Exponent

Exponent will enable women in male-dominated industries to build a more assertive, persuasive, and impactful vocabulary and help them eliminate the undermining language. As a result, they’ll be more confident and effective in their communications. It will increase their participation in the discussions/decisions and ultimately will benefit the society.

-Women being silent in male-dominated environments 

-Women not exuding confidence in their communications, not being assertive or authoritative, and using undermining language

Exponent focuses on women’s lack of agency, which is found to be one of the main reasons behind women’s silence. Women’s sense of agency and confidence is negatively influenced by being a minority voice. It affects women’s language and how they communicate their thoughts. Women usually tend to weaken their authority by using undermining language such as “I’m no expert, but…”  and ultimately having less power in making their thoughts/decisions count. 

How we communicate our thoughts via words is not innate. It's an acquired habit; a behavior that is unconscious and is imprinted in our neural pathways through repetition.Prior working on this platform and testing it with other women, as a non-native speaker with a background in science, I had to develop a new set of vocabulary when I moved to Canada and again when I transferred to design. I manually went through this habit changing. I've had a journal of magic phrases, design negotiation words and it empowered me to get my points across and my ideas noticed. 

Women in male-dominated industries will feel confident and powerful enough to speak up and have the right communication skills to transfer their intended meaning in an effective way. They will have not just a seat at the table but also a voice raised at the table and an opinion heard in the room. 

They will develop an assertive language by acquiring new power words into their vocabulary( and use them repeatedly) and eliminating the undermining language. 

Companies will ultimately benefit from eliminating gender diversity gap. 

track users' data stored on our cloud - users acquire new powerful vocabulary and use it in appropriate context

assess user engagement through tracking the number of times and duration of interactions with the platform - repeated usage and engagement

track downloads and active users in the app store - 1 million app downloads/users in the US

There are a lot of efforts in my field on getting more women to enter STEM. However, having a seat at the table but not contributing to the discussions won’t be valuable enough in terms of making these industries gender diverse. 

Exponent will enable women to build confidence through articulating their thoughts effectively. We access a large set of data, not only analyzing the semantic layer of the meaning but also considering the pragmatic layer and Psycholinguistics.

Exponent is a mobile, online and wearable habit forming solution that integrates into daily work interactions seamlessly.

This project came out of a personal insight that I gained through the first 3 months I started working in Silicon Valley. Even when we were equal number as men in the room, women weren’t contributing to the discussions equally.

My process of designing this solution was highly focused on getting women involved, from focus groups to participatory designs to testing prototypes. We track everything from our steps to hours of sleep with usually no actionable suggested ways to improve. Exponent will provide daily feedback and gives women control on how they’d like to customize their communication style.

The software will be available for people to download to their devices for free(web plug-in and smartphone app). 

In order to make the wearable piece accessible to a larger number of women, I didn’t build the functionality on the existing wearables(eg. apple watch app). The ring is low cost and works with the free software installed on smartphones.

Self investment in the early phase

Seeking seed money and venture capital 

Through grant funding and corporate sponsorship (grant making trust, large donors, corporate) by fulfilling their social objectives / Answer to a specific need (women employee engagements in meetings)

-In order to have accurate suggestions, we need a lot of data which requires the users to keep using the platform. If the pilot doesn't give enough value, people will stop using it and therefore limited data to improve the software. 

-Corporations ban installing the software for security issues (confidential communications stored on our cloud)

-Making women aware of this platform and communicating how Exponent is distinguished from other text analysis softwares.   

Every time a great thought is unsaid, it's a lost opportunity. I dream of a day that all ideas are expressed and heard regardless of age, gender, race. My goal is to empower women in STEM to achieve their dreams, monitor their personal development journey and notice growth. I hope to get the mentorship, direction, and resources help from the solve community to be able to turn Exponent into a business that many women have access to and benefit from. 

my closest competitor would be Grammarly