Schedule

An introduction to the class. We’ll review course mechanics, get a sense of the wide variety of approaches that have been used to design for a good social impact, and consider some of the possible social issues that come up in design.

Post-Lecture quiz.

Last week we started to review how values become integrated into a design. This week we’ll start to learn about Speculative Design, an approach that allows us to expand the framing of a design’s mandate.

Additional resources: A classic reading on how to bring values into the design process along the lines suggested by Nissenbaum: Flanagan, M., Howe, D. and Nissenbaum, H. Embodying Values in Technology. In Information Technology and Moral Philosophy. Jeroen van den Hoven and John Weckert (eds.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 322-353.

We’ll adapt Gaver’s design workbook technique as a method to explore cultural and social issues in and through the early stages of design.

Additional resources: Note: these papers, like many on the syllabus, are available only if you are logged in on Cornell networks. An easy way to get access from off campus is to use the Cornell Library’s Passkey plug-in. Not feeling confident about sketching? For a great how-to, see Mike Rohde’s article on sketching as a design tool. Another awesome paper describing design work drawing on speculative design is Gaver and Dunne: Projected realities. For more on how we can think about designs as a form of conceptual reflection, see Bill Gaver and John Bowers. 2012. Gaver and Bowers: Annotated Portfolios interactions 19, 4 (July 2012), 40-49.

We’ll continue honing our skills at speculative design as a way to explore conceptual issues related to design.

What does it mean to say that a technology design has a certain social ‘impact’? How can we understand the consequences of design?

We’ll look at a detailed example of designers aiming for social impact with their design. In part, they achieved these aims; in others, they were wildly off. We’ll use this case to think through the complexities of how to approach social impact through design.

Designing software and hardware to persuade people to alter their ways of thinking or their behavior, and thereby contribute to solving social problems.

Additional resources: Another useful how-to for persuasive technology: Fogg: Creating persuasive technologies: An eight-step design process

How can - and should - we use information visualization to make a point?

Additional resources: Here is a great overview on how to address accessibility in data visualizaion, in such a way that you make things more understandable for everybody. Some other useful tactics for designing compellingly persuasive information campaigns include the following: Principle: Make the invisible visible (by Nadine Bloch) (Beautiful Trouble, pp 152-153); Principle: Bring the issue home (by Rae Abileah and Jodie Evans) (Beautiful Trouble, pp 106-107); and Show, Don’t Tell (by Doyle Canning, Patrick Reinsborough and Kevin Buckland) (Beautiful Trouble, pp 174-175)). What to do with your visualization? How about Tactic: Guerilla Projection (by Samantha Corbin and Mark Read) (Beautiful Trouble, pp 52-53).

We’ll 1) look at using game design to communicate political points of view, and 2) do another in-class exercise around the miniproject. We’ll also be doing a 3) quick recap of the first and second module, and we’ll end with a 4) special 5240 catch-up session (undergrads can leave early!).

Reflecting on the politics and experience of persuasion. More readings than usual, if you’re short on time skip the Leslie.

Additional resources: In class, I’ll also be covering this argument: Brynjarsdottir et al: Sustainably unpersuaded. This is a good summary and might work for you, but is unloadable for some students: Leslie: The scientists who make apps addictive try passkey explained in the texts page!

How do you decide what the problem is you are trying to solve? How can we expand our imaginations about how technologies - or non-technologies - can make change?

Additional resources: What are some other options for making social change? Beautiful Trouble is full of them. How about organizing a strike (by Stephen Lerner) ? Or jury-rig some solutions (by Gui Bueno)?

How do political issues become embodied in the details of how computer programs work? How could they become embodied in new ways?

Additional resources: An oldie but goodie - Introna and Nissenbaum: Shaping the Web: Why the Politics of Search Engines Matter. This article explores the political consequences of search engine algorithms. It was the first landmark article to argue that search engines shape our political discourse, intentionally or unintentionally. While this article was written before the launch of Google (was there such a time?), its analysis is still relevant to search engines today.

What is infrastructure exactly, what are its effects, and what should we consider when designing it?

Additional resources: Another guide to infrastructure, with some suggestions for design: Star and Bowker: How to infrastructure.

Intervening in work infrastructures to shape new outcomes.

How are work infrastructures shaping how we will work in the future? What kinds of voices can workers have in them?

Also: How do algorithms ‘build in’ societal biases, and what can we do about it?

Additional resources: A great article about how algorithms should be managed: Michael Luca, Jon Kleinberg, and Sendhil Mullainathan: Algorithms Need Managers, Too. Also, Kate Crawford: Artificial Intelligence’s White Guy Problem

Developing methods and philosophies for designing technology directly with non-technically-trained participants.

Additional resources: Some concrete examples of participatory design exercises: Brandt: Designing exploratory design games; Kyng: Designing for cooperation: cooperating in design; Foverskov and Binder: Super Dots.

How can technologies be used by citizens to have a say in how they are governed? What role can designers play to support such conversations?

Additional resources: If you’re interested in the Community Playbook, you can find more details here: Creating a Sociotechnical API.

No lecture today. Meet with your participatory design partner to finalize your design. Course staff will be available in the lecture slot for zoom office hours to help if needed.

Please see this ED post for the link to the zoom meeting.

Art practices intended to engage communities and develop their abilities to comment on issues that matter to them.

Sometimes - perhaps much of the time -the primary impact of a technology is not what it does, but how it shapes our imaginations of what is possible or should happen.

Everyone needs a break sometimes. Take one today.

Additional resources: Principle: Pace yourself (by Tracey Mitchell) (Beautiful Trouble, pp 158-159); and note Laurie Penny’s argument in Life-hacks of the poor and aimless that being critical of the idea of individual responsibility for wellness embodied in so many apps these days does not mean it’s not OK to take care of yourself

Critical design as a strategy for reflecting on the social implications of technology and the design process itself.

Additional resources: Just because it’s ‘critical’ doesn’t mean we don’t need to be critical about it - see e.g. Questioning the ‘critical’ in Speculative & Critical Design.

Imagining alternative technological worlds and histories which start from experiences of the African diaspora.

Additional resources: Black Panther is the most widely known recent example of Afrofuturism; read more about that connection here. Yaszek’s Race in science fiction: The case of Afrofuturism is a great overview and history of Afrofuturist science fiction and how it imagines new futures. Jasmine Weber describes a design lab dedicated to Afrofeminism: An Afrofeminist Project Uses Technology to Empower Marginalized Communities. Woodrow Winchester describes how to leverage Afrofuturism in interaction design: Afrofuturism, inclusion, and the design imagination.

Refining design techniques to express and question values and futures in design.

We’ll review where we’ve come and plot out paths moving forward.

How do IT developers in Silicon Valley frame how they are making a difference? What kind of a difference are they making?

Additional resources: Issues about Silicon Valley’s take on how social change happens have been hitting the news a lot. See, for example, Arieff’s Solving all the wrong problems. Another take on who tech developers and designers are supposed to be, and the ideas of change embodied in them can be found in Lilly Irani: Hackathons and the Making of Entreprenuerial Citizenship.

What alternative framings of technology innovation exist if we stop assuming Silicon Valley is its center?

We’ll review where we’ve come and plot out paths moving forward.