"Diversity is Having the Diversity": Unpacking and Designing for Diversity in Applicant Selection

Abstract

When selecting applicants for scholarships, universities, or jobs, practitioners often aim for a diverse cohort of qualified recipients. However, differing articulations, constructs, and notions of diversity prevents decision-makers from operationalising and progressing towards the diversity they all agree is needed. To understand this challenge of translation from values, to requirements, to decision support tools (DSTs), we conducted participatory design studies exploring professionals' varied perceptions of diversity and how to build for them. Our results suggest three definitions of diversity: bringing together different perspectives; ensuring representativeness of a base population; and contextualising applications, which we use to create the Diversity Triangle. We experience-prototyped DSTs reflecting each angle of the Diversity Triangle to enhance decision-making around diversity. We find that notions of diversity are highly diverse; efforts to design DSTs for diversity should start by working with organisations to distil 'diversity' into definitions and design requirements.

Figures (10)

• Figure 1: This research begins with 15 interviews seeking to understand what selection practitioners mean when they talk about diversity and how to support that, followed with two scenario-speed-dating activities where these practitioners test a number of prototypes built based on the interviews.
• Figure 2: These figures depict the prototypes designed based on themes from Section \ref{['sec:study1']} and used in our participatory design workshops. They are reproduced at a larger scale in Appendix \ref{['app:figures']}
• Figure 3: This figure illustrates our four key design recommendations to others building tools to support the selection of diverse talent, i.e., 'design...': '...for a specific diversity', '...for idiosyncrasy', '...in stages', and '...to balance qualitative and quantitative'.
• Figure 4: This figure depicts the Diversity Triangle, three differing definitions of diversity selection practitioners expressed when discussing a diverse cohort. We also relate the Diversity Triangle to each other theme or subtheme participants mentioned.
• Figure 5: This figure reproduces Prototype \ref{['fig:representativeness']} at a larger scale.