Racist soap dispensers

Photography has racial bias.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:47 AM on October 24, 2019 [4 favorites]

Hm, I don't know if this is exactly what you're looking for, but the entire world is made for right-handed people. Every product and way of doing things basically. I really mean the entire world.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 7:49 AM on October 24, 2019 [16 favorites]

In the fabric and fashion world for the longest time "nude" worked the same way as the Crayola "flesh" color did. So nude linings were peach tone or "caucasian beige". That is changing now so that nude is becoming a section of various colors, but it is a fairly recent thing.
posted by Tchad at 7:53 AM on October 24, 2019 [11 favorites]

There are lots of ways building designers try to exclude homeless people, like having little spikes all over flat surfaces, or having dividers on benches so you can't lie on them.

I imagine this book would be up your alley. I learned about it from this 99% Invisible episode.
posted by roll truck roll at 7:56 AM on October 24, 2019 [7 favorites]

This is what the 99% Invisible podcast is all about. Here are the results for a search for 'bias,' but many more of their episodes are relevant as well.
posted by googly at 7:56 AM on October 24, 2019 [3 favorites]

99 Percent Invisible had a good episode on this, focusing on women.

Makeup is another good example. There's a reason why Fenty was so popular when it first came out, and looking at what's available for lighter skin colors versus darker skin colors. "Flesh colored" bandages.

Also, the racial history of hair care products and the assumptions as to what is considered professional looking, what you have to go through to get 'professional' hair.

The 'pink tax' - similar products for men and women will be more expensive for women. Razors are a notable example.
posted by dinty_moore at 7:56 AM on October 24, 2019 [9 favorites]

I can't find the link, but:

In endurance athletics -- cycling, running, etc -- we wear heart rate monitors. They are of two types: electromagnetic, and optical. Newer, nicer ones are optical, and use LEDs to read through the skin.

Except they work markedly LESS well on darker-skinned people.
posted by uberchet at 8:13 AM on October 24, 2019 [1 favorite]

Oh, there's also "the ketchup question" as an example: Where you keep your ketchup is culturally determined by what you use as a condiment. If you associate ketchup with vinegar, you'll keep it in the cupboard by the vinegar. If you associate ketchup with mayo or mustard, you'll keep it in the fridge with the mayo or mustard.

Also a typical issue is not thinking about how AI or design decisions might impact disabled users, like the delivery robot fiasco.
posted by dinty_moore at 8:19 AM on October 24, 2019 [3 favorites]

Although it was never implemented, Amazon famously had to scrap their recruitment/hiring AI because it was biased against female candidates.
posted by helloimjennsco at 8:22 AM on October 24, 2019

Building off @arbitraryandcapricious: Bigotry Encoded: Racial Bias in Tech.

Further reading: Band-Aids; Racist shooting target imagery; gender stereotypes in children's toys.
posted by wicked_sassy at 8:40 AM on October 24, 2019 [1 favorite]

Also thought of this one: designing for disability inclusion.
posted by wicked_sassy at 8:42 AM on October 24, 2019 [5 favorites]

Stores in the city I live in use the standard 8ft shelves and 3ft deep produce bins. Where I come from in the U.S. such setups are sometimes jokingly (or bitterly) referred to as "short people discrimination".

That takes on a much more sinister tone where I live now. The indigenous population (which makes up 80% of the city) averages 4’10 in height.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 8:43 AM on October 24, 2019 [13 favorites]

Standard desk height in offices is around 29”, which is good ergonomics for fairly tall men.

Smartphone widths have increased over the last few years to the point where they are too big to be held single-handedly by many womens’ hands.

More than one facial-recognition program has failed to detect dark-skinned faces.
posted by nat at 8:52 AM on October 24, 2019 [8 favorites]

I once worked in an office where - despite 90% of the staff being women - the men's restroom was in the same area, while you had to badge out to reach the women's. Small thing, but it stuck with me.
posted by Tamanna at 9:03 AM on October 24, 2019 [7 favorites]

On the other hand, kitchen counters are usually a better height shorter people (women) than taller people (men). Just about anything built with a non-adjustable height that is used by humans will inherently be biased against humans with height outside a certain range.
posted by SaltySalticid at 9:04 AM on October 24, 2019 [2 favorites]

Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez is a recent publication jammed full of this stuff. You can also follow her on Twitter for a steady stream of it, if you don’t mind your eyeballs exploding with rage on a regular basis.

A lot of the interviews she did around publication time talked about crash test dummies and toilet provision in public buildings but there are scores of other examples in the book. Give it a read and then make it required reading on your course.
posted by penguin pie at 9:19 AM on October 24, 2019 [12 favorites]

Until very recently (ie this year) make up. Foundation & concealers in particular often didn't have a range of colors for anyone that wasn't Caucasian or slightly sunburnt Caucasian. Makeup swatches if shown on a website where show on pale skin. Supposedly Neutral make up palettes having mid tones for creases & blending that would be considered light on many people. Oh and mineral sunscreen giving a white cast wasn't considered an issue as it only showed up on darker skin tones.

Having said that there has been to my eye, I am not a person of color so can only speak to how it seems to me, the beginning of a change in how make up companies think in the passed year or so however with more range of skin tones being included in foundation/concealer launches and small things like more ranges of colors in neural palettes, highlighters etc as well, so I'm not sure how well this would work as an example, except maybe of how public pressure from influencers & consumers can start to change things.
posted by wwax at 9:23 AM on October 24, 2019

One last one - try the colorblind tester on various websites, maybe with a graph or two. If you're only using red and green to differentiate between stop and go on your item, you're likely to have a problem.
posted by dinty_moore at 9:29 AM on October 24, 2019 [1 favorite]

Tools and machines are designed for the size and strength of the average man. Hammers are a size that's easy for a man to grip and swing. A lot of women would probably find it easier to use something slightly smaller. Firefighters need to be able to carry a certain amount of weight because of all the heavy equipment they have to use. If most of the people available to fight fires had the size and strength of the average woman, the equipment would undoubtedly be designed quite differently.

And I can tell you that if you are 5 feet tall and you live in the US, nothing is designed with you in mind. You need a pillow behind you to drive a lot of vehicles and even then it may be a stretch, especially if there's a clutch. Kitchen counters and cupboards are too high. Chairs and couches are too big. You can never find a really comfortable place to sit. If you need some specialized clothing - a uniform for work or sports, a heavy duty set of rain gear for field work - it will never come in a size that fits you.
posted by Redstart at 9:34 AM on October 24, 2019 [6 favorites]

I'm five feet tall, so not even considered disabled by my height, but: I can barely reach the pedals of my car even with the seat all the way up which I'm sure will make any deployment to of the airbag SUPER SAFE..., I regularly encounter mirrors in public and private washrooms that show nothing but my forehead, I've never sat on public transport or a restaurant and had my feet comfortably set on the floor (ah my legs fall a sleep so much), petite clothes are rare in my size range and I have to hem all my clothes myself and many tops are too tall for me (long gaping straps falling off, huge arm holes, etc), bikes in my size are for usually for children, I have to ask for help or climb shelves in most stores, car seat belts will dig into my neck to the point of causing abrasions sometimes, the assumption that I can walk as fast as my longer legged fellow students to get across campus in the allotted time as they designed the damn schedule, or that the straps to hang on to in the bus are even remotely comfortable or stabilizing for someone as short as me. There is more, but who can remember it all!

Now none of this is comparable to racial bias, obviously. But these are the design biases I encounter from being only 4 inches shorter than the average American woman. (also the whole "kitchens are better for shorter people" is a wild assertion. They are better for mid-range/average height women. I'm legit short and I can't reach any of my cupboards except the bottom shelves, the back corner of my counter, and I have to basically go ass over head to reach into the bottom of a deep sink, or a top-loading washing machine for that matter).
posted by wellifyouinsist at 9:40 AM on October 24, 2019 [14 favorites]

There were a number of stories in the news within the last month or two about the International Space Station and how they had trouble with the all-female spacewalk because they could not find two working spacesuits sized for women.

Mary Robinette Kowal has lots of threads about inherent bias against women in the space program on her Twitter feed. This thread about optimizing and gender from a few weeks ago was epic.
posted by matildaben at 10:07 AM on October 24, 2019 [4 favorites]

I read an article on the subject recently:
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/feb/23/truth-world-built-for-men-car-crashes
posted by mkuhnell at 10:18 AM on October 24, 2019 [2 favorites]

Robert Moses, the god of NYC urban planning, is a good example of this.

Moses [made] public declarations about the racist character of the streets, buildings and infrastructure he planned, like his rationale for putting still-fatal low bridges over the Long Island Parkway to keep urban black people from traveling by bus to the de-facto whites-only beaches he built; or his decision to put his legendary parks, pools and playgrounds as far as possible from black neighborhoods (the one pool he did install within walking distance of a black neighborhood was kept "deliberately icy" because Moses had heard that black people wouldn't swim in cold water). (BoingBoing)
posted by Beardman at 10:42 AM on October 24, 2019 [3 favorites]

many player voice command programs in video games don't respond to female voices. same with customer service portals that only use verbal responses.
posted by poffin boffin at 10:44 AM on October 24, 2019 [1 favorite]

Please give me examples (or resources) of implicit/explicit/voluntary/involuntary racist, sexist, classist, ableist, etc., biases you area aware of in the design of the material world.

Discriminatory design was one of the first targets of disability civil rights activism. Public buses all had stairs to enter. Transit authorities initially maintained that this wasn't discriminatory because there was no rule or policy barring wheelchair users from the bus.
posted by Snarl Furillo at 11:33 AM on October 24, 2019 [4 favorites]

Human test models for photographic film were always white people, so cameras actually couldn’t photograph brown skin properly until Hershey’s asked Kodak to make film that was flattering to chocolate (!)

Early face recognition software often couldn’t recognize Black people as human, or would tag them as gorillas

Band aids are colour matched for pink skin

Office air conditioning is always freezing cold because men wear suits, so women in dresses are usually uncomfortably cold at work

Any seating with arms or seat divisions on planes and busses are often too small for fat people, and on public benches are designed to forbid homeless people from sleeping there

Women’s and men’s public bathrooms should never be the same size or have the same number of fixtures- women need more toilets and larger rooms (and better hooks for purses) because sitting to pee / dealing with menstruation / being pretty for the patriarchy takes longer, so the women’s bathroom is always more full

Single steps at business entryways are unwelcoming to wheelchair users, walker users, and stroller pushers (usually women)- and it’s such a blatant thing, since a single step could almost always just be a slope!
posted by nouvelle-personne at 12:24 PM on October 24, 2019 [9 favorites]

Racial bias in health algorithms.

"... a widely used algorithm, typical of this industry-wide approach and affecting millions of patients, exhibits significant racial bias: At a given risk score, Black patients are considerably sicker than White patients, as evidenced by signs of uncontrolled illnesses. Remedying this disparity would increase the percentage of Black patients receiving additional help from 17.7 to 46.5%. The bias arises because the algorithm predicts health care costs rather than illness, but unequal access to care means that we spend less money caring for Black patients than for White patients."
posted by taz at 12:33 PM on October 24, 2019 [4 favorites]

There are numerous ways in which the practice of medicine in the USA is racist and sexist.
- Pain complaints by black patients aren't taken as seriously
- The Tuskeegee experiment, obvs.
- New drugs aren't tested on women who might become pregnant, so we don't have a complete picture of how they work.
For a start.
posted by adamrice at 12:40 PM on October 24, 2019 [3 favorites]

Not sure if this is totally relevant, but in terms of the actual devices used, it has struck me lately how many jobs blithely use phone or Skype for first round interviews, which are terrible for hearing or sensory processing issues.
posted by nakedmolerats at 12:59 PM on October 24, 2019 [6 favorites]

If you want an academic source, Langdon Winner's 1980 "Do Artifacts Have Politics?" is very relevant here. I'm sure there's a design literature that cites him.

He is one of the (maybe the main? I'm not sure) sources for the racist Long Island bridges story, which is apparently mistaken--although his larger argument is still compelling. See scholarly takes on this from Joerges (1999) and Woolgar and Cooper (1999). (These are probably paywalled, unlike the Winner link above. Feel free to memail if you have trouble accessing.)

Oh, and speaking of Winner and the design literature, here is a curatorial project by Francesco Garutti reflecting on the Long Island bridge case and "devious design" (should be Article 4--for a design publication I find it hard to navigate. But not paywalled, at least!).
posted by col_pogo at 2:20 PM on October 24, 2019

In heritage (sometimes called conservation, preservation, in Chile I think it’s probably ‘patrimonio’?) the question of explicit/implicit bias to what is kept is central. The Athens and Venice charters were all about protection of monuments and obviously meaningful places, and the earliest popular movements for heritage tended to stress old buildings of architectural/historical importance. Notre Dame, the Parthenon. But especially in cities, where preserved buildings tended to be things like palaces, banks, churches, mansions, those items and places tend to relate to dominant groups in society at any given time—in the 1980s there was a shift towards valuing the heritage of working people, marginalised groups, and so on. And we’ve begun to recognise the significance of places and sites as landscapes where people experienced significance (as opposed to just built structures associated with ‘important’ figures). More recently the idea of overlapping and complementary heritage significance has caught on, but it’s remarkably hard to shift the popular idea of Heritage as monuments to important dead people and ‘lovely old buildings’. And that’s even without bad faith acting—there are plenty of people willing to deploy the past and heritage language for explicit present-day political purposes: the question of Confederate soldier statues in the South of the USA is the perfect example. The past is a designed artefact!

Have a look around the city where you live and you’ll probably see exactly what I mean.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 2:40 PM on October 24, 2019 [5 favorites]

Well - disability was and IS a huge one. A VAST majority of spaces are still entirely inaccessible.
This is after years of trying to push rules and enforce legislation. Example: The new $41 Hunters Point Library is inaccessible. (For anyone who thinks access issues are in the past, they very much are not.) Therefore a lot of people are pushing for more standard Universal Design It’s a MASSIVE issue that can affect anyone -even temporarily - affected by an impairment.
posted by Crystalinne at 3:10 PM on October 24, 2019 [4 favorites]

Women are more likely to get motion sickness from virtual reality simulators because they're built for male depth perception.
posted by Mchelly at 3:29 PM on October 24, 2019 [3 favorites]

Safety equipment (hardhats, coveralls, goggles, etc.) is most widely available in sizes for normative men. I have an old flyer from a vendor where the waterproof overalls have an open fly for male urination, and of course only male models because that's all they supplied sizing for. Using improperly fitted equipment is unsafe and also leads to folks not wearing it at all.

Ditto tractors and I'm guessing most heavy equipment. Even if there's an adjustable seat, it's usually barely suitable for me at 5'6", let alone a former coworker at 5'0".
posted by momus_window at 4:08 PM on October 24, 2019

I saw a tweet the other day about a wheeled meal-delivery robot trapping a wheelchair-user in the road because it had taken up the navigable curb-cutaway at the crossing.
posted by pompomtom at 4:48 PM on October 24, 2019 [1 favorite]

I love this question. Is there a short name for this topic?
posted by Sterros at 7:35 PM on October 24, 2019

The Arsenal of Exclusion and Inclusion is a very design-y compilation of articles, with good content and poor organization. It is US focused.

Dell Upton writes mostly about the US but you still might find it interesting. He covers lots of topics related to the built environment and culture. I remember a good article describing how Thomas Jefferson used architecture to convey power within the slave owning environment he was part of, and another about how Chinese-Americans created Chinatown within a racist context. The Vernacular Architecture Forum has more international coverage now, and might have articles about topics more local to you.
posted by sepviva at 8:57 PM on October 24, 2019 [1 favorite]

Standard office temperatures are set in relation to men's metabolic rates, which, if you've worked in a big office before, will explain why literally every woman keeps a sweater at her desk.
posted by just_ducky at 9:02 PM on October 24, 2019 [1 favorite]

Another one: women experiencing hearts attacks get consistently worse care because doctors look for "classic" symptoms that men present with, and fail to recognize other symptoms than women present with.
posted by just_ducky at 9:06 PM on October 24, 2019 [3 favorites]

Office temperatures are traditionally set for men’s bodies in the expected professional attire, which in this specific case has much less flexibility for men. There are many other aspects of professional attire that’s discriminatory or more restrictive for PoC and non-men, this one is kind of a wash.

Most of what we consider ergonomic standards were tabulated by the US Army decades ago on their young, Caucasian, male personnel in high athletic shape, so anything using those measurements or metrics as a baseline doesn’t account for most of the actual humans in the world.
posted by a halcyon day at 9:10 PM on October 24, 2019 [1 favorite]

One size fits all T-shirts are designed for the average man.
posted by ch3ch2oh at 9:48 PM on October 24, 2019

I'm told by reliable sources, that if you are Deaf or otherwise rely on visual markers for conversation, this type of restaurant/bar sucks.
posted by Toddles at 9:55 PM on October 24, 2019 [2 favorites]

A 6-Year-Old Asks Why There Are No Female Toy Soldiers. Now, There Will Be. (NYT)
A letter written by Vivian Lord drew a flurry of news media attention and prompted one toymaker to develop, for the first time, a pack of the classic toy soldiers designed to be women.
posted by katra at 9:57 PM on October 24, 2019 [2 favorites]

- In the fairly recent past building had no women's loos, and even now they have at the most an equal number of facilities, while for various reasons women take longer in the loo.

- this is just something I've noticed, so may need checking, but pubs in the UK used to have separate women's and men's sections with bar access to both, and the bar was often much shorter on the ladies' side.

- can't believe no one's mentioned WOMEN'S POCKETS and issues with clothes for women in general.

- there's also the pink/blue thing
posted by low_horrible_immoral at 2:00 AM on October 25, 2019 [2 favorites]

I came here to post the study that taz posted above. It's noteworthy because in most studies of algorithmic bias researchers only have access to the outputs and have to do detective work to figure out how the bias came about, this study was able to look at both the "race-blind" inputs and the biased outputs and it speaks directly to how data that explicitly excludes race can lead to unequal outcomes. There is good media coverage on this paper.

The study was published with a companion piece that is also good, Assessing risk, automating racism.
posted by peeedro at 7:46 AM on October 25, 2019 [3 favorites]

Inequality by Interior Design (especially in its early years, when it was more focused on material culture) might have some interesting topics.

If you're looking for specific readings, Tressie McMillan Cottom has some essays that, among other things, show how implicit bias is embedded in the medical system and in the logic of evidence in domestic violence cases (since cameras can't always see bruises on black skin). These aren't tightly focused on questions of design, but they're both fantastic essays.
posted by dizziest at 7:59 AM on October 25, 2019 [1 favorite]

Office temperatures are traditionally set for men’s bodies in the expected professional attire, which in this specific case has much less flexibility for men. There are many other aspects of professional attire that’s discriminatory or more restrictive for PoC and non-men, this one is kind of a wash.

Except that wool suits are not actually expected in the majority of offices anymore, and most professional settings are still freezing, as are hotels, malls, movie theaters, and many other public spaces where no one is wearing professional attire. For years, I worked in a very casual office that was warm-pants-and-a-thick-sweater-and-sometimes-fingerless-gloves freezing for several employees. My male boss often wore t-shirts. Our thermostat was set at a very normal office temperature. There are many, many Asks about how to stay warm in the office that advise bringing a space heater. It's really not a wash.

AC is of course also a climate issue (made even worse when the AC and the space heater are working against each other and both using electricity), and might be a particularly interesting question to discuss in Chile, where AC isn't as ubiquitous as it is in the US. This Guardian article provides an interesting history of air conditioning, contextualizes it within city planning/architectural choices, and points toward some other possibilities.

(Also I meant to say in my previous comment how much I love that the protests are leading to this shift in your curriculum!)
posted by dizziest at 8:16 AM on October 25, 2019 [1 favorite]

Just personally, pretty much the entire built world presumes the ability to sit up for a sustained amount of time, which my cardiac output won't allow me to do.
posted by jocelmeow at 8:23 AM on October 25, 2019

TSA body scanners in the airport are cissexist—they are programmed assuming bodies scanned as female don’t have penises, and bodies scanned as male don’t have breasts. This causes big problems for trans people when flying.
posted by needs more cowbell at 10:49 AM on October 25, 2019 [3 favorites]

Heavy doors are a problem for old people, disabled and people pushing prams. Many cities have cut their snow removal budgets to the point that sidewalks are often impassable. The responsibility is on the property owner to clear the sidewalk whether they be disabled, elderly or pregnant. This is a huge financial burden and unsafe.
Tall people have just as much problem with fitting into and driving a vehicle. And Consumer Reports new issue discloses more of the problems with cars - for instance, until it was made law, the drivers side was made stronger to survive a crash, the passenger, as usual, was neglected.
posted by Enid Lareg at 1:53 PM on October 25, 2019

Placement and number of Women's washrooms in older buildings and historically male dominated workplaces.

Example, I was visiting a trading floor with a male colleague. We split up for a washroom break, he immediately found his and went in, I completed a full revolution of the very large floor, finally asked a woman, was directed to the reception area on the floor which is outside the security doors. I get to the only women's washroom, which is right beside another men's washroom. I can't get back through the security doors as a visitor so I have to regain access, find my colleague, who says innocently "thought I lost you, what took you so long?"
posted by devonia at 2:47 PM on October 25, 2019 [4 favorites]

the entire world is made for right-handed people

As a specific example: every single model of microwave oven, from every manufacturer in the entire world, has the door hinge on the left and the door handle and controls on the right. And unlike fridges, none of them can be swapped to open the other way.

This was infuriating when trying to find a microwave to fit a small space in a compact kitchen where there wasn't space on the left for the door to open into. And we're both right handed!
posted by automatronic at 3:10 PM on October 25, 2019

Women's clothes sizing and the fashion industry's issues with plus size clothing.
posted by SisterHavana at 8:54 PM on October 25, 2019 [1 favorite]

It's tangential, and doesn't have a social justice focus, but I can't get it out of my head.

Mobile phones die if you get them wet. They were mostly designed by people living in Northern California... where it rains like ten days a year, tops. I can't help think that if they were designed in the 95% of the world where it rains more regularly, we'd have waterproof phones by default.

Oh, and if they were designed by a group with more women... they'd fit into women's pockets, which massive modern phones, ah, don't seem to. Or they'd be useable one-handed by people with smaller hands, which again, nope.
posted by talldean at 6:08 PM on October 27, 2019 [2 favorites]

Voice recognition systems are a lot less usable if you don't have a "standard" accent.

Free services which require a valid credit card are inaccessible to many underbanked people.

One which gets me: baby changing is often only in the women's toilet.

Otherwise excellent medical personnel that try to speak to non-native speakers by using "friendlier" language (which is actually local slang and much harder to understand than the medical terms).

Making government services only accessible on more expensive devices.
posted by Wrinkled Stumpskin at 10:43 AM on October 28, 2019 [4 favorites]

the entire world is made for right-handed people

Another example, those chair-desk combos that only have a writing area on the right.
posted by HiroProtagonist at 7:59 PM on October 29, 2019

That people who need to open medical containers like blister packs, childproof lids or snap lids are often unable to do so. This may be because of the conditions for which they need the medications, or their age:

“... We found that 14% were unable to open a screw cap bottle, 32% a bottle with a snap lid, and 10% a blister pack. Female gender, higher age, living in an institution, Parkinson's disease, rheumatoid arthritis, cognitive impairment and impaired vision were all associated with a decreased ability to open the containers. Less than half of the elderly people who were unable to open one or more of the containers received help with their medication. Among those living in their own homes only 27% received help....”
posted by honey-barbara at 8:57 PM on October 29, 2019 [2 favorites]

Business hours, if your circadian rhythms aren't matched up to them.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 7:29 PM on November 1, 2019

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