In 2022 Snap released Inclusion By Design Principles that lay the foundation for our thinking around product inclusion. The aim is to provide three guiding principles for all those involved with Product development at Snap: Increase Inclusion, Build with Empathy, and Take Smart Risks.

The principles were the result of a large cross-functional effort between the Product team, Engineering team, and IDEA (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Awareness), with close engagement from Camera Platform, Policy, Platform Integrity, and Legal.

Prior to the release of the principles, product inclusion work had been happening at Snap for some time with various ad hoc initiatives. For example, Inclusive Camera is a multi-year commitment to focus resources on making the Snap Camera work better for everyone,  particularly those with dark skin tones who have been poorly served in the past. In 2022, Snap also invested in a new Inclusive Testing program as a route to validate the inclusivity of our new camera features. The team partnered with a third-party vendor and identified 1500 people to help test their products, starting with Ring Flash, on a variety of DEI attributes such as gender and skin tone.

Snap also made Bitmoji more inclusive by enabling people with disabilities to express themselves more authentically, including the addition of wheelchairs, walking canes, and hearing aids. Interestingly, those users with disabilities who used these features were 8x more likely to share those images than other users, demonstrating that an increase in product inclusion drives better business outcomes.