Can UX design help fight discrimination?
We use technology every day, even without being conscious about it. So why don’t we use it to help make the world a better place?
Discrimination is a real fact. I bet we all know a lot of people struggling for the color of their skin, their sexuality, their identity, or their age. But I also bet you don’t know so many people who are discriminating. How is that?
Sometimes we hurt people with our comments or actions without even realizing it. This was our kick-off. My team and I strongly believe education can help to solve the problem, and is there something better than a gamification experience to learn?
Cooltura is the result of a Design Sprint project that was born as the result of questioning how can we use technology to fight discrimination.
I urge you to keep reading to learn about the process of this idea.
Let’s start
Steve Stoute said “Good ideas come from everywhere” and I agree, but sometimes you have to look for them using the right tools, and this is exactly what we did. We developed our first Design Sprint project, a co-creation process in five days for solving problems and testing new ideas.
I honestly don’t want to turn this article into a list of how Design Sprint works or which are the steps to follow, but I do want to quickly guide you in this process through my prototype.
We had 5 days to work on this project, and we had to strictly follow the schedule planned:
To come up with the final idea was a fun but exhausting process. We had to choose the best two out of 46 sprint questions to work on them. We split the team of eight into two teams of four to work on one idea each.
The winning options were:
1.How might we make a user learn about discrimination and empathize with minorities in a fun way through gamification?
2. How might we involve people with discriminatory behaviors in gastronomic and cultural activities that promote an approach to different cultures?
I chose the gamification option because I believe it’s an easy and enjoyable way to instruct. As I pointed out at the beginning of the post, sometimes we are not aware of using an inappropriate language that can make someone uncomfortable, so this solution can help you understand better people with different gender identity, ethnic origin, age, or political ideology.
We used the storytelling technique to understand how this game could help people to empathize with other minorities at the same time they have fun.
We took our two profiles of our map (someone who is discriminating and someone who is being discriminated) and made them interact with our digital product.
We offered a solution where the teenager who is having a discriminatory behavior with a transgender kid is able to learn with the game and finally feel empathy with that kid.
We all agreed that the best way to approach this idea was to make a quiz game app.
We have the idea, so now what?
Time to prototype!
After choosing by dotmocracy (voting with dot stickers) the four ideas that each of us designed, we had to split again to prototype the winning idea on our own: Cooltura.
Design Sprint is a fun way to co-create, or at least that was my impression after having my first taste with it, but as you might know, life is no bed of roses.
I must admit I made the same mistake as any beginner. When you are all focused on making screens in Figma you don’t know when to stop, or even how. You just feel you have to keep designing so people will understand the interface much better, but this is not how it works exactly.
Design Sprint is a “ learn fast, fail fast” methodology, so you don’t want to spend so much time in the visual (as I did). You just want to have a prototype to test it and validate if it actually works so, if it does work you can get involved in the visual part, this time knowing that the idea will succeed and all your work has not been worthless.
In the following video, you can take a look at my final prototype.
Does it work?
When you think everything is finally over and you got your prototype, many questions come to your mind…Is it easy to use? Will it work? Will people understand it? Will they like it?
So now it’s time to answer all these questions by testing.
After doing a few testings (both remotely and face to face), I noticed some issues I could iterate to make the flow smoother and more understandable for the user, but overall I got positive feedback.
One of the verbatims I got was: “I would like my little sister to use it”, so I guess we can say that the idea succeed. Of course, there are things that need to be improved, but the main idea was understood and accepted for my testers.
Conclusion
Design Sprint has been my first encounter with the UX world and I loved it. I believe it is a good way to validate ideas in just a few days, so if the idea is good you will have done it in just 5 days, but it is not so good, you will just have lost 5 days so you can focus on a new one.
By being a short project with the limited time you also have to learn to prioritize, and having a schedule with all the tasks to do day by day is extremely helpful.
Regarding my personal experience, I have had so much fun working on a team and putting into practice this co-creation dynamic. I also have learned I need to be more practical and don’t get lost in insignificant details because that is not what this methodology is about.
My next challenge will be a Design Thinking project and I can’t wait to tell you about it!
Thank you for reading! I hope this story has been useful and interesting to you!
