Design thinking consists of a design process in which many ideas are developed into prototypes, which allows to try out many different solutions and address potential issues in the prototypes in a short time. The process allows finding creative and innovative solutions.

Most technology firms and digital developers use design thinking techniques as they are well adapted to a fast changing environment where innovation and consumer input are central. Steps were developed to guide this process and it became the usual way of thinking in many design projects.

In the course Design Thinking and Maker Culture we were introduced to design research. I was pretty confused at the beginning as what we read about design thinking and making sounded more like a belief system than a method. But as we learned more about the importance of design, the importance of design research became clearer.

The main lesson I took away from this course is the importance of understanding design processes to be able to address biases and flaws in those processes, especially the biases that result in products that are discriminatory and harmful to certain groups.

In the documentary, Coded Bias, face recognition technology is shown to have built-in biases. The program works remarkably well, but only to recognise white male faces. As stated by AOC when presented with those facts in Congress, “We have a technology that was created and designed by one demographic that is only mostly effective on that one demographic, and they are trying to sell it and impose it on the entirety of the country”. The Congress audience also outlined how that technology excluded people of different gender expressions and worked with diminishing efficiency on black and females faces, failing to recognise most black women faces.

This shows how a technology can have built-in biases that reinforce racist and sexist discriminations. The use of this facial recognition technology by police force and security companies could have devastating consequences for minorities who are already discriminated against. For example, the mis-identification of young black men by police using facial recognition reinforces existing stigma and police abuse on black minorities.

While the use of this technology was ruled against by the US Congress. The built-in biases here were found by Joy Buolamwini to be because the database used to teach the program contained a disproportionate number of pictures of white and male faces compared to pictures of black and female faces.

Many cases of built-in racism and sexism in technology exist. This shows the importance of supervision and feedback on design processes. Design research reflects on how design processes can be used to counter such biases by insuring that a diverse group of designers work on a product for example or by creating feedback loops between the designers and a diverse group of customers. Importantly, design thinking puts user input and consumer needs to the center of the design process. This is crucial to build fairer, more sustainable technology.