Inequality impacts us all. We feel angry but powerless. We want to, but don’t know what to do to reduce disparities. Now comes Equalize, an app that enables us to create a more equal society.
Created by an all-women team from The Institute of Customer Experience (ICE), a not-for-profit initiative by Human Factors International, this app offers a range of possible interventions that you – as an individual – can effect, in an affected area of your choice. What’s more, it does this in an engaging way, motivating you to do more.

• The app highlights inequality – and urges you to remove inequality – in 6 areas: Income, Gender, Hunger, Education, Environment, and Happiness.
• You get a list of activities that you can take up to reduce inequality in any of these 6 areas.
• The activities range in complexity and efforts involved. You can choose what you would like to do.
• As you complete an activity, you get “smiles” (Equalize points). You self-report to the app and can share your work, inspiring your friends to do their bit.
• In order to engage and motivate users, Equalize offers playing levels, based on the activities completed. The levels are color coded so there is a visual reminder upfront, urging you to move on. You are “green” till level 4. Once you cross that and become an Equalize leader, your dashboard and notifications appear “golden.”
The key factor is the suggested activities as an actionable to-do list. The gamification angle makes it engaging and fun—inviting more participation and eventually leading to transformation.
The end goal of Equalize is clear: More the number of activities you do on Equalize, greater is the real-world impact on society. And Equalize users like you and me can get immense satisfaction
for bringing happiness to those afflicted by inequality.
Right now, Equalize is available for users in India (on Play Store). A global launch is being planned soon.

We—at the Institute of Customer Experience—are creators of experiences that will lead to a better world. We are futurists who passionately believe in an inclusive future. Therefore, our first priority is to try and level the playing field for all. In other words, we aspire to create a less inequitable world, and what better way for us to achieve this greater good than through the medium of design.
Our approach behind creating the gamified mobile app of Equalize is to harness individual agency and the goodness of people to power the omnipresent technology in our everyday life. With this avatar of social design, our objective is to bring about a major transformation and create an inspirational environment where each one of us can be a potential change agent. Recent history presents numerous examples of radical change effected by committed people’s movements rather than by disinterested government intervention.
Our app design addresses the biggest block that people have about their ability to contribute. They think that contributing may end up using more time and effort than they can actually commit to. Our app works on that block by letting you choose the area you want to impact, and suggesting activities based on your availability and the depth of involvement you are willing to get into. Finally, more the activities you do here on Equalize, greater is the real-world impact on conditions around you.
We envision that Equalize has the potential to engineer the social equality that you and I dream about and want to make a reality in the world we live in. And, for us as User Experience professionals, a world that offers equal opportunities to all will be a world in which creating delightful experiences would prove to be a fulfilling mission.