Applying human-centered design to unconscious bias awareness

Assumptions, inferences, and points of view. These elements comprise a key part of the human-centered design process. They largely fall under the umbrella of the "define" phase of the process.

This is when you are drilling down to the problem you’re really trying to solve. Observation, interviews and immersion help inform design teams and enable them to identify a number of assumptions and inferences, which can then lead them to a point of view or problem statement. That point of view can then be tested by way of a prototype. The prototype may test one or more of your assumptions, guiding you through multiple iterations to a solution.

Before I dive further into the details of process, it’s important to know this: I am trying to figure out how to help people become more aware of their unconscious bias using human-centered design methods taught to help designers identify problems and opportunities.

The way unconscious bias works is that we often leap immediately from an automatically and subconsciously generated assumption to an action. Design, specifically human-centered design, relies on abductive reasoning, leaping intentionally from an observed phenomenon to an assumption about what the observed thing or action means.

In the human-centered design process, assumptions are tested, ultimately, through a prototype. There are a number of steps that occur between the assumption and the prototype, of course. But, at a surface level, that is the path taken.

Our unconscious bias operates differently. We leap immediately from assumption to solution whereas, in a human-centered design process, we delay naming a solution until after multiple rounds of testing. In the case of unconscious bias, the solution is the action we take without testing our assumptions first. We make snap judgements and act on them constantly. Everything from the people we invite to work with us to whether we sit next to someone on the bus — these snap judgments happen every day.

Unconscious bias is natural, and we all have it. It has contributed to the survival of our species, and is not, unto itself, a bad thing. It can, however, lead to negative outcomes. Those outcomes can either hurt or otherwise disadvantage others, denying them a level playing field and an opportunity to bring their authentic selves to work or play.

My goal is to create a learning experience that gives people tools to use so they might shine a light on their unconscious bias. These activities are meant to help generate awareness in a way that empowers participants, giving them actionable tools to use.

So, I first spoke with the d.school’s Director of Fellowships, Thomas Both, testing my understanding of the human-centered design process. He made a key observation: it’s important to remember that the prototype in the case of design process is a thing — a product or an experience. That raised the question of what a prototype looked like when looking at the process from the perspective of an unconscious bias intervention.

I posited that the prototype would need to be a question.

Then, I pulled d.school Teaching Fellow, Nihir Shah, aside and asked for his take on my parallel processes — one for human-centered design unto itself and the other for process as taught through the lens of unconscious bias disruption. He cracked the problem open for me, showing me that I was not necessarily teaching a parallel process so much as I was helping people by making a space for debriefing interviews not from the perspective of what people heard but how they heard it.

He reminded me that, in human-centered design (as in the work of raising awareness of unconscious bias), it is important to “see the water” — to identify the nature of your own experience and how it colors the assumptions you make.

This helped me realize that what I am creating is not a workshop that carries people through the human-centered design process soup-to-nuts with the lens of unconscious bias. Instead, I am pulling together a series of experiences to help them see the effect their past life experiences have on how they respond to other people. I am then giving them tools from the design world they can use to help themselves and others challenge assumptions prior to taking action.

Finally, I spoke with the d.school’s Executive Education Director Jeremy Utley. Jeremy is a master of guiding people through the leap from observation to inference. That inference leap, like Mario jumping over a canyon in Mario Brothers (which is how Jeremy and his team articulated the process to me when I learned it), can be an uncomfortable part of the process for many people.

That’s because we are often led to think of assumptions as bad or even dangerous. The fact of the matter is, we make assumptions automatically throughout the day. We have to. Our brain can only process so much raw information. So, it makes shortcuts to get us to decisions faster. That process produces both good and bad results.

Human-centered design stretches out the process and gives us tools and language to investigate those assumptions through action. First, though, you have to go through the discomfort of make an assumption and placing it in front of others to test.

Jeremy helped me realize that the assumption made in unconscious bias may be more clearly identified if participants are called on to react to one of their past experiences — specifically a moment when an action that resulted from their unconscious bias led to a negative outcome. In other words, have people look at a moment when they were the heel.

The learning experience would then be giving people a series of tools to help them work backward, going from the action they undertook to the assumption they made. Then, they could work forward, with a prototypical question to help them prevent a similar occurrence from happening in the future.

So, I am going to be testing these three insights from folks, re-crafting a final version of the “Designing for Worldview" learning opportunity to see if I can create an experience that helps people better understand how unconscious bias works, investigate a moment that went awry and then use a series of tools to help discover the right question to ask going forward that may help them avoid similar situations in the future.