Diversity App Research Project

My Role as a Designer

As an Interactive Designer, it is my job to solve problems users face in their everyday experiences with their devices. I must be able to create with intention and be able to meet the needs of the target audience for which I am making the product for.

What am I working on right now?

I am currently working on a way to address the community’s uncauntious opinions over certain groups of people. We all have some form of bias that effects the way we talk and interact with each other. My job is to create a mockup of an app or website that allows people to become more informed on the groups they mispercieve.

What is the Challenge?

The topic I wish to be covering is perceptions and abolishing barriers. In this challenge, I will be creating an app or website for college students to help them obtain a broader knowledge of how to be inclusive. It needs to be educational, user friendly, and encourage students to have a more open mind.

So Why Do Research?

The first step to this project is to reseacrh my topic and establish what it is the users want in a product. Reasearch is important because a designer needs to understand what they are designing for and who they are specifically designing for so that they can meet the users’ needs.

The Interview

I interviewed a student from my school named Hira Hamirani. She is a multicultural scholar and has knowledge and experience pertaining to perceptions and abolishing barriers. One of the key points she made was that everyone has an unconscious perception over others and this causes them to behave in a specific way. This does not always have a negative reaction and it does not always pertain to race and culture alone. The interviewee believed the best way to overcome this was to educate people and encourage them to ask questions. These types of misjudged perceptions are normally towards topics of race, gender, religion, and culture. However, stereotypes can also be stated towards something so simple like athletes or people with blonde hair. My job is to figure out which group(s) I want to address in my product as well as how I want the user to learn through my app.

Data Research

The data set titled “Share of adults who agree that movie/TV roles for selected groups are often stereotypes in the United States as of February 2019” shows that many believe certain roles in movies and tv shows are often stereotyped based on what kind of person they are. The highest percentage shows that Black people feel the most stereotyped in this kind of media. It influences my project by having me think about how I want to address influencers who are encouraging this inaccurate view onto groups of people. I also wish to address where these false representations are coming from.

Scholarly Literature

The article titled “Teaching Our Own Racism By: Stephen Bookfield” teaches the reader about their unconscious perceptions over specific groups of people. It talks about the influences this can have in a work environment and in society. Their main point is that even the most wholesome white people still have some form of bias.

One of the main goals to my design is making sure I find a soft way of confronting the user about possible perceptions they may have over a type of person or a group of people. They should be informed about this but I don’t want them to leave the website or app because they feel like they are being accused of a wrongdoing. Everyone is guilty of stereotyping in some form or way.

Community Research

The source, “How do we rid ourselves of Stereotypes?” talks about the ways we can abolish stereotypes over different races. They directly claim that white citizens need to educate themselves in order for stereotypes to stop. It takes a little effort and a little more awareness in order for us to overcome this.

This influences my project by maybe angling my product to be for white students rather than colored. This source believes that it is mainly white citizens who need to be educated. Although I do want to address this, I do not want to target white people alone. I believe everyone has been guilty of stereotypes in some shape or form. My app will be designed to address a broader audience and teach them to have an open mind and to not judge based on appearances.

What’s My Next Step?

I plan to start sketching ideas of how to address these problems. I will decide the types of categories I wish to cover and who is my target audience. I will also be deciding how I want the user to be interacting with the product.