Confront your microaggressions

Thesis

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The prompt

Help people aware of microaggressions and change their behavior in daily communication

Problem

We all have stereotypes, all the time, without knowing it. These biases come from our various background, cultural environment and personal experience.

We consciously and unconsciously reveal these attitudes and beliefs through different ways in everyday life. It might hurt a certain person or a group through our implicit actions verbally or nonverbally.

78% of people experienced at least 1 microaggression over a two-week period.

Solution

Make the invisible visible. Leverage technology to help people notice and rethink their microaggression behavior in real time, educate and inform people to interact better with each other.

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Scenario 1

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The aggressor notices the microaggressive behavior immediately

• Quickly save events
• Save for later recall and training
• Track behavior for improvement

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The microaggression is recognized and raised by the recipient

• A quick overview of the person talking with, to help determine potential risks or consequences of responding
• Choose preset less attacking language

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The aggressor needs to respond to the recipient as soon as possible

• The aggressor’s watch got locked until initiate a further conversation
• Confront the problem with each other in a timely manner

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Scenario 2

View daily activities and track a specific microaggression

• A clear overview of the records of their microaggression
• Choose to track particular microaggressions based on their preferences

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Interact and engage in the community

• Friends at the same stage of achievement are able to encourage and motivate each other
• Badge awards empower people to be more aware of their behavior

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Be educational and bring more engagement

• Read and learn about the impact and how to improve their behavior
• Have a quiz to make sure they gain the knowledge of the particular type of microaggression

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Track long-term microaggression stats

• Provide insights on how the user’s performance in the past week or month in a visualized way
• Be able to improve their behavior and keep track of them

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My process

I started with establishing a tangible design process in the early stage to have a clear and specific scope about the necessary phases of thesis project and breakdown to the tasks for each week and each day.

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Findings from interview

During the time I started to interview different people about their understanding and experience about microaggressions. I realized there are some pain points the they are struggling about.

1. The recipients of microaggressions always feel a sense of powerlessness and invisibility, while the aggressors were often unaware of the harm they've brought.
2. The recipients of microaggressions are often regarded as oversensitive and take offense too easily.
3. Because microaggressions are so subtle and ambiguous. it's often hard to know if you're committing one or if you're on the receiving end.
4. The recipients of microaggressions have a significant negative impact on their mental and physical health.

Target audience

• Students and faculty who experience microaggression in daily communication and have difficulty to pinpoint and respond microaggression within the school community
• Office workers who would like to pay more attention to how they talk in the workplace to improve personal growth and build a more inclusive environment

Personas & their typical days

Recipients' emotional journey

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"How might we" exercise

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Visual design

For both the watch and mobile user interface, I utilize color to indicate different status and level of intensity, for example, the pinkish color represents an aggressive and unstable situation and the light green color expresses a safe and good condition.

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Reflection

The purpose for this thesis project is to bring more awareness to people while communicating with others in daily life and I explored a new experience to have real-time detection and long-term tracking system to make microaggression less ambiguous and uncertain. Instead, it should be more visible and encouraged to confront and transform into a more positive conversation. During the time I talked to people with different cultures and races and did some research about microaggression, I found out some typical scenarios that happen a lot among these people and came up with the idea to solve the problem. There are some technical and other issues I didn’t take into consideration yet, which I hope I can have better solutions after further testing and deeper learning.