monkey see, monkey do serves as a personal blog and creative outlet for
ethics and design
MOVED: this post has moved to my design blog
does usability design take an increasingly role and importance these days? i just received a short note from alan blackwell, promoting a workshop at the british human computer interaction (HCI) conference coming up this september. but i appreciated most how he summarized the overall trend in HCI:
Computing technology is now so pervasive that the study of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) is almost the study of everyday life. A consensus has emerged in HCI that its historical concerns, such as usability and efficiency, are no longer sufficient scopes of inquiry. There have been turns to fun and enjoyment, emotional
design, experience design, culturally situated design, critical and reflective design, beauty and aesthetics, and technology for social action.
he goes on to promote the interchange of critical theory and HCI, the topic of his workshop.
i agree with his stated consensus, and i’m noticing as the projects i’m asked to help with incorporate increasingly social aspects. simpler concerns like measures of learnability and productivity are not enough to determine if those designs are good designs. as much we have to consider their impact on our emotional lives and how they enable or discourage healthy social lives.
one example that immediately pops to mind was the recent myspace-related suicide, when a neighbor used a fake profile to torment a young teenager resulting in her taking her own life. is that a usability issue? well the design of the system and how it relates to anonymity played a part in that tragedy. and it’s such a new medium, i don’t think we know enough yet about how those social spaces work or fail us. this is a point danah boyd has been making for as long as i’ve know her. for example, that kids blog and discuss things in public spaces without realizing the long term implications of that kind of behavior. we all don’t really know yet what the long term side effects will be from an increasingly public social space mixed with partial anonymity or the illusion of anonymity. so to alan’s list above i have to add ethics as an important area of inquiry.
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9. June 2008 at 8:16 am :
i don’t want to sound completely critical of anonymity in myspace. i think anonymity is important in many ways. but i do think it played a part in the tragedy i mentioned, and we can’t just ignore that these central design decisions do not have an ethics impact on our society — in particular as these systems become the places where we socialize. everything from bullying and safety become part of the design process.