Financial Times Europe - 13.11.2019

FINANCIAL TIMES

Wednesday

13 November 2019

FT

Reports

|

3

Diversity in Technology

quality of your choices.” Dur-ing the assessment process,consistency is important

in

order to give all candidates anequal chance. Workable has apopular feature that helpscompanies build interviewkits, including scorecards anda set of questions to ask e

ach

applicant.

Mr Moraitakis also praises

the “relative objectivity” ofold-fashioned CVs and skill as-sessments.

He believes degrees from

top universities are overrated,however. “Judge people bytheir relative performance —what they’ve accomplishedcompared to what resourcesthey were given,” says MrMoraitakis. “Don’t look forwhat people have done, lookfor what they can do.”

Diversity and inclusion goes

far beyond recruitment, notthat all companies realise this.“The tendency for these thingsto rest with HR is quite damag-ing. It gets seen as another HRpolicy, a tick-box exercise,”says Mac Alonge, co-founderof The Equal Group, a Britishdiversity consultancy.

Organisations may make

token gestures, says MrAlonge. Take the Pride festi-val, when

companies give their

logos a rainbow-colouredbackground.

“If a company thinks that by

changing its logo it no longer has to consider how peoplefrom the LGBT communityfeel on a day-to-day basis, itgives them an easy way out,”he says.

Instead, a company’s leaders

need to be deeply involvedwith diversity and inclusion,and to be held accountable.

“[You should] structure

bonus incentives in such a waythat D & I becomes a key incen-tive for leaders,” suggests MrAlonge. He recommends that leaders sponsor diversity net-works

, participate in bilateral

mentoring and get a coach.

Collecting qualitative and

quantitative data on diversitycan help bring about change.This may include measuringhow many applicants from acertain group are gettingthrough to

interview

; how

many women are on theboard, or whether particulardemographics are consideringleaving the company. “If you’remeasuring it, you can manageit and you can improve it,” saysMs Coventry.

“Companies should look at

diversity and inclusion todaywith the same granularity theylook at financial data,” says MrAlonge.

‘Don’t look forwhat people havedone, look forwhat they can do’

In 1786 the Scottish economist, engi-neer (and occasional secret agent)William Playfair created somethingthat would

revolutionise the way peo-

ple communicate with numbers.

In

The Commercial and Political

Atlas

, Playfair introduced the world

to the

first charts: visual representa-

tions of data that were more effectiveand aesthetically appealing than theverbose tables

that preceded them. It

is testament to the quality of

his work

that his designs remain in daily busi-ness use, largely unaltered, today.

While charts might be great for

those who can see, they are not

inclu-

sive: people with visual impairments

cannot see data in the way that manyof us

take for granted.

International standards

d esigned

to make the web accessible to peoplewith disabilities require the use ofequivalent alternative text, known asalt text, with images such as photo-graphs and charts. Visually impairedusers can use screen reader softwarethat reads aloud the alt text alongwith the rest of the text on a web page.

The age of big data means charts

now often have thousands of datapoints. They can

even be animated

.

Alt text struggles to cope in such con-texts, often carrying no more thansimple summaries of information.

This year I explored the emerging

technique of data sonification totransform 40 years of US economicdata (more than 100,000 data points)into a musical soundtrack that sup-ported an animation of the

data.

The US yield curve is a chart

famous for — and named after — itsshape.

Sonifying the data

i nvolved

mapping the values of the curve into a

sequence of pitched notes, repeatedlyreplaying as the data (and graphic)changes daily.

Significant changes in

the

shape of the curve

c an be detected

by listening to the music. For sightedreaders, the audio can reinforce thevisuals, but for visually impairedusers the audio is an interface to thedata that would otherwise not exist.

It soon became clear that the

potential of data sonification lies withbigger rather than smaller data. Nasaclearly agrees. The US space agencyhas

sonified data

f rom the Hubble

space telescope, opening up a newway to interpret

t he universe.

It is impossible to

d iscuss astron-

omy and sonification without men-tioning the research of Wanda Díaz-Merced, a blind astronomer whosedoctoral thesis explored the use ofsound as an adjunct to visualisationfor studying interstellar radiation.According to Ms Díaz-Merced, theadvantages of sonification extendwell beyond

providing a multisensory

experience. As she concludes in a

memorable T

ed Talk

, “if people with

disabilities are allowed into the scien-tific field, an explosion, a huge titanicburst of knowledge will take place”.

In addition to accessibility benefits,

some practitioners believe that soni-fication can

help meet one of the big-

gest challenges in presenting data vis-ually — to generate an empatheticreaction from the reader.Composer Jamie Perera

h as used data

sonification to explore newapproaches to music, including col-laborations with mathematicianMarcus du Sautoy. Mr Perera’s

Climate

Symphony

uses data on food access,

migration and CO2 emissions to pro-vide a sonic portrait of the unfoldingclimate crisis. For him, sonificationopens up more possibilities than sim-ply replicating a visual in audio form.“As a medium, sonification holds aunique position between informationand emotion,” he says.

It might be tempting to regard soni-

fication as

a novelty but perhaps it is

the current convention of data onlybeing seen and not heard that mayend up

a s an anachronism.

The writer is the FT head of visual anddata journalism.

The code for the soni-

fied yield curve is

available on GitHub

Shut your eyes, listen to the dataand start to think differentlySonificationAdding sound to chartscan help visually impairedusers access informationtoo, writes

Alan Smith

C

D

E

F#

G#

A#

C



D

E

F#

G#

A#

C

D

E

F#

G#

A#

C

D

E

F#

G#

A#







Data points

Mapping data to a whole tone scale of equally-spaced pitches means data can

be played as a musical

arpeggio

Mapping data to a whole tone scale of equally-spaced pitches means data can

be played as a musical

arpeggio

Data value ()

Value of produces C

note

Value of 

produces A#

note

How data can be heard and not seen

Four octave whole tone musical scale

Bilateral mentoring

M atch junior with

senior colleagues

a nd ask them to mentor

each other.

“ It helps everyone to learn

about perspectives outside

their

immediate experience,”

says Mr Alonge.

Nuanced data

Ga ther data regularly on all

aspects of “people operations”, from thehiring process to pay rises,

s ays Ms

Coventry: “Where are people droppingout? Are you losing female engineers?”Ask employees

G ive employees frequent

opportunities to give feedbackanonymously on what is working and whatis not.

“People often like [

anonymity]

to give real feedback to their employer,”says Ms Coventry.Lead from the top

Make sure everything

your organisation does is inclusive — donot think of this as an HR function.Communication

C onsider how forms of

communication may exclude some groupsor how social activities could shut outothers. For instance, people withneurodiversity — which includes autism,dyspraxia and Tourette syndrome — maydislike speaking to a big group.Be conscious of socio-economic barriersJudge people by performance relative tothe resources available to them

.

Shortlists

“A lot of recruitment agencies

don’t provide a diverse shortlist unlessspecifically asked for it,” says Mr Alonge.Reassess what ‘good’ looks like

W hen

hiring and promoting,

review your

assumptions about what candidates needto succeed. Consider the skills

essential to

a role — otherwise do not require

them.

Practical tips

6

| FT

Reports

FINANCIAL TIMES

Wednesday

13 November 2019

Diversity in Technology

M

en occupy many of thetop posts in technologywhile women are usual-ly in support roles suchas business devel-

opment and marketing ,

s

ays

Zara Nanu, chief executive andco-founder

of Gapsquare, a UK

software business.

Her company,

based in Bristol,

south-west England, has developedand sells a program that assesses,explains and helps eliminate genderand ethnicity pay gaps for clients thatinclude the Metropolitan Police inLondon and

Serco

, a private sector

provider of public services.

“There are a lot of discrepancies

that are unjustified,” says Ms Nanu,who sees bias affecting women notonly in remuneration but in fundrais-ing too.

“I know it’s tough to raise money,”

she says. “I have long suspected

it is

easier for men

than [for] women.”

The gender balance in the tech sec-

tor is particularly poor, with womenlagging

b ehind

men in both numbers

and pay. In the US tech industry,

women occupy 25 per cent of roleswhile in Britain that proportion is

16

per cent

, according to

tech employ-

ment business Honeypot

.

“Women join the industry and soon

ask themselves: ‘Am I really going tomake it in tech? Is there a glass ceilinghere?’,” Ms Nanu says.

She is speaking to the Financial

Times at the

Engine Shed

in Bristol, a

city emerging as

a tech hotspot

w ith a

reputation for nurturing start-ups.

Bristol is home to many of the feats

of engineer

ing genius Isambard King-

dom Brunel

, including the Engine

Shed, built in 1841, which is now a col-laborative

working space for new

businesses. Bristol also boasts

SET-

squared

, a start-up incubator run by

five universities, and

Watershed

, a

media facility that encourages socialnetworking and helps with researchand innovation.

Some of the struggles that face

women in tech are the result ofunconscious bias, in particular frompotential investors, says

Dana Kanze,

assistant professor of organisationalbehaviour at London BusinessSchool.

Her research,

co-authored while at

New York’s Columbia BusinessSchool,

analysed

h ow language was

used in funding pitches and Q&A ses-sions over seven years of Tech-Crunch’s competition in New York forearly-stage start-ups. The studyfound that questions posed by

would-be investors tended to allowmen to showcase a start-up’s poten-tial, while women were asked howthey would avoid failure and addressother losses.

Ms Kanze says: “The bias was

consistent. Both male and femaleinvestors displayed an implicitgender bias

.”

Ms Kanze and her colleagues in the

study classify the questioning aseither “promotion” or “prevention”and she adds: “There is nothing thatfemale entrepreneurs are doing toelicit these [types of] questions.

“They are pitching

similarly to

men.

It shows that both men and

women have

deeply rooted stereo-

types.”

Ms Kanze has highlighted the

study in a

Ted Talk

.

Such sentiment was highlighted in

a multinational survey

b y the private

banking arm of

HSBC

, which found

that more than a third of femaleentrepreneurs suffered gender biaswhen

raising capital.

In terms of cash, in 2018 US

start-ups

f ounded solely by men

received $109bn in venture backing,more than

three-quarters of the

$130bn

t otal capital invested, accord-

ing to Seattle data provider

Pitch-

book

. Companies founded solely by

women received

$ 2.9bn, or

2.3 per

cent of that pot.

Becky Sage, chief executive and co-

founder of

Interactive Scientific

,

based in Bristol, agrees that it is tough

for women in the tech sector to obtainfunding.

This

h as not put her off pursuing

the dream for her

company, whose

technology creates biological, chemi-cal and material molecular simula-tions, which bring the potential formore

collaborative practices in drug

discovery.

“Anecdotally, I have been

asked a lot of

...

‘prevention’ ques-

tions.

People do look at you differ-

ently if you are more feminine.”

Stephanie Campbell, of Bristol

business

Okko Health

, agrees that the

technology sector is dominated by

Female ‘upstarts’ ona quest for fundingWomen

F ounders in

UK tech hotspot ofBristol tell

Mark

Wembridge

that access

to finance is still tough The mismatch between thetechnology industry and theelderly, says Masako Waka-miya, an

84-year-old devel-

oper of iPhone apps designedto stimulate older people

, is

what she calls the “cross-pur-poses syndrome”.

Being an older person with

papery-dry skin on the indexfinger is

a significant

drawback

in a world

of technology where

controls are dominated by the

smartphone swipe,

says Ms

Wakamiya, who is also knownas Ma-chan.

As she sees it, hardware and

software makers

feel unable,

or do not bother, to test

prod-

ucts on older users.

The elderly, meanwhile,

believe they are not given achance to find

new kinds of

devices and applications

.

Both these situations must

change quickly or the digital-age divide will be impossible tobridge, says the self-describedevangelist for diversity in tech-nology, who has spoken at theUN and given Ted Talks.

“Companies should think

more about the elderly in theirplanning,” says Ms Wakamiya,pictured, a former bank clerkwho took up

app development

in her late seventies

after real-

ising that younger coders maynever

meet

t he needs of her

age group.

“It’s just good business,” she

says. “Their population is onlygoing to increase.”

Now an octogenarian and an

adviser to the Japanese gov-ernment on tech and the eld-erly, Ms Wakamiya is acutelyaware of how Japan is changingdemographically.

She says the country’s expe-

rience of being at the forefrontof the world’s ageing societieshas made

it a pioneer, whether

it likes it or not.

The game she created,

Hina-

dan

, looks deceptively simple

but is a huge hit with itsintended audience. It requiresthe player to organise a series

of traditional Japanese dolls onan elaborate tiered stand.

As well as sharp and clear

sounds, the game is controlledby taps on the screen ratherthan swip

es — a distinction

whose importance Ms Waka-miya believes is forgotten bythe current generation of pro-fessional

programmers,

mostly in their twenties andthirties.

That kind of oversight can-

not last, she says. More than aquarter of the Japanese popu-lation is aged over 65

a nd 14.2

per cent is over 75.

Faced with these realities,

and with one of the highest lifeexpectancies in the world,Japan has begun to prepare.

A few years ago, the cabinet

of prime minister Shinzo Abe

assembled a broad-basedpanel of

government figures,

academics and business lead-ers to form the

Council for

Designing the 100-year LifeSociety, in

a n attempt to pre-

dict and prepare for the com-ing changes.

Ms Wakamiya, who argues

that tech literacy is vital to themental health of Japan’s oftenisolated retirees, was a vocalappointee.

The necessary shift for com-

panies, says Ms Wakamiya, isfundamental: “For developersof both hardware and soft-ware, the elderly have rarelyfeatured in the imaginations ofdesigners.”

They do not consider, for

example, the way that coloursappear to 70 or 80-year-old

Why grandma will struggle to swipe on a phoneOlder usersYoung developers canlearn from Japan’s84-year-old appcreator, says

Leo Lewis

Becky Sage: the InteractiveScientific co-founder wasasked a lot of ‘prevention’questions ‘When I pitched [forfunding] there were allmen in the room. But acouple of those men arenow on our board’

eyes, or the way that handsa n d a r m s m ove a s t h eybecome less flexible.

“One more thing is that the

reason that elderly — let’s say‘analogue people’ — cannot getused to IT devices is that themanuals are written by a gen-eration that grew up in the dig-ital world,” says Ms Waka-miya, whose

latest project

involves “translating” manu-als into a form of language thatcan be understood better byretirees.

In some areas of tech, Japa-

nese companies have alreadyembraced the idea that if theircustomers in general are grow-ing older, they must adapttheir development processes.

Entire development lines,

from helper robots to ATM