Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, Stanford University

Beyond Pink and Blue:
Gender in Tech

Spring 2019 Core Class

Dates: Mondays, April 1st – June 3rd (No Class Monday May 27th)

Time: 1:30 p.m. — 4:20 p.m.

Location: d.school, Studio 2

SCHEDULE

Week 1 — Monday, April 1st

Overview

In your first class, you will participate in group introduction activities, including a rapid design challenge. We will give an overview of the course, introducing the key components of sex, gender and intersectionality, design thinking and tech.

Session 1: Warm Up + Introductions*

* Pre-task: Please be prepared to bring along a cultural prop, a tangible example of a piece of technology or design that reflects your interest in the class theme of ‘Gender in Tech’. This might be an inspirational example, such as the Nike Hijab; or a product that would benefit from a more inclusive approach, such as smart assistants like Siri, Alexa or Google Assistant. Your example might be something that you have worked on, or something that you use on a daily basis. These props will form the basis of our collective introductions. MAKE IT TANGIBLE – try and bring along the actual object/ product or a physical representation (photograph/ illustration) to share with the group.

Session 2: Course Overview – Sex, Gender and Intersectionality, Design Thinking, and the Tech Context

BREAK

Session 3: Design Exercise – Re-scripting your Product Examples

Readings for week 1

1. Ni Loideain and Adams – From Alexa to Siri and the GDPR: The Gendering of Virtual Personal Assistants and the Role of EU Data Protection Law
2. Anne Fausto-Sterling – Gender/Sex, Sexual Orientation, and Identity Are in the Body: How Did They Get There?  (Read Pages 1-5 only)
3. Joy Buolamwini and Timnit Gebru – Gender Shades: Intersectional Accuracy Disparities in Commercial Gender Classification
4. Rena Bivens – The gender binary will not be deprogrammed: Ten years of coding gender on Facebook
5. Judith Shulevitz – Alexa, Should We Trust You?

ADDITIONAL LINKS:

Open source virtual assistants by Monica Lam

Monica S Lam

Monica Lam/keynote talk/video

Week 2 — Monday, April 8th

Overview

In our second class, you will form interdisciplinary design teams, learn about your first design challenge on the topic of Virtual Assistants, hear from an expert in the field and meet our project partners. You will also jump into our first design exercise, which focuses upon conducting inclusive empathy work to catalyze your design process.

Guests:

Academic Expert: Professor Monica Lam, Computer Science, Stanford

Project Partners: To be revealed on the day.

Session 1: Warm Up + Project #1 Introduction: Virtual Assistants

Session 2: Q+A with Project Partners

BREAK

Session 3: Design Exercise – Introduction to Empathy

Readings for Week 2

1. Tatsuya Nomura, DE – Robots and Gender
2. James Zou and Londa Schiebinger – Design AI so that it’s fair
3. Matt Simon – THE GENDERLESS DIGITAL VOICE THE WORLD NEEDS RIGHT NOW
4. Nic Newman: ‘Voice technologies will be hugely disruptive in terms of how people access media’

ADDITIONAL LINKS:

Gendered Innovations Case Studies

Week 3 — Monday, April 15th

Overview

In our third class, you will be sharing the key insights gained from your team’s empathy field work. Londa Schiebinger will lead a discussion about sex, gender and intersectionality. Your will have an introduction to synthesis and ideation and practice building off of your early project insights.

Guests:

MacKenzie Thomas, Product Inclusion, Equity + Diversity Lead, Google

Nicole Ricossa, Director, SMB + News Partners, Google

Cathy Pearl, Head of Conversation Design Outreach, Google

Session 1: Warm Up + Group presentations*
* Homework: In preparation for this session, please create five slides presenting key insights from your team’s empathy work. This might include inspirational quotes, sticky questions, tensions and opportunities. MAKE IT CLEAR, TELL US A STORY – don’t just list out data from your explorations, turn your findings into a poster that communicates to your audience.

Session 2: Design and Intersectionality

Session 3: Introduction to Tools for Synthesis + Ideation including Gender Prompts

NO READINGS

Week 4 — Monday, April 22nd

Overview

In our forth class, you will be prototyping concepts that respond to your project partner’s design challenge. These will be presented for the whole group to experience and critique. Your project partners will also offer their critique on the final outcomes.

Guests:

Workshop Co-Facilitator: Andrea Small, Strategic Designer and Consultant, d.school Teaching Fellow 2015-16 – http://www.andreasmall.com/

Rebecca Hwang – Co-founder Rivet Ventures,

Adam Cheyer – Founding Co-Technical Lead/ Siri, Apple

Project partner

Session 1: Warm-up + Share out

Session 2: Rapid Prototyping Workshop*
* Homework: Please bring along 3 concepts from your project to prototype in class. Produce one portable whiteboard per concept.

Session 3: Prototype Demos + Partner Feedback + Wrap Up

Readings for Week 4

1. Åsa Wikberg Nilsson and Marcus Jahnke – Tactics for Norm-Creative Innovation
2. Paxtyn Merten – 6 Things Data Visualization Can Learn From Feminism
3. Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein – Feminist Data Visualization
4. Shaowen and Jeffrey Bardzell – Towards a Feminist HCI Methodology: Social Science, Feminism and HCI

ADDITIONAL LINKS:

1. Design Thinking Toolkits

Week 5 — Monday, April 29th

Overview

For week 5, you will be distilling 3 tools for product designers working on gender inclusive designs, based on the learnings and outcomes from your first project. We will facilitate a design artifact making workshop to create a first version of a Gender in Tech Toolkit. We will also discuss diversity and inclusivity in interdisciplinary teams with an expert from industry, reflecting upon your experience on the course so far.

Guests:

Industry Expert: Alice Ching, Lead Engineer, Funomena

Session 1: Gender Tool Kit Artifact Workshop
* Homework: Please bring along 3 ideas for tools (Sex, Gender and Intersectionality)

Session 2: Diversity + Inclusivity in Team Work

Session 3: Mid-stage Reflections

Readings for Week 5

1. Edmond Awad, Sohan Dsouza, Richard Kim, Jonathan Schulz, Joseph Henrich, Azim Shariff, Jean-François Bonnefon & Iyad Rahwan – The Moral Machine experiment
2. GERMAN ETHICS COMMISSION AUTOMATED AND CONNECTED DRIVING
3. Edwin Olson – The Moore’s Law for Self-Driving Vehicles

Week 6 — Monday, May 6th

Overview

In week 6, you will receive your second design challenge on the topic of Driverless Cars. We will hear from an expert in the field and meet our project partners. You will kick start your gender inclusive empathy field work.

Guests:

Academic Expert: Dr. Marco Pavone, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Stanford

Project Partners: To be revealed on the day

Session 1: Project #2 Introduction: Driverless Cars

Session 2: Project Launch with Partners

Session 3: Design Exercise: Immerse, Observe, Engage

Readings for Week 6

1. Kathryn Schox – Emerging Women Startup Leaders in Transportation, Mobility & Autonomous Vehicles
2. Kara Swisher – Owning a Car Will Soon Be as Quaint as Owning a Horse
3. Alex Hern – The racism of technology and why driverless cars could be the most dangerous example yet
4. Yanbo Ge, Christopher R. Knittel, Don MacKenzie, Stephen Zoepf – Racial and Gender Discrimination in Transportation Network Companies

Week 7 — Monday, May 13th

Overview

In week 7, you will share your team’s key insights from your empathy work, reflecting upon your use of your gender inclusive empathy prompts. We will discuss the topic further with another expert in the field. We will also conduct a synthesis and ideation exercise.

Guests:

Kaan Gunay, Co-Founder + CEO Firefly

Session 1: Warm up + Group Presentations

Session 2: Guest Speaker + Group Discussion

Session 3: Design Exercise: Synthesis + Ideation

Week 8 — Monday, May 20th

Overview

In week 8, you will prototype and test your driverless car concepts with the whole group and receive feedback from project partners.

Guests:

Project Partners

Rebeca Hwang

Project Partners

Session 1: Warm up + Share Out*

*Homework: Please bring along 3 concepts to prototype.

Session 2: Design Exercise: Prototyping + Testing

Session 3: Critique + Reflections

ADDITIONAL LINKS:

1. Design Thinking Toolkits

Week 9 — Monday, May 27th – NO CLASS

Week 10 — Monday, June 3rd 

Overview

In our last class we will be finalizing our Gender Inclusive Design Toolkits. We will share our reflections on the course and celebrate.

Session 1: Warm up + Gender Inclusive Design Toolkit Making*

*Homework: Please bring along 3 ideas for tools based upon learnings and outcomes from project 2

Session 2: Class Reflections

Session 3: Celebrations