When you design a product, you design a future

By Britney Crooks and Paul Daugherty

Hundreds of micro-decisions each day determine inclusivity or exclusivity

“The world is hungry for a new kind of leadership. Amid the challenges of 2020, two truths became evident. More companies than ever have embraced the axiom that every business is a technology business, and they’ve ignited a new era of exponential transformation as technology continuously reshapes industries and the human experience. Now, as we begin shaping our post-pandemic reality, companies must learn to [excel at] change.” –Accenture 2021 Tech Vision

Every company is becoming a technology company.?Think about that. We live in an exceptional time, where companies are compressing what would have been at least a decade of change into 24-36 months. And they’re using a potent mix of emerging technologies to do things they’ve never been able to do before. They’re literally inventing the future.

But with great power comes great responsibility.?With digital transformation happening faster and at greater scale,?everyone from product designers to data analysts needs to ensure technology works for all.?Every leader is now a technology leader, helping to shape the future with each decision.

Products that perform are great. Products that?perform for ALL?are the mandate.

As Accenture technologists, we get excited about?tech for good .?Part of tech for good means ensuring the future we’re creating is inclusive.?What does that look like in our everyday lives? Let’s use fitness trackers as an example.

Many fitness trackers measure heart rate with optical sensors and green light. As your heart beats, the blood volume in your wrist changes. That changes how much green light is reflected back. The challenge with this is that green light is more likely to be absorbed by melanin, meaning the green light used on darker skin may not always recognize each heartbeat, making the tracker’s level of certainty is lower.?Some devices in the market have recently switched to infrared light because it's more accurate, but some are still using a method of measurement that excludes dark-skinned people from getting full benefit.?Britney has to be conscious of this every time she puts on a fitness tracker.

This is just one example among far too many. We must build inclusivity into our products, our services and our systems. Otherwise, the digital divide gets bigger rather than shrinking, in all areas of technology. Paul has made inclusivity by design a core tenet in Accenture Technology. Recently, Britney and?Daniel Cole , Talent & Organization Senior Manager, shared insights and actions needed to incorporate inclusivity into technology design during the?Preparing for the Future: Innovation with Equality ?webinar, which looked at our Technology Vision 2021 with an inclusion and diversity (I&D) lens.

One of the themes of this year’s Tech Vision was?“Stack Strategically.” ?This theme is important because the way organizations stack now matters later. Companies are building their technology stack, the foundation for how their company functions in a post-digital world.?As they make decisions about their stack, they are making decisions that could determine inclusivity or lack of it. Some of the decisions made over morning coffee may be hard to undo later, as technology choices become more integrated and build upon each other.?We should make decisions purposefully, with an inclusive focus, to build the best possible future for all.

If sensors built into our exercise clothing can warn us of an impending cardiac event, then?the consequence for leaving out darker-skinned people could be a debilitating heart attack or even death for people of color.?If self-driving car interfaces are modulated for a deeper voice, then we risk accidents because women can be more easily misheard by their vehicle.

Who sits at the decision table?

To prevent those scenarios from becoming a normal part of our future,?make sure you’re building diverse teams that are responsible for incubation, development and testing of a product.?And if someone is an “only” in the room, they need to have enough influence to be heard. This can be through the person’s level or role but could also be enabled based on the culture you create for the team.

Another way to drive more diversity in design is to support or enable successes for the diverse entrepreneurs who are building some of these products.?Building their success and their brand allows their voice and insight to have greater impact. This is why Accenture created our?Black Founders Development Program .

The power for a better future is in our hands.?There’s so much more we could say here, but we’ll leave you with this for now:?The power is in our hands, as business and technology leaders, to shape a better future for all.?As we move into a future where sensors and microprocessors are all around us (Paul counted at least 30 just in his home office), the decisions we make have greater networked impact more rapidly than ever before.

Technology is at the heart of redefining every experience we have, as citizens, consumers and workers. But?people drive technology. And we must design it to be inclusive. We'd love to hear from you - what are you doing to design technology with inclusion at the core?