Digital Product Inclusivity: DE&I by Design Assessment

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Your organization has worked hard to ensure that your workplace is diverse, equitable, and inclusive, but what about your digital products and software teams? DE&I is not hitting the mark if your digital products and tech teams aren't inclusive and intersectional. This covers the people who make up the teams to the way people are supported and even how products look and feel.

Think about these questions:

  • Do employees feel a sense of inclusion or exclusion when using your intranet?
  • Is your digital team diverse with opportunities for mentoring and developing diverse, intersectional employees?
  • Are your users truly seen and heard while engaging with your digital products?

According to the Great Attrition research study conducted by McKinsey, organizations need to take time to truly understand their employees. They further shared in their article, Why Women Are Leaving and How to Rethink Your DE&I Strategy, that many women are planning to leave their jobs in the next 6-months.

 

Percent of Women Planning to Leave their Jobs in the Next 6-Months

46%

Women of Color

35%

White Women

 

Being a woman-led technology company, one key area we focus on is how digital experiences and tech teams contribute to employee culture and brand experiences. More specifically, we take a close look at how digital DE&I influences and contributes to employee and customer retention. However, digital experiences are often overlooked when it comes to DE&I initiatives. To change this, organizations can first start by evaluating digital products and tech teams against a DE&I scorecard to assess their current state.

 

Key areas to focus on include:

Diversity: the presence of differences that may include race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, nationality, socioeconomic status, language, (dis)ability, age, religious commitment, or political perspective. Don't forget intersectionality!
Equity: the process of fairness. Do all customers and employees have equal access to the tools they need to succeed in designing, developing and using products?
Inclusion:do employees and customers feel like your digital products are meant for them? Do they feel like your services or training programs are meant for them? What about those who are neurodivergent or remote workers? 

 

To help organizations better understand what questions to ask and how to process and respond to the answers to these critical questions, Predictive UX developed a DEI Product Index (DEI PI pronounced DEI "pie"). The DEI PI is an assessment of over 100-points of diversity, equity and inclusion. The findings from our assessment allows us to measure the DEI maturity of both tech teams and the products they are designing which have an impact on your company inside and out. From that maturity benchmark, we define actionable recommendations across people, process, technology and content that guide organizations in becoming more diverse, equitable and inclusive in their product teams and in their product designs. 

 

Why You Need Expert Help

Many companies have ERGs and DE&I initiatives, but they aren't trained in user experience design, design thinking and data-driven design. Leveraging methodologies and frameworks from these areas results in deeper insights across your digital DE&I maturity as UX researchers and experts are trained to ask open-ended questions that dig deep into your organizational culture, mindset and processes. Here are a few samples:

  • What languages do members of the product team speak languages other than English?
  • How are tech team members trained in DEI + UX?
  • What accommodations are provided during user research testing for those who are visually or hearing impaired, neurodivergent, or otherwise in need of assistive technology?
  • How do you ensure the product process simple and clear across different age cohorts?

At the conclusion of our assessment, you will receive:

  • DEI PI Scorecard Analysis
  • DEI Maturity Model
  • Actionable Recommendations

Learn More

 

Our DEI by Design Experts

KarenKaren Passmore
DEI PI Creator

LinkedIn

 

Jen

Jen Segovia
Sr. UX Lead

LinkedIn

Picture of Karen Passmore

Karen Passmore

Karen Passmore is the CEO of Predictive UX, an agency focused on product strategies and user experience design for AI and data-rich applications. Karen talks about UX, AI, Inclusive Design, Content and Data Strategies, Search, Knowledge Graphs, and Enterprise Software. Her career is marked by product leadership at Fortune 500 companies, startups, and government agencies.

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