Why You Should Have a Diverse Web Design Team

Masters of website design are known for their hate of Internet Explorer, the magic behind how pizza plus caffeine equals a webpage and their need for spending more time in the sun. When you think of these wizards, you probably imagine a Caucasian male sitting at the computer desk, and your imagination isn’t too far off.

There are a shockingly low number of women and minorities in the work force, as roughly 33 percent are women and 20 percent are minorities. Not only does this discourage those who are already in the field, but leaves the companies themselves at a disadvantage. Why does diversity in the website design work place matter?

 Diversity Makes You Smarter

Studies have shown that diversity pushes people to be smarter and more creative. By having people from all walks of life in one place you get several different ways of seeing the problem. With multiple perspectives comes the creativity to mesh the solutions together and spawn faster and better ways of solving said problem with your website design. In the long run, these companies perform better financially.

 Diverse Companies Serve Diverse People

 Step back in time and remember when YouTube launched their first iOS video-uploading app.  They had a team of individuals who were predominately right handed who developed the app. By ignoring little details for those left-handers, they ended up with upside down uploads and a group of unhappy users.

 By remembering that the world isn’t entirely black and white, your group of diverse designers can cater to all. Different people can catch small errors in your website design before it ever becomes a problem.

 It’s the Right Thing

 Our upbringing, biases and experiences in life can often lead to a uniform network. The unconscious division in the work place leads to an undermining of the undiscovered talent. Many website design companies have started hiring based on “the best idea wins” process. This way they eliminate any bias based off of race or gender. Diversity should never be an afterthought. 

Kenadee Hatch writes for Fusion 360, an SEO and content marketing agency. She writes for many other clients as well. Follow on Twitter.