INFO/STS 4240: Schedule

Introduction: Values, Technology, and Design

What does it mean to build a technology that has a good impact on society? Can "values" even be built into technology? If not, does this mean designers have no responsibilty? If so, what values do technologies already have? How do they impose these values? How can we start designing with values in mind? How are the values designers can espouse shaped by the institutions they work in?

Feb 9
Technology, Design, and Social Impact
An introduction to the class. We'll cover how the course works, and learn about some major approaches to social impact issues .
Additional resources: A classic reading on how to bring values into the design process along the lines suggested by Nissenbaum is: 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.
Feb 11
Speculative Design
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.
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.

Feb 12
Section: Sketching
We'll practice sketching and review questions about course tools.
Additional resources: Not feeling confident about sketching? For a great how-to, see Mike Rohde's article on sketching as a design tool.
Feb 12: Purchase course reader from the bookstore.
Feb 16
Responding to readings through speculative design
We'll continue honing our skills at speculative design as a way to explore conceptual issues related to design.
Reading:
Bleecker: "Part 1: Design Fiction"; pp 3-8 only of Design Fiction: A short essay on design, science, fact, and fiction
Additional resources: More examples of speculative designs can be found in Pierce and Paulos: Some variations on a counterfunctional digital camera
Feb 18
The 'impact' of design
What does it mean to say that a technology design has a certain social 'impact'? How can we understand the consequences of design?
Reading:
Edgerton: Significance (This reading - like all those without a web link - is available in the course reader for purchase from the bookstore).
Feb 19
Section: Design responses
We'll practice creating a designed response to a course reading; submit the results for your design workbook checkin this weekend.
Feb 21: Design workbook checkin
Feb 23
Case study of values and impact in design: Modernist architecture
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.
Reading:
Scott: The High-Modernist City
Using design to persuade

One way in which we might create a positive impact is by using technology to persuade people to think or act differently, by providing new forms of information or by suggesting different ways to see what is happening around them.

Feb 25
Persuasive computing
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
Feb 26
Section: Creating a persuasive design
We will hone the most critical skill for effective persuasive design; creating a precise description of the behavior we want to change.
Feb 28: Design workbook: Unit 1
Mar 2
Political information visualization
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 visualization, in such a way that you make things more understandable for everybody. Correll has a great discussion of the Ethical Dimensions of Visualization Research.
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)?
A nice example of political visualization is the Data Viz Challenge, a contest to generate visualizations of where your tax dollars go. To understand why data visualizations have so much power, it can help to understand its place in visual history: Belief at First Sight (by Kosminsky et al).
Mar 4
Persuasion or coercion?
Reflecting on the politics and experience of persuasion
Additional resources: Kaiton Williams wrote a remarkable piece exploring the much more complex and nuanced experiences of personal data cultivation than simple celebration or rejection of persuasion would suggest: An Anxious Alliance
Mar 5
Section
Mar 7: Miniproject 1: Persuasive computing
Mar 9 - Wellness Day
Mar 10 - Wellness Day
Mar 11
Expanding design framing
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?
Mar 12
Section
Infrastructuring

Code and algorithms form a contemporary infrastructure for our organizations, work, and social life. What kinds of impacts do they have on how we behave, alone and together? How can or should technical infrastructure be designed for better social outcomes?

Mar 14: Design workbook: Unit 2
Mar 16
Politics of algorithms
How do political issues become embodied in the details of how computer programs work? How could they become embodied in new ways?
Reading:
Additional resources: Srnicek explores the economic forces behind the proliferation of algorthmic platforms here: The challenges of platform capitalism: Understanding the logic of a new business model
Mar 18
Infrastructure
What is infrastructure exactly, what are its effects, and what should we consider when designing it?
Reading:
Jackson, Edwards, Bowker and Knobel: Understanding infrastructure
Mar 19
Section
How to write an op-ed
Mar 23
Politics of search algorithms
Search engines are one example of an infrastructure with political consequences. How do seemingly innocuous technical choices about algorithms lead to political consequences?
Reading:
No reading required. Get a head start on Thursday's reading instead, it's heavier than usual.
Additional resources: An oldie but goodie: Introna and Nissenbaum: Shaping the Web: Why the Politics of Search Engines Matter. Note: 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.
Mar 25
Algorithmic fairness
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
Mar 26
Section
Making technical changes to infrastructure
Mar 30
(Optional) Hands-on Infrastructure Redesign workshop
Bring your miniprojects to class to get help with your project from your peers and course staff.
Apr 1
Mental health day
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
Apr 2
No section - Mental health day
Expanding participation in design

Until now, engineers and designers have mostly been in the driver's seat. Here we expand beyond experts in technology - how can individuals and communities be involved in design decisions that affect them? Can we use this to improve the design of technology and its impact?

Apr 6
Participatory design
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
Apr 7: Design workbook: Unit 3
Apr 8
Participation in infrastructure
Is it possible to organize platform workers to have more of a say in their own work?
Apr 9
Section
Designing participatory design activities
Apr 13
Participatory design partner meet-ups
No lecture today. Meet with your participatory design partner to finalize your design. Course staff will be available in the lecture slot for office hours to help if needed.
Apr 14: Miniproject 3: Participatory design
Apr 15
Creating civic conversations
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?
Apr 16
Section
Designing imagination
Technologies act not only through what you can do with them but also through the ways they shape our imaginations of what technology could be, who it could be for, and what kind of lives it could fit into. In this section we'll look at the social meanings of technology and how to design explicitly to use and reflect on this dimension.
Apr 20
When the impact is the narrative
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.
Apr 21: Design workbook: Unit 4 (optional)
Apr 22
Critical design
Critical design as a strategy for reflecting on the social implications of technology and the design process itself.
Reading:
Dunne & Raby: Chapter 4, Design Noir
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
Apr 23 - Wellness Day
Apr 26 - Wellness Day
Apr 27
Critical design workshop
Bring your projects to class to get hands-on help from course staff
Apr 29
Fine-tuning critical and speculative design
Refining design techniques to express and question values and futures in design
Reading:
Bleecker: "Part 3: Fact and fiction swap properties", pp 25-33 only of Design Fiction: A short essay on design, science, fact, and fiction
Apr 30
Section
May 4
Afrofuturism as design fiction
Imagining alternative technological worlds and histories which start from experiences of the African diaspora.
Reading:
Womack: Evolution of a space cadet (in the course reader)
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.
Looking forward, looking outward
In this final section of the course, we will look at how ideas we have looked at in the class are playing out in the world.
May 6
The Silicon Valley theory of social change
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
May 7
Section
May 10: Design workbook: Unit 5
May 11
Technology design beyond Silicon Valley
What alternative framings of technology innovation exist if we stop assuming Silicon Valley is its center?
Additional resources: Another interesting lens on innovation is to remind ourselves of the amount of innovation involved in tech practices besides `invention' as understood in typical histories of technology. For example, Ahmed, Jackson, and Rifat explore the innovation inherent in repair practices: Learning to fix: Knowledge, collaboration and mobile phone repair in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Fouche explores forms of 'vernacular' or lay creativity that reshape the usage and meaning of technology: "Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud: African Americans, American Artifactual Culture, and Black Vernacular Technological Creativity."
May 12: Design workbook: Unit 6
May 13
Course conclusion
We'll review where we've come and plot out paths moving forward.
Additional resources: Here's a set of resources for students who are interested in pushing the agenda of computing and social impact.
May 14
Section
Final exam review
May 18: Final Exam. The 24-hour take-home final exam will be released on May 17 at 7pm and due May 18 at 7pm. A secondary exam will be released on May 19 at 1pm and due May 20 at 1pm. You have your choice of which exam date you prefer, but you must commit to your date preference by May 13. No changes to exam date can be made after that date.