Removing gender bias
Tailors worked out long ago that men and women have different shapes. Yet this message has failed to enter many other areas of design. Car seat belts, for example, which date back to the 1880s, are often still more suitable for men, who tend to sit farther back than women when driving. And today the most forward-looking tech companies on Earth are still placing old-school bias (偏见；成见) into new products. Consider smart phones. Most are too big to fit comfortably into the average woman's hand, as are many video-game controllers.
An obvious part of the explanation for their design problem is that men control most of its companies—male-run firms receive 82% of venture-capital (VC) funding. Male bosses may be unaware of the problems women face. They may not flag up obvious areas of concern, or ask the right questions when doing their research for a new product design. And once an ideagets the green light, it will then be handled by product-design and engineering teams, three-quarters of whose members are men. These teams often use data to make decisions, but mixing all users together means they may fail to spot trends based on sex differences. Dependence on historical data, and the lack of data on underrepresented groups, can also create bias in algorithms (算法).
Next comes testing. Naturally, designers test original models on their intended customers, but they may not get feedback from a broad enough group of people. There is also the risk of confirmation bias—designers may listen to what they want to hear, and ignore negative reactions from some groups of users.
Tech's design bias needs fixing for moral, safety and business reasons. The ethical importance is obvious: it is wrong that women have to make do with a "one-size-fits-men" world, as Caroline Criado Perez, a writer, puts it. As for safety, regulators can tackle that by banning things that are dangerous to women—including seat belts—because they are no! designed properly.
But there is also a powerful business case for avoiding design bias, because huge opportunities are being missed. Women are 50% of the population, and make 70—80% of the world's consumer-spending decisions.
Change is coming. The first voice-recognition systems struggled to understand female voices, but most now manage just fine. "Femtech" start-up companies, which focus on women's health and well-being, may raise MYM 1 billion by the end of this year. VC funds and tech firms are hiring more women. Ensuring that products are designed for everyone would lead to happier and safer customers. For the companies that get it right, that means higher profits. What is holding them back?
