#howmuchtime

PREMISE 

During my first week at Microsoft, co-workers asked if they could use my hair texture for a computer-vision user test. During my first month at Microsoft, I was told I was the diversity hire of the team. During my first winter at Microsoft, I had to tell three people that they couldn’t touch my hair. During my first year in Seattle, I heard white people use the n-word four times. 

I spend so much time on the distraction that is racism and I am trying to quantify that. The goal of #HowMuchTime is to data log the quantity of time spent being distracted due to race. How much time do I spend focused on the distraction that is racism. How often does my life get interrupted because of racism and issues on race? 

THE TECH

I did a lot of brainstorming around what tech I could use to data log these moments of distraction given the following design constraints I outlined: 

- Must be able to document location - Must be able to timestamp duration of distraction - Must be able to count how many distractions - Must be immediate/easy to access

Tech Brainstorming Sketches:

Ultimately, I chose the Flic button for documenting my distractions. I press the button every time I am distracted due to race/racism. 

I chose Flic, because it is immediate, it attaches to the back of my phone, and it can be used while my phone is unlocked. 

The Flic button connects to an iOS app on my phone, that I built using Xcode. It records the geo-location and time of each button press. 

This button connects to Google Firebase where all data points will be stored. The data points are: 

- Location of distraction (GPS Coordinates) - Starting Timestamp of distraction - Ending  Timestamp of distraction - A brief description of what caused the distraction (optional) 

NEXT STEPS