Why shouldn't we include more perspectives?

Today, about 80% of the world's programmers are men and the nationality is European or North American. What does it do to our digital solutions? It has already manifested itself in voice recognition, which works worse for women, face recognition, which works worse for dark-skinned people, or certain digital solutions in public services, which do not work for the elderly or new arrivals. Or AI solutions that discriminate against certain groups in society and where prevailing norms and grounds for discrimination are reinforced by AI solutions rather than the AI ​​reducing discrimination. It is no longer enough to create solutions for the norm - we have to broaden our view and capture more needs and the first thing you can do is look around you who you involve in your work. It starts with you.

Even though I, and many people with me, have such a hard time thinking out a sensible answer to why we shouldn't include more perspectives, it happens very often that we see projects and development groups that are content with the perspectives we have today. And it's also not unusual to perceive yourself as diversified and have an attitude that everyone is welcome - but if you were to really zoom out - which cultures, religions, political views, nationalities, gender identities, people with functional variations or age can you see in your workgroup, or unit, etc.? And how welcome do those who are outside your established norm feel?

I am completely convinced that it is not done out of reluctance or with the aim of being exclusive, but people are comfortable and we like to use the contacts we usually go to and we prefer to be with like-minded people where we feel validated. It's convenient and nice, and it's called confirmation bias. But if our task is to drive innovation and development, it is a no-brainer to include more people and maybe even people we are initially a little uncomfortable with. The trick is to create a pleasant environment where it is comfortable to be different and think differently, i.e. a culture that can be affirming despite our different perspectives. (Psychological security). It's better for any kind of innovation than the most perfect flow chart you can find.

It's about thinking a bit critically about the group composition we have. We cannot take people out of the innovation process, therefore the group needs to be diversified. Another common mistake is that we use data that is not representative of the users, or create solutions that work best for the norm. If you belong to the norm, you may also find it difficult to see other needs - because it is not a problem for YOU. If, on the other hand, you create solutions together with and for those who find it most difficult to use your solution - then there is a good chance that those who are within the norm will be able to handle it as well.

There are so many good examples of when it has been done with a norm-critical approach, and I list some examples below of projects that really understood which norms are driving the development, and which we need to identify and restructure - and which by doing so can be a great source of new solutions.

A great example is the "Urban girls movement", which worked with urban development in Botkyrka municipality and took an approach in: What should the city center look like if it is to feel safe for young girls? Because if young girls find it safe - then it's safer for everyone. Despite this, that aspect has historically been ignored by much of our urban development.

We worked in another project with Umeå municipality where we put an equality filter on work commuting - because if men traveled like women, Umeå would reach its climate goals for passenger transport.

Or when we reviewed the norms and values ​​and system errors that hinder young Värmlanders to a greater extent from achieving better school results and increasing their entrepreneurial abilities. Then we could see that the solution lay far beyond activities for increased attendance at school or more activities to increase entrepreneurship. There are lots of other things that need to change first.

In both of these cases, we have worked with service innovation and norm-critical innovation as a method - which has given us a completely different problem formulation and much more interesting FOI projects. It is inspiring and innovative and creates a deeper understanding of the problem if you dare to think critically and involve new perspectives.

This blog post is actually quite basic - we don't go into gender order, grounds of discrimination or power and constructions of power - which is really the root cause of this facial recognition, voice control, etc. not working for certain target groups. It is important to resolve the specific issues, but ultimately this is symptomatic of a larger problem – of a power imbalance that we need to identify and restructure in all development projects. The question we should ask ourselves is rather: Who has had the most power in designing this solution up to today - and what will the distribution of power look like in the future