Susan Doran....online work samples

thoughts on design, empowerment, persuasion (aka – ethical design manifesto)

susandoran — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 21:54:13 +0000

The following was originally a post in response to an IxDA Discussion thread started by Dave Malouf, but seemed suited as a blog entry.

I believe it chuffs the rules of the blogosphere (tho I don’t know that anyone cares, as they did, passionately, 2 years ago) to post something from somewhere else, out of chronological order, and even to edit it, from its original stream of conscious state. But I’m doing so and being transparent about it. For now, here it is in all its original florid glory.

Design for impulse & Behavior Economics

posted 8 Dec 2008 – 3:17pm by Dave Malouf

Hey there,

Robert Fabricant of frog design write this nice piece on an designing to change behavior.

http://designmind.frogdesign.com/blog /design -for -impulse.html

The topic of behavior economics is important, and one I know I haven’t thought nearly enough about (despite being mentioned in the article). What do people think about this in our domain as IxDers?

— David Malouf

My response

posted 12 Dec 2008 – 7:59pm by Susan Doran

David Malouf…great, provocative post.

OK…this is what I believe in: Design to empower people. Design to encourage and allow people to question. Design to encourage mindfulness of self. Design to encourage, teach, and reward critical thinking. Design to allow people to see there are choices…that there are always choices. Design to encourage non-lemming-like behaviors. Design to reward people for being themselves and thinking in their own unique ways. Design to help people understand their impacts on others and the environment. Design to create comfort around the existence of negative capability, ambiguity, complexity and “not knowing.” Design in ways that reward finding that there’s almost never one “right” answer and to distrust claims of absolute correctness. Design to communicate divergence from any groupthink is ok. Design to convey it’s more important to follow their gut, instincts, and passions rather than follow someone on twitter. Design to show that we’re all different, and we’re all connected. Design unashamedly with love, and to inspire love in others.

That is what I’m a zealot about.

It’s none of my business (or concern) what precisely somebody believes, or what they do with their highly functioning brain and heart. My work is done if people are more mindful after interacting with something I’ve designed than beforehand. If they’re smarter. If their awareness of choices is greater, rather than narrowed. If they don’t feel duped, or helpless, or hapless, or less important. If they’re willing to take a chance on something scary, and be a little bit more ok with doing so.

I don’t believe the concept of choice architect is limited literally to designing shelves so that multi-grain organic crackers are at eye-level rather than Cheez Whiz. The point, as I see it, is to be mindful of choices we make as designers — to know that with every breath and with every design choice we make our decisions are NOT value neutral — they are not made in a vacuum from ethics and morality, and even minutely may impact people’s lives and the way they move forward in their lives. That we’re designing for human beings and we are impacting them. That power is embedded in our position, and to use that power thoughtfully . Whenever possible, to share our power with “users, ” rather than take it away by telling what to do. And to own, and take responsibility for, the behaviors we are eliciting, encouraging, and rewarding. To be unflinchingly plain with ourselves about what we’re doing to people, and to do our best not to rationalize that.

Manipulation is manipulation whether it’s intended for [what an individual or group considers] Good or for Harm. Propaganda is propaganda whether convincing children not to smoke, or discouraging people not to throw trash out the car window because it makes the Indian or Baby Jesus cry, or conveying that turning to a pill to sleep is normal, expected, The Answer.

The example provided of Obama is important, but undifferentiated. What Obama as an individual seems to have espoused vs what his campaign and soon Administration are catalyzing via IxD (and social media) are radically different. The latter (campaign and Administration) have clear agenda and vested interest in the specific actions people take, and their outcomes. They are/were intended to benefit the campaign and the Administration. They also had/have aims for benefiting communities, humanity, etc. But clearly there’s a keen element of self-interest. The end of civic engagement, thus far, has not been the Kantian “Ding an sich” — in this case: civic engagement as an end in itself — to empower individuals to participate actively in a democracy, regardless of specific policy-supporting outcomes. Rather, it’s designed to achieve ends that benefit the campaign/Administration.

While I agree with a lot of what the Administration hopes to achieve, I’m ambivalent about what I perceive as the “yoking up” of a volunteer workforce in this manner. Rather than the priority being to cultivate legions of smart, empowered thinkers, actors, and decision-makers — without whom our democracy is, if not a farce, then non-practicable.

I personally hope this shifts, and if it does, it will indeed be the most radical administration in the history of our country. Because it will be about empowering people to make their own decisions and inspire them to engage — but stop short of telling them HOW.

And to me, that’s the most interesting challenge for designers.

_________________________

comment: The reception to this previously lively thread…silencio.

caveat: of course in our worklives we sometimes will have to “guide” users and tell them what to do. I have done some things I consider fairly heinous, in terms of not respecting–in fact in direct violation of–the humanity and autonomy of “users.” However, I also deliberately do otherwise every chance I can. Basically, what I’m suggesting is to consider subversion in the form of authentically forwarding the business goals of the companies we work for — while at the same time creating experiences that honor human beings, and that value simplicity but acknowledge underlying complexity and individual choices and empowerment. Something like that : )

Democracy as a 21st century design problem…?

susandoran — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 19:44:56 +0000

Dave Malouf recently said on IxDA’s discussion list:

The very means of bringing meaning, of doing economy, of communicating, of leading (doing politicking)–the heart of culture–has gotten so complex that it requires us to re-look at on a fundamental level the ways in which we engage in culture and find new ways to design them….like the industrial and information revolutions, which created deep cultural shifts through society and thus new practices, this new era of cultural complexity was also brought about by changes in technology itself. So the technology is often at the center of the equation, even if it is not being directly dealt with in the solutions that service designers conceive. Thoughts? Repudiations? Appreciations? Arguments? Affirmations?

So, this was my response, which is essentially a blog posting.

……………………..

Since the 2008 election cycle, I’ve given much thought to–if not to complexity itself increasing, then–how, increasingly, complexity is presenting itself in its raw, unbridled forms.

How we’ve intentionally and inadvertently sought to “release” and embrace complexity, a move away from traditional attempts to restrain, tame, or “manage” it.

Been thinking about the implications of the above on human-designed or -defined systems. The service system I’ve been thinking most about is democracy….how brilliantly that system was designed to allow for (work with, and reward the existence of) profound complexity and ambiguity. And how it seems to me, that as originally and brilliantly as it was configured, adapted, and adopted for radically “modern” conditions of 18th century in America, that democracy is now straining (fraying?) at the seams.

Why? Partly, I think, it’s this emergent unbridled complexity, culturally (tho “cultural” of course needs defining) and otherwise of which you speak, that’s testing the efficacy and longterm sustainability of democracy.

Democracy depends on the collective recognition (need for, and valuing) of there being a demos, For some in our profession(s), as well as in our broader world, the notion of sociocracy is replacing democracy in terms of what’s believed to be relevant and practicable, in an increasingly complex global world. Sociocracy…as in being about socios (social groups) — i.e., who you know and who you’re connected with. As opposed to democracy, being all about the demos (the great mass of people) — i.e., in democratic terms: We, The People.

I understand how interaction/experience/social designers find it easier to design for self-identifying groups, rather than an amorphous unknowable blob of demos (and of course online advertisers *totally* ecstatic about this — advertisers love social experiences, and niche sites, because we willingly offer up loads of data about ourselves, our likes, dislikes, activities, preferences, and our socios – who we’re connected to). But I’m wondering what happens when there’s mass dissociation from our broader connection to people we don’t know, and probably will never know, only to focus on You, Me, and Everyone We Know, as opposed to the democractic notion of an interdependent collective, We, The People.

Gravitating toward our safest “tribes” is a natural state, to some degree, but is also something that democracy was carefully crafted to counterbalance–i.e., dissuading us from acting on the notion that it’s ok to stop caring when we hit the outer boundaries of our own socios, and instead structurally requiring recognition that each of us is connected to the larger mass—honoring the demos in principle, even when our own individual (or social groups) needs may not be met.

My mom, a psychotherapist, reflected when I was a teenager that she believed the ultimate and sometimes lifeflong challenge of being an adult human is to be able to recognize and be “comfortable” with ambiguity. I would take that farther and say functioning comfortably/uncomfortably within complexity, in its unharnessed form. So if that’s true for individuals, what does that imply for a world of [connected] individuals, if not a Society? I don’t know yet.

Last point: the “free press” and eventually public libraries, have traditionally been staples of democracy. Unleashing information directly to all The People [through these channels] was radical and literally revolutionary—and a core necessity of creating and educating an informed populace who could be active in creating and sustaining participative democracy. I went to grad school before the web existed, because I saw the potential (at that time) for information to be locked away “on computers” in systems only accessible to those who afford it–the old information rich/information poor paradigm. Thankfully that hasn’t come to pass. And what’s unfolding is far more interesting, complex, and unforeseen.

At IA Summit 2005 (?) I remember someone in a session about taggng bellowing forth “Wake up librarians—wake UP!! Your day is OVER!!” (might even have been you and a small hue and cry arising from the apparently librarian-oppressed audience. I do understand what that was about–ranging from post-adolescent weltschmerz to a dominant paradigm of the time – hacker/anarchist mentality dismantling traditional notions of hierarchy, elitism, exclusion, rigid lumbering siloed systems, offering an alternative paradigm of inclusion, whoever’s here are the right people to be here, wisdom of the crowd, everyone is an expert, fluidity and nimbleness, temporary self-organizing groups, and complexity.

It did (and does) resonate with me to varying degrees, but more germanely simply presents as an unmistable emerging cultual force majeure I went around that IA Summit suggesting the potential of hybridized systems, which would allow for complexity within structure. But that was seen as timid, and “not getting it.” So we and Mr Gorbachev did take down the wall. And henceforth among many other things, have seen massive shifts away from traditional curators of information (“The Media,” public librarians) whose agenda was formally and ostensibly (and I would say actually – and not to deny the limitations) to be responsible for undergirding part of the framework for democracy. And to do so in service to the public good (and what the hell is “the public good” now? how would we begin to define such a thing in a world that’s more directly exposed to, as well as materially benefitting from, raw complexity?)

It’s impossible for traditional “press,” public libraries, and other ostensibly non-partisan entities (there are not many of them) in place to ensure that the demos not only has access to information–because we now have that access, with or without them–but deliberately and systematically to create exposure multiple, sometimes contradictory, perspectives, i.e., complexity. And to provide a means for being able to assimilate complexity

Now, without institutions that many saw as oppressive gatekeepers (and when corrupt could indeed function in that manner) individuals are free to choose what information/perspectives they expose themselves to. Or put another way: are largely left to their own devices to create an individual democracy regimine. How many people do that? How many people are well-educate or motivated enough to do so? Practically, how well can individuals keep themselves informed in a manner that nourishes and supports the notion of the demos, We, The People? meaning that fundamentally forces people to look beyond their own interests and to the interests of “the whole”? Aside from there being no clear sense of what “the whole” looks like, we’re so challenged by time – and it’s so much more comfortable to identify with our socios, and expose ourselves only to those points of view that already resonate with me and mine – that I don’t have an answer.

I’d argue that our move toward self-definition/identity in terms of our socios (rather than the larger amorphous demos) is in fact a way we’re trying to grapple with, and filter out cultural and other complexity from our systems. Is a fully functioning democracy with an informed citizenry and a dedicated to We The People possible in the 21st Century? who are the radicals this time who’ll retrofit the 18th century manifestation of this system to our current conditions and needs?

So, that’s all I got at this point.

intro…

susandoran — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 08:53:40 +0000

By clicking around here, you”ll find some samples of my work. Not all of my work…not even most of it. Just a few representative splashes I was able to lift from past positions, with permission.

What’s less easy to convey is what’s not here.

What’s less intuitive by browsing the visual artifacts on this site is how I think. And what I contribute to groups and projects I’m part of.

I believe that sort of understanding unfolds through dialogue, through stories, through Q&A.

In a nutshell…..what I offer is keen strategic and analytical skills, solid substance, an astonishingly good memory, and the ability to scale from the big picture to the details, to go broad and deep, in a nano.

And from the other side of the brain…creativity, humor, intelligence, openness, a propensity to share, an unquenchable thirst to learn, my own vision coupled w/collaborative spirit.

Social media…NYT: Online “A Reason to Keep Going”

susandoran — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 21:32:48 +0000

An interesting article (“Online, ‘A Reason to Keep Going’ “) on older people and social media from today’s NY Times.

My favorite quote:

Sunny Walker, 89, who refused to use an electric typewriter when she was a school secretary because she hated technology so much, now plays games and sends friends messages through the site.“I’m telling you, it’s the best thing for seniors,” she said. “It challenges their mind, that’s what it does. It challenged mine.”

. . . . . . . . . . . .

We’re now discussing this article and its implications on the MaineUX list.

As designers, what are ways we can address challenges of keeping 55+ engaged with online experiences/software we’re creating?

How can we encourage people to hang in there and not abandon/quit?

To design in ways that serve our own agendas related to increasing engagement (i.e., interaction with applications/sites we’re working on). And also transcend our interests and make people’s lives better?

MaineUxer Mark suggests, “the older people get, the more they’re averse to doing things differently (and the longer it may take to come around).”

If that’s so, what can we do to design experiences that meet “older users” where they are, and create rewards for their staying engaged, continuing to hang in there and learn?

There seems to be a threshhold of “learning-pain” that’s acceptable to people. A level of discomfort with ambiguity or “not-knowing” that people can tolerate before they crawl for cover.

Conversely, an increase in reward, satisfaction, inspiration, and pleasure results in corollary increase in people’s tolerance for the pain/discomfort.

Studies have shown that new skill/knowledge acquisition takes place in the frontal lobe of the brain. This kind of learning can literally, physically “hurt,” in the way that immersing your hand into cold water might.

(Have you ever said “My brain hurts!” from complex thinking — that’s real)

But if you know you’re reaching into that frigid water to grab a valuable pearl you’re more likely to tolerate the pain.

When we’re younger we are continously learning, being thrown into unfamiliar situations, and letting in new knowledge. The “pain” of learning is less noticeable — like if you’re used to working out, a day of muscle pain is shrugged off.

So again I’m wondering, as UX designers, what do we incorporate into our designs to turn up the heat — creating competency around continuous learning at all ages — while building in sweet rewards for doing so?

Social media for 55+

susandoran — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 23:13:29 +0000

As we all know,the trouble with sheer quantitative stats is they tell you the “what” — but not the “whys” or “and what else?”

Four Reasons People Over 55 Are Quitting Facebook

Consulting with someone last week re: social networking and older demographics — having watched and interacted with users on FB and Myspace for years now — it’s interesting to note how similarly and dissimilarly current newbie populations (i.e., who are appreciably older than the 1st and 2nd waves of FB’s users) interact/engage with Facebook vs. early adopters and younger people.

My hopeful hypothesis was the lack of familiarity w/this type of interaction, when combined with the high positive incentive/reward to figure out “how it works” — think: connect with grandchildren, stay in touch with friends from 30 years ago, chance to re-explore “frivolous” playing bahaviors — could actually function as a learning and inspiration mechanism to increase “online literacy” and facility overall. How we as UX designers can encourage and reward learning/growing behaviors in our work, through play (which is largely how younger generations learned to interact, socialize, and think online, after all). As well as UX insights into creating more meaningful, connective community experiences for older people.

That was last week — prior to May 09 data. Way back when 55+ seemed to be clambering on the bandwagon and grabbing onto FB with their teeth!

So…if 650K 55+ people abandoned FB in May…we just don’t know. Maybe the weather turned nice and they went outside to play with their grandchildren instead of throwing virtual snowballs at them?

Four Reasons People Over 55 Are Quitting Facebook