According to the U.S. Census Bureau 2019 estimates and U.S. Equal Economic Opportunity Commission’s Diversity in Tech Report, Black people make up 7% of tech employees while being 13% of the total U.S. population. Similarly, Hispanic/Latinx people represent 8% of positions while making up 18% of the total population. Companies like Facebook, which is the parent company of XR industry juggernaut Oculus, have taken active measures to close these proportional gaps and over the past six years have shown an almost 1% increase in relative Black employee representation.
Why is diversity important for XR?
Murray Newlands states in “Why diversity Matters in Tech”, “…a diverse company will be able to reach out to, build innovative features for, and encourage the inclusion of underrepresented communities” resulting in more relevant features for typically discounted groups.
When considering racial and ethnic minority nuances and perspectives while developing products and services, companies can avoid negative consequences affecting the whole.
“The models and systems we create and train are a reflection of ourselves,” said Marco Magnano, of the Cyber-XR Coalition, an association that brings together diversity and inclusion (D&I) focused organizations within the fields of XR and Cybersecurity. “There have been several high-profile cases of bias, including computer vision systems for gender recognition that reported higher error rates for recognizing women, specifically those with darker skin tones.”
Likewise, by having more diverse teams, both companies and customers benefit. A 2004 study by Lu Hong and Scott E Page suggests teams with diverse perspectives increase performance ability in problem solving and finding new solutions. Morover, a North Carolina State University study found casual links between diversity and bottom-line gains for businesses.
“Welcoming multiple points of view can help your organization better understand customers, employees, and changing markets,” said Maren Fox in ‘Diversity = Strength: The Power of Multiple Points of View’. “Sure, that can help avoid embarrassing and costly blunders—but it can also drive innovation and creative problem-solving by pushing people to look at old challenges from a new perspective.”
As the XR industry matures and scales, it allows for products to have a more profound and meaningful impact on a larger audience.
“There has been a lot of change,” said Facebook’s Chief Diversity Officer Maxine Williams in an interview with Tech Crunch, “Has there been as much as we want? No… The biggest takeaway is that the later you start, the harder it is”.
