Product Bias: What You Buy May Not Be For You

Here’s something to think about the next time you make a purchase.

For me, it started as an innocent observation. I was looking into buying a planner when I noticed that the full, page-sized planners were commonly in pink shades or floral patterns. What statement are the makers of these planners trying to make?

I started to do some digging and found examples of product bias. Product bias results from items made for a specific group of people, with little to no research done to ensure that the product is meant for a larger group of users. For example, products made for right-handed people, or equipment designed for men, but used by any person. 

The following are just some examples of product bias.

Right-Handed Products for Left-Handed People

Products designed for right-handed people can cause inconveniences for left-handed people. For example:

• Almost all doors are designed to open using the right hand and hand rails are usually on the right side.
• The measurements on a measuring cup will need to be read upside down or backward if you are left-handed. 
• The buttons on watches are on an inconvenient side of the watch.
• People at your dinner table are likely right-handed so all the tableware is set up for right-handed diners. Left-handed diners need to remember which side their cutlery and glasses are on.
• Jobs are likely to supply you with a right-handed mouse. 

Biased Design

Everyday things are designed in a biased manner, from seatbelts to voice assistants.

• Period tracking apps are pink. Just search “period tracking apps” and you will see pink logos and pink designs.
• Seatbelts (until recently) were tested using crash test dummies with body shapes similar to the average male body, so female drivers are more likely to be killed or injured in car crashes.
• Voice assistants such as Google Home, Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana & Apple’s Siri have female names and voices. These products are described as “helpful,” “supportive,” and “humble” by the company.

“Shrink It and Pink It”

The saying “shrink it and pink it” refers to products that were originally designed for men and later made in a smaller size for women. In other words, those products were not originally designed for women (or for use by all adults).

• Running shoes were designed to fit the typical shape of a man’s foot and later made in a smaller size to fit a woman’s foot.
• Personal protective equipment (PPE) that fits women properly is hard to find. In healthcare, women deal with gowns that are too long. They wear masks that are too big to fit their face properly. 
• “Women represent over half of the global population and in the US, they influence nearly 90% of all purchasing decisions. Yet only 19% of practicing industrial designers, also known as product designers, are women.”

Racial Face Misidentification 

Products designed for light-skinned faces encountered unexpected issues when the products were used with a wider range of human subjects. Some specific stories:

• Mr. Alciné, a software engineer, used an A.I. in a Google online photo service six years ago to organize his photos into topics such as “birthday.” He noticed a folder labeled “gorillas.” Curious, he opened the folder and “found more than 80 photos he had taken nearly a year earlier of a friend during a concert in nearby Prospect Park. That friend was Black.” The photos had been mistagged. 
• An Amazon facial recognition technology service had difficulty identifying the sex of female and darker-skinned faces. “According to the study, the service mistook women for men 19 percent of the time and misidentified darker-skinned women for men 31 percent of the time. For lighter-skinned males, the error rate was zero.”

Key Takeaways

Biases exist in the design of products designed specifically for one group of people, but sold to a wider group. For example, products designed for men and then marketed for use by all people. 

What is your experience with products? Have you bought a product that you felt was biased?