users may be facing on the platform.
While evaluating Carina’s platform for DEI, we were unable to find any resources to help us in this process. So we decided to make our own! We used our extensive research both with users and the literature, to compile a toolkit that can help teams to be more aware of DEI in their design process.
What’s Covered
The toolkit is made up of 20 prompts organized into 7 themes:
Sharing information
Developing trust
Humanizing users
Promoting interactions
Supporting users
Measuring impacts
Setting policies
The Cards
Each prompt card has an overarching question and context. Content is grounded in concrete examples, and framed as questions to consider in the context of a specific product. While there is no one-size fits all solution for designing an equitable product, the prompts suggest some best practices to consider and discuss.
How to use this toolkit
This toolkit can be used to generate new ideas, iterate on current designs, and evaluate existing products. Prompts can be discussed in a group workshop setting or individually. Our workshop template will guide you through the following steps:
Define context & goals
Conduct DEI analysis
Identify what's missing
Make an action plan