By Janus Boye
Antonia Fedder is a Hamburg-based designer for impact-driven brands
We all have bias.
But how did biases find a way into the digital world, what are the effects of (machine) biases and what can we do against them?
In a recent member's call, Hamburg-based design leader Antonia Fedder decoded bias and helped us navigate the digital landscape towards inclusivity.
We heard about the cause and roots of bias in tech and society. Antonia also shared practical strategies and actions to prevent discriminative patterns and behaviors. As she said:
“True innovation lies in designing technology that doesn't discriminate, but rather embraces diversity and fosters inclusivity. “
The conversation started with stating the obvious (“we all have bias”), and then she moved to the interesting ‘why’.
Why is it important to create an inclusive digital landscape
Many are reliant on screen readers and for those, even seemingly simple use cases, like navigating an invoice can take half an hour. Is that good design?
It’s a bit saddening after decades of creating digital solutions that still today an overwhelming amount of digital products are not designed with accessibility in mind. Many lack basic accessibility features and are not usable for all people. To make matters worse, many tools that we use every day also enforce gender and racial bias.
Antonia also shared some numbers to put things in perspective: According to the WHO over 1 billion people worldwide live with some sort of disability. In Germany that’s about 10% of the population. That’s too many to exclude.
One of Antonia’s favorite quotes on the topic is from UX analyst Lico Takahashi’s 2018 article on Why your design is biased:
“Design is never neutral”
Antonia took it one step further and said that it also applies to technology. Technology is never neutral and it’s also always political. Most are designed by men and for men. The consequences hinders and harm others. Inclusive technology needs to be unbiased and accessible to all. So, what’s holding us back?
What are the biggest problems?
To see where the problem is rooted and understand the problem and lack of progress, Antonia held a metaphoric mirror in front of all of us. Illustrated by a famous SNL comedy sketch she made the point that ‘let’s take a good look at ourselves’.
To quote:
“We project our beliefs and views into the world.“
She then introduced us to the so-called I-methodology. This is a big problem and unfortunately a commonly used design practice in which designers consider themselves as representative of the users.
Stereotypes play a big role and Antonia also introduced us to the term othering known from social psychology. This is the act of treating someone as though they are not part of a group and are different in some way. This happens when designers describe others by features (e.g. gender, age, religion), so that we can understand which groups we are a part of and which we are not. To be fair, this is very deeply embedded in us as humans. Sometimes the results can be very apparent - like stereotypical pink coloring products for women - but often it’s harder to detect.
Then there’s machine bias, a more technical aspect. Many have experienced this firsthand in 2023 playing around with tools like ChatGPT and experiencing bias in the output. These technologies are effectively holding a mirror and Antonia cited two older widely publicized cases of machine bias:
Back in 2018, Amazon scraped a secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women
In 2019, a study found that a clinical algorithm many hospitals were using to decide which patients need care was showing racial bias — Black patients had to be deemed much sicker than white patients to be recommended for the same care. Read more in this 2022 updated post: Algorithms Are Making Decisions About Health Care, Which May Only Worsen Medical Racism
This year prompting has become a big thing, and Antonia pointed us to an interesting LinkedIn post by Maaike Groenewege on how to prompt for racial & gender diversity without introducing cultural bias. For some balance, check out the comment from Dennis Oswald: “In 9 out of 10 cases, I assume the cause is poor prompting…”
So much for the big problems. Accessibility and inclusion has often been after thoughts in many projects, but now it’s time to break the cycle and create for all. Not just because it’s the right thing to do.
From Brussels with love - The European Accessibility Act
The European Accessibility Act took effect in April 2019 and to some of our members, in particular in government, this had a bigger impact than ensuring GDPR compliance.
EU-wide digital accessibility legislation was adopted in 2016 and came into full effect in June 2021. However, the connection between the EU legislation, the technical standard in support of it, and the standards and support materials developed by the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) can be hard to grasp. Read more on the European Commission website: Web Accessibility Directive — Standards and harmonisation
As Antonia charmingly said:
“It’s a chance - not a punishment!”
The law enforces what was already the case in the US and Antonia also made the point that building accessible solutions builds trust and shows that you take customer needs seriously.
I’ll add that accessibility is actually also one of only five categories in the Lighthouse scores, which impacts how you appear on the Google search engine. Antonia stressed that building accessible solutions to her is about fulfilling a social responsibility and comes with long-term business benefits.
What steps can we take to overcome bias in our work?
Simply put: Question everything!
Antonia encouraged us to challenge ourselves and introduce accountability in our design work. To be helpful, she also shared this list of 8 steps you can adopt in your work:
Education & Awareness
Examination of Assumptions
Inclusive Research and User Testing
Diverse and Inclusive Design Teams
Ethical Guidelines and Standards
Regular Bias Audits
Iterative Design and Feedback Loops
Ongoing Education and Training
As she said in the closing, we need to embrace inclusive technologies and accessibility today for a future-ready advantage.
Together, let's make our way towards a diverse digital environment.
Learn more about designing for all
If you are interested in exploring this topic further, Antonia also shared these three helpful resources:
A collection of articles by Deloitte on Diversity, equity & inclusion for tech leaders
Nielsen Norman Group has a helpful Accessibility and Inclusivity: Study Guide
We’ll naturally continue the conversation in our peer groups and conferences. You can often meet Antonia in person at our Hamburg-based design leadership group.
Finally, you can also download the slides (PDF) or even lean back and enjoy the recording below.