Fighting Forward with Saadia Muzaffar

Saadia Muzaffar is an author, tech entrepreneur and an ardent advocate for responsible innovation. Responsible innovation refers to making technology accessible, applicable and user-centric. She is the founder of TechGirls Canada, a hub for science, tech, math and, engineering for Canadian women. As well as, co-founder of TechReset Canada, a coalition of business people, technologists and others who work towards making technology that maximizes the public good.

Who are you building for?

She emphasizes the importance of keeping in mind the purpose of any technology you are creating. Incorporating the views and ideas of your audience in order to make something usable by them and useful for them.

This image sums up the unfairness inherent in the socio-economic system, which also manifests itself in the technological field as well and is evident in the technology that is created and in the population of those who create being saturated with a particular group of people. The barriers of entry into the technological field limit the vision of the creators and that it is why it is important for them to involve the users of the technology in the creation process to widen their view and to give the receiving audience perspective in creation.

Equality: refers to giving everyone the same amount of help they need in order to achieve their goals. As is shown in the image above, this does not do anything to remove the unfairness in the system, as everyone does not start off at an equal starting point, to begin with.

Equity: refers to giving people the help that they need to achieve their goals. This seems much better, as it giving everyone just the right amount of help they need to achieve their goals.

Justice: refers to removing the barriers that cause people to require help to get through. Barriers do nothing but segregate people, with the barriers removed there will be no segregation and therefore, no unfairness. This is the ideal situation we should all strive for.

A Responsible Creator's Framework

Saadia provides a framework which we, as creators should adhere to and keep in mind as we make creations for the public.

Equity: Making sure that the technology is user-friendly to its audience, especially those targeting a larger audience. The technology should be able to deliver and be used easily by anyone in that audience and not a particular subset of tech-savvy individuals.

Purpose: The technology should be able to do what it was made to do effectively and efficiently.

Measurement: This is crucial to achieving success. It refers to incorporating feedback from the end users or audience of the technology to ensure that they are able to use and that it fulfills its purpose effectively and efficiently.

Epicenter: The users should actively be a part of the creation process to test and give feedback on the technology, in order to more accurately highlight points for improvements. Saadia cites the example of Ontario's Social Assistance Management Systems (SAMS) which failed in doing what it was made to do, which was to make it easier for the employees. SAMS failed because the users, who are the employees were not included in the creation process of the technology. The creators ended up making a product that neglected its audience and so resulted in many flaws that the creators could not have known, which could have been easily pointed out by employees and fixed. The epicenter is where you want your mindset as a creator to be, you should constantly have in mind the purpose of the technology and should always keep in mind the users and include them for a successful technological product that makes lives easier.

Interested in more info on Saadia and what she's currently working on? Click here