Review: Technically Wrong

In her book Technically Wrong, author Sara Wachter-Boettcher raises a call to action for anyone who uses digital products to get involved in designing tech to prevent poor experiences, by increasing diversity of thought and participation. Written with engaging and relatable examples, the author introduces how poor design decisions such as with Facebook’s Year In Review memories or gendered keycard access that don’t recognize women as doctors, can be prevented with a more thoughtful approach on who is being served by digital products and who could be alienated or insulted by the same.

She encourages tech to consider hiring culture “misfits” for a more inclusive approach to designing tech instead of seeking candidates from similar schools, experiences or in-company referrals. To improve diversity in tech, the problem is not the “pipeline of candidates” but one of a “leaky bucket” – we need to ensure an environment that is more welcoming and supportive of women and underrepresented minorities. Referring to Slack where more than 40% of management positions are held by women, the author reinforces that we don’t need rock stars or ninjas, but just people who bring a combination of expertise, humility and empathy to build great products.

I really liked the chapter on Normal People where the author discusses “personas” that are used to support empathetic design of products and how they can backfire if the product teams have not taken the time to understand nuances in user behaviors. Instead of using demographics to define personas, she recommends deeply understanding motivations and challenges of users and how they interact with tech to design products. Using the example of the default avatar on endless runner games, she cautions designers to be more careful when selecting default settings. I loved her recommendation to not focus on the “average” case but instead focus on “stress cases” where the design could break down – this would help designers see the spectrum of varied and imperfect ways humans interact with products, especially taking into consideration moments of stress, anxiety and urgency.

Another area where digital products have repeatedly failed marginalized populations are with forms and selection menus – take a simple design problem with names. When considering names that are hyphenated, long, patterned or of indigenous populations, many are rejected by digital products since they don’t conform to a simple “John Smith” pattern. This leads a majority of the user population to have to adjust their identity to conform with unnecessary “rules” mandated by digital products. Other opportunities where thoughtful design can avoid poor experiences include misplaced celebrations (friendversary updates for estranged friends), market negging (gain access to more personal information than necessary in a cloak of cuteness), inattentional blindness, caretaker speech (patronizing language that tech knows best) and more.

While I don’t believe that tech intentionally encouraged abuse of its platforms (Built to Break chapter), and I do subscribe to a “fail fast” approach as it pertains to experimentation with innovative products, I agree with the author that tech can do so much more in being intentional when deploying solutions at scale, prioritize recovering from mistakes, as well as learning from failures.

More often than not, poor design decisions manifest in tech products due to a lack of diversity in the insular industry and a lack of intentional approaches. However, I am hopeful that these unintentional yet endemic issues are surmountable with inclusive and multi-disciplinary teams and tech can serve all its users if we invite all to have a say in how tech is built.