diversity.md

Diversity in DreamTeam

To us, diversity is at the cornerstone of creative solutions. Our diversity will play an important role in how we create our final product, determining how inclusive and accessibility our software is. Within our own team, we have 5 people, spanning 4 countries, 5 musical instruments, and the ability to communicate in 6 languages (and many more programming languages!). We believe our diverse perspectives will help us to develop unique solutions that are reflective of our vastly different programs of studies, strengths, interests, and upbringings.

We acknowledge the shortcomings of our team composition. In order to be aware of our inherent biases and to mitigate their effects on the work we do together, we have spent some time reflecting on what perspectives aren’t included in our group. We have discussed 6 axes of diversity in our team, and have provided some highlights of that discussion below. By reflecting on our team composition, we will be able to inform our future directions, especially if we look to expand the team.

Age

Our team represents a single age demographic, with some variability. All of us are currently enrolled in undergraduate programs at University, so we interact primarily with others who are in their early 20s.

Ryan: 21

Christine: 20

Sarthak: 20

Ribhav: 21

Shiyao: 25

How This Can Impact Us:

• We have all grown up in a similar time period of culture and technology. Our experience of using certain tools and understanding of what is an “intuitive” user-interface is very narrow. Someone who was born in a different decade is used to using different tools and has different expectations. This can lead us to assume that our customer has knowledge that they may or may not actually have.
• Our worldviews and responsibilities as 20-year olds may be different than our users, who we anticipate being late 20s-30s. As university students, we enjoy the luxury of not having responsibilities such as taking care of a family, meeting performance reviews, among countless others. This can skew our perspective of what value we are providing to our users and how exactly how we are enhancing their work performance.

What We Are Doing To Mitigate This:

• In order to mitigate our lack of diversity in age, we will research intensively what tools potential customers are currently using. This would include not only industry software programs but personal software like social media and entertainment. These tools share some design philosophies, but some do not overlap, leaving a gap of understanding in our user base. We will also conduct usability tests on users of varying ages within our customer base to observe any potential issues.
• We will interview our anticipated users to learn about what their pain points are at work, instead of guessing. We will also interview customers to gain a sense of what real value we can provide to them.

Socioeconomic Status

Next, our team had a discussion on our socioeconomic backgrounds. Currently, none of us are completely financially independent, and so, these backgrounds reflect the families we have been born into.

Ryan: Middle Class

Christine: Middle Class

Shiyao: Middle Class

Sarthak: Middle Class

Ribhav: Middle Class

How This Can Impact Us:

• Our relatively homogeneous socioeconomic backgrounds means that as a group, we have a narrow understanding of licensing lead reps and even venue owners and how they view value and money. Unlike many Canadian families and small shop owners, our group members haven’t had the same amount of financial pressure hanging over our heads. This means that we may have some incorrect assumptions about how our users and venue owners make decisions when it comes to money, such as paying for a tariff. On the other hand, we have also not had immense resources at our disposal, like a licensing VP may have, and miscalculate the value of money to them. For example, we could undervalue our solution when selling it to performing rights organizations.

What We Are Doing To Mitigate This:

• To mitigate this, we will complete extensive market research and understand how our users and stakeholders value money. Additionally, we will validate our findings through user testing during the building phases of our product. This way, we can be inclusive and gain valuable feedback from all experiences, especially when they differ from our own.

Subject Matter Expertise

Our team consists of three entrepreneurial-minded coders, a music major, and a business major. This diversity in thought and expertise provides us with a unique way to approach problems. It gives us a deep understanding of the field as well as how technology can fit into its world. Between us, we have at least 37 years of music playing experience spanning 10 instruments giving us an appreciation for what it means to be an artist and why it is important to retrieve the proper royalty payments.

Ribhav and Sarthak, two developers from our team, have actually had a startup before which they worked on for a year and secured multiple investment offers. The experience they gained from that experience is invaluable and that has really helped us with the creation of the pitch deck, market research, market analysis, business decision, etc. They also created the MVP for their startup and going through that process was a great learning experience.

Our team has both interweaving and unique strengths. We possess technical and industry strengths, spanning music industry experience in arts programming to expertise in AI algorithms. Moreover, we each have many transferable, interpersonal strengths including adaptability, creativity, accountability, and leadership.

However, our team lacks knowledge in some areas that are critical to DreamTune’s success:

• We acknowledge that we do not have people experienced in copyright law
• We acknowledge that we do not have people experienced in lead generation
• We acknowledge that we do not have people experience in performing rights management and licensing negotiation

How This Can Impact Us:

• Our lack of a specialist in law means our solutions may not release businesses from their complete royalty obligation. We hope to mitigate this by doing thorough research and consulting with SOCAN experts who are knowledgeable in this field to confirm the assumptions we make.

How are we mitigating this:

• People with experiences that differ from our own can help us in the Music industry because music is one of the most vibrant industries. As a result, it is important that we reflect on their population to ensure our solutions line up with the people we hope to help.
• It will be important to keep in mind the areas that are currently lacking when we are looking to expand DreamTune. Top priorities for hiring may include a copyright law specialist and individuals who have experience in licensing lead generation. That way, we will have a first-hand understanding of challenges in the space and enhance our product’s story and reach.

Gender and Sexual Orientation

A central point in our conversation included gender, and a reflection on the importance of cultivating female leadership.

Ryan: Male, Cisgender, Heterosexual

Sarthak: Male, Cisgender, Heterosexual

Ribhav: Male, Cisgender, Heterosexual

Christine: Female, Cisgender, Heterosexual

Shiyao: Male, Cisgender, Heterosexual

How This Can Impact Us:

• In several regards, we have a narrowed understanding of the users who may be using our product. This can impact us by creating a bias when we are generating licensing leads. Given the majority of team members are male, there may be an inclination to focus on venues that our team members are interested in pursuing. To mitigate this we must complete calculations to find the most valuable licensing leads.
• To further the previous example, given that our team is entirely heterosexual and cisgender, we may be missing insights into venues, locations, and other places of congregation that are predominantly frequented by the LGBT community. To mitigate this, we aim to bring on LGBT representation to ensure that we are accurately capturing their views and experiences.
• We have a predominantly male team and must be conscious of encouraging female leadership and equal voices on the team. In a male-dominated tech landscape, we will work to establish an inclusive space for the female members who are currently on and may join our team. Currently, our team has 1 female-identifying member, from 5. We hope to positively improve this balance when recruiting new team members.

What We Are Doing To Mitigate This:

• To mitigate our narrowed understanding of the users who may be using our product, we will complete extensive research and user testing throughout the building phases of our product. This way, we can be inclusive and gain valuable feedback from all experiences, especially when they differ from our own.
• To ensure that our product is not producing biased results by the experiences of our predominantly male team, we will complete tariff calculations to search for the most valuable leads, rather than ones we have a personal interest in pursuing.
• We intend to encourage the growth of female leadership on our team. Currently, we are fostering open communication and hosting team meetings to reflect on the project experience and ways we can positively improve our team working skills. In the future, we hope to recruit team members from diverse backgrounds and upbringings.

Physical Ability

Our team represents a homogeneous group of physically able individuals.

How This Can Impact Us:

• For us, transportation is easy. We are mobile and overcome physical barriers easily. Not everyone is like this. Because of our narrow perspective on mobility, we may make some mistakes in how we assume people’s travel. For example, we want to implement a system in our licensing lead generation app that will make strategic calculations based on the locations of unlicensed venues to suggest a target region to send a licensing rep. We need to ensure that we are considering travel cost, time, and, importantly, accessibility when proposing solutions. We intend to implement a feature directly into the DreamTune web application that will offer licensing representatives accessibility information.
• Beyond physical accessibility, we must be aware of visual impairments, and other barriers to accessibility. Because this is a web application solution, we can implement technology to increase the accessibility of our product including screen-reading and contrast modes.

What We Are Doing To Mitigate This:

• We intend to include the perspective of all types of physically able and unable when designing the transportation and travel feature of our application. We will seek to consult a variety of licensing lead reps about how they travel to leads they have identified as valuable venues and what limitations they have. We also will conduct user tests with a variety of individuals, this way we can validate that our application is accessible. For example, we will verify that our application is compatible with screen-reader technology, has sufficient contrast, and inclusive controls. We will also refer to the AODA (Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act) guidelines on websites and content.
• We intend to accomplish a lot of this with automated accessibility tooling that will be integrated into our CI pipeline.

Nationalities

Finally, our team had a discussion on our backgrounds and nationalities. Our team represents diverse backgrounds that have led to unique lived experiences. Based on our upbringings and nationalities, we speak different languages, and identify with different traditions and cultures.

Ryan: United States of America

Sarthak: India

Ribhav: India

Christine: Canada

Shiyao: Singapore

How This Can Impact Us:

• We are proud of our diverse backgrounds! Diversity here means that each team member has unique values and perspectives. It is important that even in a small team of 5, we have significant diversity. It is reflective of our potential users, customers, and the users and owners of venues we intend to identify. We intend to continue building an inclusive and welcoming environment, to engage diversity with future hires.
• Our diverse backgrounds may also inform future directions for our project and influence our expansion plans. For example, when thinking globally, we may focus on markets in which our group members have experience. We have already explored the potential for licensing lead generation in India, as was presented in our initial team pitch.

Conclusion

Across the 6 dimensions of diversity we analyzed, we found that we are diverse in areas of subject matter expertise and nationality but are almost entirely homogenous in the areas of age, socioeconomic status, gender, and sexual orientation, and physical ability. During our discussion, we tried to identify how this homogeneity would be a limiting factor and could lead to a worse or misaligned product.

Generally, we found that the way to mitigate the impact of our lack of diversity is to be mindful of different perspectives when making decisions. This means including individuals with the diversity that we seek in our consultations, interviews, and user tests. It also means conducting research on the areas that we know we lack knowledge or understanding in, but also acknowledging that we have not created a comprehensive list and that we have not anticipated many shortcomings that may manifest in our final product. This discussion will also shape our future visions for DreamTune, when we look to expand our product’s reach in global markets and when we look to hire new team members. We aspire to foster an inclusive and welcoming work environment.

This discussion of examining our biases and diversity composition was an eye-opening process of discovering new ways that we should approach our project from. It also showed us that this is just the beginning of our exploration into this topic. We must continue to have these discussions throughout the life cycle of our startup.