Gender-Inclusive Software and Beyond

Margaret Burnett
ACM Distinguished Speaker, Distinguished Professor Oregon State University

Stevenson Hall 1300
12:00 PM - 12:50 PM

How can software industry professionals (e.g., developers, UI/UX professionals, product managers) assess whether their software supports diverse users? And if they find problems, how can they fix them? We begin with a summary of GenderMag, a systematic inspection method for finding and fixing “gender inclusivity bugs" -- biases against different genders in software interfaces and workflows. We then show what software industry professionals are doing with it in the real world, from their bias finds & fixes to their practices & pitfalls in using it. Finally, we introduce InclusiveMag, a meta-method that can be used by HCI researchers to generate systematic inclusiveness methods for other dimensions of diversity.