We had a course at our University about biases and how to mitigate them, which made us realize how pervasive they are. We wanted to help make the general public more aware of this problem, and teach them techniques on how to mitigate it in a fun manner.
Bias Hack is a game where you take a Judge's role, you are presented with the description of a criminal case, 5 suspects, and evidence. The cases are both real-world examples and works of fiction. Just like in real life, the evidence is not 100% accurate. It is full of hidden biases, such as Attentional Bias, Emotional Bias, and Memory Bias. You, as a Judge, have to make a quick decision and convict the correct person that committed the crime. At the same time, you have to analyze the evidence for biases, identify, and mitigate them. After the game is over, the player is presented with a report of their personal biases.
First, we gathered real cases of wrongfully convicted people and adjusted them to fit our gameplay. Then, we collaborated using git to create a fun and interactive python game via the Tkinter GUI library. At the same time, one of our teammates was creating graphics and illustrations from scratch throughout the hackathon.
One of the largest challenges was balancing implicit biases with explicit clues so that our game would be fun and educational at the same time. On the software side, the whole team was unfamiliar with Tkinter(and GUI libraries in general). In addition, this hackathon was the first major software project for most of our team, meaning that we had to learn the libraries, collaborate effectively, and integrate everything into a cohesive game, all in under 24 hours.
Although we were under time pressure, we were able to create well-structured object-oriented code. The feature that we're most proud of is the timer because instead of computer fonts it uses custom graphics developed by our team member.
On the software side, we all became much more familiar with python, Tkinter, and OOP. In addition, we became much more comfortable working as a team and working simultaneously on different aspects of our project.
We plan to add more levels and build out the functionality more over the next couple of months. We plan to have a browser and mobile application available by April 2021.