Harms exist today because tools that are designed for one “optimal” process or way of thinking. People who have slightly different approaches or habits struggle to use the tool. People may have other goals or purposes than the tool expects, so the outcome after the struggle may be wrong.
Your goal, after measuring and tracking harms, is to help people accomplish something in a way that includes the way they usually think about it, with better outcomes (not process, outcomes) than their usual results.
Level 1: Mild – People can recover, but it tends to be chronic and leaves emotional residue. People usually wonder if the tool was not meant for their thinking style. Mild harms are typically the only level of harm that teams check for in evaluative testing.
- annoyance
- confusion
- dislike
- frustration
- worry
Level 2: Serious – Subtracts time and productivity from people’s day. People are triggered or feel shamed, or they are forced to take sometimes lengthy extra steps. Hardly any organizations check for these harms. Some organizations actually depend on unpaid labor, self doubt, and pestering to earn their profits.
- interruption, pestering
- unpaid labor
- lost time
- self doubt
- misleading information
- emotional trigger
- shame
Level 3: Lasting – Leaves a permanent scar or void in people’s lives. Often compounds, leading to greater harms. Of this list, only lost work, misidentification, injury, or death tend to be double checked before launching a solution. The rest haunt us all.
- lost productivity, work
- lost money
- lost opportunity
- lost relationship
- misidentification
- diminished reputation
- vilification, hatred, rage
- threat or attack
- injury or death
Level 4: Systemic – Hard to see, impossible to avoid (unless you are a member of a small privileged class) because it’s baked into our society, economy, education, law, and government.
- inequality of:
- education
- healthcare
- housing
- opportunity, access
- salary
- arrest
- laws
Product, service, and policy design is not about the visuals, but about these intangibles.