User Interaction DEI Toolkit

For creating more inclusive, equitable platforms

About

A structured, proactive approach to designing for DEI.

Want to plan and assess your product's user interactions from a DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) lens? This toolkit can be used to evaluate platforms where users interact with other users. It will help you understand how users can interact on your platform, and how those interactions can facilitate either diversity and inclusion or harassment, discrimination, and bias.

Technology is not neutral.

DEI isn’t just about company culture. Specific user interactions can be designed in ways that include diverse users and mitigate bias. Numerous platforms have come under fire for design choices that enable biased modes of thought and action.

Your users deserve an equitable, inclusive platform. It is in both moral and business interests to create one.

Cards

What’s on the cards?

These cards contain 20 prompts organized into 7 themes:

  • Sharing information
  • Developing trust
  • Humanizing users
  • Appropriate interactions
  • Supporting users
  • Measuring
  • Company policy

Each prompt card has an overarching question and context. Content is grounded in concrete examples and framed as questions to consider in the context of a specific product. While there is no one-size fits all solution for designing an equitable product, the prompts suggest some best practices to consider and discuss.

Cards PDF
Example prompt card about structuring reviews to reduce bias

Workshop

How to use the toolkit

This toolkit can be used to generate ideas for new platforms, iterate on current designs, and evaluate existing products. Prompts can be considered individually or in a group workshop setting. Our workshop template will guide you through the following steps:

  1. Define context & goals
  2. Conduct DEI analysis
  3. Identify what's missing
  4. Make an action plan
Miro Workshop Template Figma Workshop Template
Workshop template for the toolkit which has all of the toolkit content along with empty spaces to fill in questions and collaborate

Our Story

Graduate capstone project in designing for DEI

This was created by Rachel Feltes, Megan Peaslee, Meghna Nayak, and Sara Koeck for our graduate capstone project in Human Centered Design & Engineering at the University of Washington. We are all UX Researchers or Designers.

We created this toolkit over the course of our Master's thesis project. Our Capstone sponsor, Carina, asked us to evaluate their platform and see how they might design features differently to support equitable interactions. When looking for a tool to guide us, we couldn't find one. So we created our own.

We conducted extensive research by analyzing literature on DEI, completing a competitive analysis, talking to industry experts, and talking to marginalized users affected by the platform we were evaluating. Our abstracted findings turned into this set of DEI focused prompts.

Many thanks to our sponsor, advisors, classmates and everyone who contributed to this project

Carina

Contact

This toolkit is a starter kit.

We developed this toolkit with a focus on platforms where two people interact with each other. Examples and context are given from the perspective of United States cultural norms. Many of these prompts can be considered from other contexts, however some areas may not translate and some may be missing.

These topics are all important, but not currently incorporated in the toolkit:

Questions? Feedback? Ideas? Reach out!

Would you like to contribute to extending this toolkit? Do you have feedback on any of the prompts or examples currently included? Email us at interaction.dei.toolkit@gmail.com.

Contact Us