Friction in Equity Work for Product Development: A Human-First Approach to Getting Unstuck

Abstract

As part of an internal UX team, researchers at a multinational tech corporation were tasked with improving the Equity of products through product development practices within the company. However, the researchers had to first define the space and assess the friction their colleagues felt when trying to do Equity work. What followed was an ethnographic “noticing” of colleagues feeling “stuck” followed by an accounting of social and organizational blockages at three levels: institutional, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. But to even capture these signals, the researchers themselves had to first get “unstuck” and reframe our UX-centric understanding of internal “users” back to ethnographic-centric “humans”. Based on the findings of mixed ethnographic and UX methods, this case study explores the multidimensionality of Equity work for the individual, questions the boundaries of what “counts” within the professional sphere, and argues for new strategies for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) solutioning. The first half of the paper lays out the fraught landscape of product building for Equity and the challenges practitioners face when business constraints intersect with top-down DEI goals. How did we account for the many causes of friction in Equity work? How were our colleagues blocked, slowed down, or paused within the minutiae of their day-to-day? The second half identifies opportunities for Equity-focused UX praxis within organizational structure. How did storytelling create space for productive discomfort? What were the calls-to-action for individual contributors, managers, and leadership? And how did we define success within our own work? In the end, this case study demonstrates how, when experiencing friction ourselves, we got unstuck by stepping back and simply asking ourselves, “Why is this so hard [for us right now]?”