Responsible & Inclusive Cards: An Online Card Tool to Promote Critical Reflection in Technology Industry Work Practices

Abstract

Societal implications of technology are often considered after public deployment. However, broader impacts ought to be considered during the onset and throughout development to reduce potential for harmful uses, biases, and exclusions. There is a need for tools and frameworks that help technologists become more aware of broader contexts of their work and engage in more responsible and inclusive practices. In this paper, we introduce an online card tool containing questions to scaffold critical reflection about projects’ impacts on society, business, and research. We present the iterative design of the Responsible & Inclusive Cards and findings from five workshops (n=21 participants) with teams distributed across a multinational technology corporation, as well as interviews with people with disabilities to assess gameplay and mental models. We found the tool promoted discussions about challenging topics, reduced power gaps through democratized turn-taking, and enabled participants to identify concrete areas to improve their practice.