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Assumptions canvas, for more equitable and less problematic products
Unexamined assumptions rarely turn out well. At best, your product/app/service will stumble, from which you can recover but at a cost. At worst, your assumptions can lead you to undermine democracy. It certainly is true that the damage will be exponential to the people in the world who are already the most vulnerable.
These assumptions often arise from perhaps the ur-assumption — perhaps the original sin in tech and design — that everyone else is you, the person making the thing. We want the thing, the thinking often goes, and we’re smart and good people, so let’s give this gift to the world.
And so Google Buzz is birthed. Or creeper period-tracking apps. Or… you can just read the book.
I’ve seen it happen in my own places of work, where a founder pressures the product designers to make something to show to investors that more matches the pie-in-the-sky pitch — and the result was something that the users rejected, as their needs, inconveniently, did not align with those of the investors.
This all came into focus for me recently when, on one of those manifold design Slacks, someone told me his team was worried they might be making assumptions that could lead to unintended consequences. With their project, a poor assumption — such as assuming a steady power supply — could expose users to potentially life-threatening situations (such as improperly cleaned or stored masks). He asked me if I knew of any formal process for teams or individuals to examine the assumptions they’re making, with the goal of avoiding unintended consequences. It’s a good question.
It’s a good question especially in these times, when it’s all the more critical to prioritize research and learnings around inclusion, diversity, and equity; as outlined in the Design Justice movement, we need to be better at centering the voices of those who are directly impacted.(Look around your office: is this the entire population that will be affected by what you put out into the world?)
And it’s a good question that spans problems in design thinking, limited conceptions of inclusion, affinity, and even the problem of groupthink. It’s a question that covers how an assumption can lead to catastrophic failures, like Google Buzz, or…
