6 ms·

I'm curious if anyone has examples where diversity led to better product creation, or counterexamples where companies were hurt by since the designers overlooke

I'm curious if anyone has examples where diversity led to better product creation, or counterexamples where companies were hurt by since the designers overlooked certain groups. One notable example was Google photos racist blunder: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33347866 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33347866 Arguably Apple not focusing on women's health for the longest time could have also been mitigated by more female product people as well.

hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
I strongly, strongly doubt that having more dark skinned people on their staff would have prevented their "Google photos racist blunder". I remember a similar complaint that Google must not have any black people on staff because Maps was pronouncing "Malcolm X Boulevard" as "Malcom 10 Boulevard". To which I would respond that I have a hard time believing people who make those complaints have any understanding of how software development works or how bugs are introduced.
- theatraine 8y ago
  It's hard to say if it would have helped. My rationale would be that the engineers commonly dogfood their own products and do ad-hoc testing so a black engineer may have been able to catch the bug before it hits production. Taking the example to the logical extreme I doubt the bug would have hit production if the entire development team was dark-skinned.
  - albertgoeswoof 8y ago
    No it wouldn’t have made it to production if the training dataset had more dark skinned people and lots of gorillas in it.
trjordan 8y ago
Try Googling "diversity performance teams." "Why Diverse Teams Are Smarter" - HBR [1] "Diversity and Work Group Performance" - Stanford [2] "New Research: Diversity + Inclusion = Better Decision Making At Work" - Forbes [3] There's a drumbeat of this stuff, both old and new, that comes out constantly. [1] https://hbr.org/2016/11/why-diverse-teams-are-smarter https://hbr.org/2016/11/why-diverse-teams-are-smarter [2] https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/diversity-work-group-performance https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/diversity-work-group-p... [3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/eriklarson/2017/09/21/new-research-diversity-inclusion-better-decision-making-at-work/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/eriklarson/2017/09/21/new-resea...
- jl2718 8y ago
  These are interesting evidence, but they don’t explore the question of why. The idea that mere color of skin would be causal to performance in anything other than hide-and-seek is kind of anaethema, right? I’m certain that there is a legitimate reason for the effect, but people are right to be skepical without any exploration of the cause. Are diverse teams more likely to disagree? Do they exhibit complementary recall of facts? Different modes of creativity? I think a more complete explanation of causality would result in a much more concerted effort to increase diversity and a lot less resistance. As it is, it feels like the diversity ‘lobby’ is actually trying to create controversy instead of proving value.
  - colemannugent 8y ago
    It's sociology, they can't tell you the reason why because they don't know. Instead they rely on people wanting it to be true, so they build a "common sense" argument that lacks evidence. When these people push for diversity they often mean "have every skin tone represented in your team photos". While this feels nice and would certainly repel any accusations of not being "diverse enough" it is the wrong kind of diversity. Now here is my "common sense" argument: What people actually want is a diversity of opinions. This you can imagine having a positive effect on performance as each member of a team would have a slightly different take on things that may allow the group to discover a better solution. This would explain why the diversity of skin tone type approach somewhat works, as different races usually have different experiences, which usually means more diversity of thought when compared to a completely homogeneous group. The obvious drawback to diversity of thought is that it's harder to quantify and optimize for. Anyone can look at a team photo and tell if a race is over/underrepresented because we have evolved incredibly advanced pattern recognition abilities. You can't easily tell what someone's opinions are without talking to them for a little while. Management already has trouble hiring qualified candidates since they don't know what qualified candidates look like, so adding diverse thinking to the list of criteria just exacerbates the hiring problem. Plus if you actually could select thought diverse candidates you run the risk of not including all races, opening yourself up to accusations of bias that can be devastating in today's politically charged climate. Social science can't accurately model single humans well, let alone groups of humans as they attempt to solve problems. Even my analysis that we really ought to be concerned with diversity of thought is based on intuition rather than experimentation. It's a hard problem domain, and the solutions may not be intuitive.
mrkurt 8y ago
It's easier to find counter examples (because it's difficult to pinpoint exactly how much a given effort contributed to a good product). This one is funny/sad: https://gizmodo.com/why-cant-this-soap-dispenser-identify-dark-skin-1797931773 https://gizmodo.com/why-cant-this-soap-dispenser-identify-da... More history: https://priceonomics.com/how-photography-was-optimized-for-white-skin/ https://priceonomics.com/how-photography-was-optimized-for-w... Not a product, but musicians and gender: https://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/oct/14/blind-auditions-orchestras-gender-bias https://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/oct/14/... We build to our biases, and groups of people integrate their own collective bias into all their decisions. It would be difficult to argue otherwise, I think.
benbreen 8y ago
My wife always gives the example of car airbags and crash test dummies: carmakers in the 1960s successfully resisted including female-sized crash test dummies. In fact, female-sized dummies were apparently not legally required until around 2012 [1]. How many women (and children or short men!) were injured or even died because a group of male automobile executives deemed male-sized dummies to be sufficient as a universal standard? [1] http://leevinsel.com/blog/2013/12/30/why-carmakers-always-insisted-on-male-crash-test-dummies http://leevinsel.com/blog/2013/12/30/why-carmakers-always-in...
deleted 8y ago
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hn_throwaway_99 8y ago

I strongly, strongly doubt that having more dark skinned people on their staff would have prevented their "Google photos racist blunder". I remember a similar complaint that Google must not have any black people on staff because Maps was pronouncing "Malcolm X Boulevard" as "Malcom 10 Boulevard". To which I would respond that I have a hard time believing people who make those complaints have any understanding of how software development works or how bugs are introduced.

theatraine 8y ago
It's hard to say if it would have helped. My rationale would be that the engineers commonly dogfood their own products and do ad-hoc testing so a black engineer may have been able to catch the bug before it hits production. Taking the example to the logical extreme I doubt the bug would have hit production if the entire development team was dark-skinned.
- albertgoeswoof 8y ago
  No it wouldn’t have made it to production if the training dataset had more dark skinned people and lots of gorillas in it.

trjordan 8y ago

Try Googling "diversity performance teams." "Why Diverse Teams Are Smarter" - HBR [1] "Diversity and Work Group Performance" - Stanford [2] "New Research: Diversity + Inclusion = Better Decision Making At Work" - Forbes [3] There's a drumbeat of this stuff, both old and new, that comes out constantly. [1] https://hbr.org/2016/11/why-diverse-teams-are-smarter https://hbr.org/2016/11/why-diverse-teams-are-smarter [2] https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/diversity-work-group-performance https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/diversity-work-group-p... [3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/eriklarson/2017/09/21/new-research-diversity-inclusion-better-decision-making-at-work/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/eriklarson/2017/09/21/new-resea...

jl2718 8y ago
These are interesting evidence, but they don’t explore the question of why. The idea that mere color of skin would be causal to performance in anything other than hide-and-seek is kind of anaethema, right? I’m certain that there is a legitimate reason for the effect, but people are right to be skepical without any exploration of the cause. Are diverse teams more likely to disagree? Do they exhibit complementary recall of facts? Different modes of creativity? I think a more complete explanation of causality would result in a much more concerted effort to increase diversity and a lot less resistance. As it is, it feels like the diversity ‘lobby’ is actually trying to create controversy instead of proving value.
- colemannugent 8y ago
  It's sociology, they can't tell you the reason why because they don't know. Instead they rely on people wanting it to be true, so they build a "common sense" argument that lacks evidence. When these people push for diversity they often mean "have every skin tone represented in your team photos". While this feels nice and would certainly repel any accusations of not being "diverse enough" it is the wrong kind of diversity. Now here is my "common sense" argument: What people actually want is a diversity of opinions. This you can imagine having a positive effect on performance as each member of a team would have a slightly different take on things that may allow the group to discover a better solution. This would explain why the diversity of skin tone type approach somewhat works, as different races usually have different experiences, which usually means more diversity of thought when compared to a completely homogeneous group. The obvious drawback to diversity of thought is that it's harder to quantify and optimize for. Anyone can look at a team photo and tell if a race is over/underrepresented because we have evolved incredibly advanced pattern recognition abilities. You can't easily tell what someone's opinions are without talking to them for a little while. Management already has trouble hiring qualified candidates since they don't know what qualified candidates look like, so adding diverse thinking to the list of criteria just exacerbates the hiring problem. Plus if you actually could select thought diverse candidates you run the risk of not including all races, opening yourself up to accusations of bias that can be devastating in today's politically charged climate. Social science can't accurately model single humans well, let alone groups of humans as they attempt to solve problems. Even my analysis that we really ought to be concerned with diversity of thought is based on intuition rather than experimentation. It's a hard problem domain, and the solutions may not be intuitive.

mrkurt 8y ago

It's easier to find counter examples (because it's difficult to pinpoint exactly how much a given effort contributed to a good product). This one is funny/sad: https://gizmodo.com/why-cant-this-soap-dispenser-identify-dark-skin-1797931773 https://gizmodo.com/why-cant-this-soap-dispenser-identify-da... More history: https://priceonomics.com/how-photography-was-optimized-for-white-skin/ https://priceonomics.com/how-photography-was-optimized-for-w... Not a product, but musicians and gender: https://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/oct/14/blind-auditions-orchestras-gender-bias https://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/oct/14/... We build to our biases, and groups of people integrate their own collective bias into all their decisions. It would be difficult to argue otherwise, I think.

benbreen 8y ago

My wife always gives the example of car airbags and crash test dummies: carmakers in the 1960s successfully resisted including female-sized crash test dummies. In fact, female-sized dummies were apparently not legally required until around 2012 [1]. How many women (and children or short men!) were injured or even died because a group of male automobile executives deemed male-sized dummies to be sufficient as a universal standard? [1] http://leevinsel.com/blog/2013/12/30/why-carmakers-always-insisted-on-male-crash-test-dummies http://leevinsel.com/blog/2013/12/30/why-carmakers-always-in...

deleted 8y ago

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