Our digital devices - smartphones, digital wearables and virtual
home assistants - are getting increasingly intertwined with all
facets of life. While these connected digital things are rapidly
becoming technically more complex, they are also getting more
intuitive and effortless to operate. In Relating to Things -
Design, Technology and the Artificial leading design
researchers and philosophers probe the consequences of the
inaccessible and often invisible elements of these networked
products.
In a nutshell, what is the book
about?
"The key issue we're trying to tackle is how we relate to the
things in our world and how they are part of our lives, especially
now that digital everyday things around us are becoming more active
and assertive as they are imbued with networked computational
capabilities", says Heather Wiltse.
"These things are not simply inanimate objects waiting for us to
pick them up and use them, the way we've known things in the past,
but rather in many cases active agents that are able to adapt to
contexts and do things on their own. And much of what they actually
do is not present to our awareness, and may even conceal ways in
which they use us".
Amazon's Alexa and Pokemon Go under the microscope
The book includes case studies on Amazon's Alexa and
Pokemon Go, what did the authors find?
"The chapter addressing Alexa is by philosopher Diane P.
Michelfelder, and she was interested in how we might care for
things that care for us (such as digital assistants). Care has
ethical significance here, in the sense that caring for Alexa
caring for us (for example, rephrasing a misunderstood query, as
one might do for a child who doesn't understand something) might
provide an opportunity to develop our own caring
capacities".
"Seeing care as deeply embodied, she goes on to look at how the
Echo (the tabletop device that houses the assistant called Alexa)
might be redesigned to care for users through being a 'privacy
ally'. For example, the Echo might turn a particular color and
speak in a more anxious way to reflect the apparent sensitivity of
information involved in a user request".
"Pokemon Go is a case study by philosopher Galit Wellner. She is
concerned with how augmented reality (AR), such as Pokemon Go,
mediates our relation to the world. She looks at how the relations
between AR technologies, their users, and the world is shaped, and
how the world is mediated for us through these technologies. She
arrives finally at a consideration of what it would mean to live in
an environment where "human intentionality 'withdraws' and
technological intentionality 'takes over'".
"This is illustrated with reference to a short film clip
called "Hyper Reality" that portrays an information-rich
future reality that is entirely dominated by technological
systems-and those behind them. This is in fact also the logic of
Pokemon Go, which was designed as an experiment in large-scale,
real-time behavior modification (i.e., getting users to go to
particular real-world locations through positioning of in-game
characters and assets). This raises questions about where we as
humans are in this picture, how we relate to the world through
things-and what kind of world they reveal".
Designing for the user in the world of big data
How come this subject is so close to your
heart?
"Digital networked technologies can bring so many amazing
opportunities into our lives. We are able to connect with people
all over the world, to find and share information and other media,
and to powerfully engage with the world around us and even
ourselves through the mediation of these things".
"And now, connected things have in a way been hijacked by new
business models based on the pursuit of massive profits that can be
gained through prediction and control of behavior through
production of behavioral data, in service of interests other than
our own as users. This behavioral data is produced in large part
through digital things that we use as part of carrying out our
normal everyday activities, and increasingly must use for
various reasons".
"But it doesn't have to be this way. It is possible to envision
other ways of designing things, to return to basic ideas of caring
for users through design rather than treating them as resources to
be exploited. But in order to do that well we need not only
non-toxic business models, but also ways of thinking about how we
relate to these kinds of things that also relate to us, and what
positive roles they might play in our lives".
Just how might we design digital things
differently?
"Currently, connected digital things (anything described as
"smart," part of the internet of things, smart cities, or any app
on a smartphone) are designed within industry primarily as supply
routes for behavioral data. The goal is to maximize the scope and
scale of data production, in order to enable more finely tuned
predictions and nudges for others' benefit (whether companies or
governments). This model is fundamentally anti-democratic and
challenges basic values of autonomy and the freedom to make one's
own choices".
"Industrial interaction design as a practice can now be seen
crafting the user-facing interfaces for these data-producing
things, but it is no longer at the center of the action in terms of
crafting what things really are and do. What we need is a design
practice that is able to work with these new kinds of things that
mediate multiple relations and interests, to provide reasonable
value for all stakeholders, but also, especially, to explore what
these kinds of things could do and be if they were not so
thoroughly driven by these current models of profit generation.
There is still a lot of work to be done here", concludes Heather
Wiltse.
