The inclusion of individuals of all abilities and ages is an absolute key element in the inclusion of safety solutions. However, it is usually gone.
To learn more about the inclusion as a design principle, Justin Fox, Director of Software Engineering for PaymentsJournal and NuData Security’s NuData platform, Dave Senci, Vice President of Product Development, Mastercard, Vice President of Network and Intelligent Solutions, and Tim Sloane, Vice President Have a discussion. The payment innovation team of the Mercator Consulting Group.
Two common problems that often arise during security solutions and identity verification are competence and age discrimination.
“When I talk about competency, I actually mean that someone is discriminated against in a certain technology because of their ability to use physical devices,” Senci said.
One thing to remember about these types of exclusions is that they may be temporary or conditional, for example, because individuals who cannot access the Internet cannot access the Internet, they cannot access the Internet. They can also be permanent, such as individuals who cannot participate in biometric identification through fingerprints due to the lack of a hand.
Both situational abilities and permanent abilities affect many people. One-third of Americans shop online, and one-quarter of adults have a disability.
Age discrimination is also common. “Just like abilityism focuses on exclusion due to an individual’s physical abilities, age discrimination focuses on exclusion around the changing level of technical literacy around age groups,” Fox added.
Compared with young people, older people are more susceptible to security breaches or identity theft in their lifetime, which makes them more vigilant and cautious when using devices as a whole.
“Here, a lot of creativity is needed to adapt to these behaviors, while ensuring that you don’t lose any age group,” Fox said. “The bottom line here is that the way someone is treated online and how we verify them and interact with them shouldn’t distinguish them by their ability or age group.”
In most cases, exclusion is the unintended consequence of not taking into account the unique differences of people in the product design. For example, many organizations rely on authentication measures that rely on physical and biological characteristics. Although this can improve the user and payment experience for a large part of the population, it completely excludes others.
In fact, nearly a quarter (23%) of Americans with an annual income of less than $30,000 do not have a smartphone. Almost half (44%) do not have a home broadband service or a traditional computer (46%), and most people do not have a tablet computer. In contrast, these technologies are almost ubiquitous in households with an income of at least $100,000.
In many solutions, adults with physical disabilities are also left behind. In the United States, approximately 26,000 people permanently lose their upper limbs each year. Coupled with temporary and situational disorders such as fractures, this number jumped to 21 million people.
In addition, online services usually do not require most of the personal information they request. Young people are more accustomed to handing over their personal information, but older people are less willing. This can lead to reputational damage and a bad user experience for adults who accumulate spam, abuse or toil.
Non-binary gender exclusion is also widespread. “I find nothing more frustrating than a service provider in the form of gender that only offers binary options,” Fox said. “So sir, miss, madam or doctor, and I am not a doctor, but this is my least preferred form of gender, because they do not include Mx. Options,” they added.
The first step in decomposing exclusive design principles is to recognize their existence. When recognition occurs, progress may be made.
“Once you recognize [exclusion], you can continue to work hard and keep in mind which solutions [under construction] and the broader solution impact they may have, so that you can make them a priority in solving the problem.” Fox . “As a software engineering director and educator, I can say without reservation that every bit of solving this problem starts with the way you first designed the solution.”
The participation of various people in the engineering team makes design problems more likely to be identified and corrected as soon as possible. They added: “The sooner we adjust our approach, (the sooner) we will ensure that diverse human experiences are taken into account.”
When the diversity of the team is low, another method can be used: games. This looks like asking the design team to write down examples of physical, social, and time of day constraints, categorize them, and then test the solution with these constraints in mind.
Sloan said: “I think we will eventually see this ability to identify individuals get better and better, wider in scope, and able to take all these types of issues into account.”
In addition to gaining awareness, it is important to realize that security and ease of use are not one-size-fits-all solutions. Senci said: “This is to avoid gathering everyone in a large group, but to know that each of us has our own uniqueness.” “This is to move towards a multi-layer solution, but also for users. Options are provided.”
This looks like using passive biometric authentication to verify individuals based on their historical behavior and uniqueness, while also combining it with device intelligence and behavioral analysis, rather than creating a single solution that relies on fingerprint scanning or one-time passwords .
“As each of us has our own human uniqueness, why not explore the use of this uniqueness to verify our identity?” He concluded.