2.2.1 The Connected World — Technology as experience, Attention Economy & the Effects of Technology use
Chapter 2 of Design for Human Connection within Global Communities — An exploration through digital experience design and participatory action research
Technology as experience
The internet is now inextricably woven through our contemporary lives; connectivity has brought advances to many aspects of life and is now so pervasive that people do not usually stop to reflect on how it works or its impacts on society. The Internet Health Report by Mozilla Foundation (2019) points out that personal data may seem like a modest price to pay for online free services; however, the attached social tax is now threatening the sovereignty and human rights. Technology is impacting civilisation in many ways, and it is a crucial moment of discussion and awareness to challenge the status quo and build systems and technologies more aligned with human values.
When viewing technology as experience (McCarthy and Wright, 2004), we start to reflect on how to design for these experiences considering that there is a symbiosis of humans and the technology in their interaction. Wright and McCarthy analyse that “…we cannot design experience but that, with a sensitive and skilled way of seeing user experience, we might be able to design for an experience” (2004). Carpenter and Mekler (2019) advocate that “It cannot be said that we as designers can predict exactly what someone’s experience might be, rather we can design for certain circumstances to exist in which a particular outcome is anticipated”.
According to Branco and Providência (2017), “through the digital medium, design acquired a new economic and social reputation, that was consolidated by its viral propagation through the web”). On the other hand, being connected at all times makes us question whether technology is driving us away from an authentic life (Su and Stolterman, 2016).
Human-computer interaction (HCI) is the “intersection between psychology and the social sciences, on the one hand, and computer science and technology, on the other” (Carroll, 1997). HCI has progressively improved the usability of systems and applications. However, it is still a challenge applying and promoting psychological and social approaches, with regards to technology, considering that the experience is the result of the symbiosis of each person with the design and happens in an environment that is not controllable and constantly changing.
Attention Economy
Attention economy was initially introduced as a term in 1971 in a lecture called Designing Organizations for an Information-rich World (Simon, 1971), but became broadly accepted and discussed only in the 1990s with the internet and massification of digital technologies to understand the emerging economic context and possibilities (Bueno, 2017). According to the author, the vast amount of information produced by the internet made attention scarce and therefore, a precious resource. In the meantime, many services were created and offered online for “free” in the ad-driven internet economy, transforming data into a valuable commodity and people “the product” (Mozilla Foundation, 2019).
Most smartphone applications and social media are designed to optimise engagement, like comments and shares, and to increase the amount of time spent online (Mozilla Foundation, 2019). This method serves the advertising business model and is described as “addiction by design” by Natasha Dow Schüll (2014). Schüll’s study shows how casinos and slot machines pull people into an addictive “machine zone” that is difficult to leave and understands that the same design principles are applied in digital technologies. Facebook, for instance, was accused of encouraging game developers to let children use money without their parents’ consent — something called “friendly fraud” (Halverson, 2019) — as a way to maximise results, according to a document detailing the company’s policy.
By contrast, with the amount of information available and platforms constantly trying to hook us, when someone is talking, our attention levels are low, and we usually listen very little other than we have heard before, evaluating based on past views and sentiments (Scharmer, 2016). The author stresses that “so long as this level of listening prevails, actions tend to preserve the status quo, even though the actors may sincerely espouse an intention to change”.
Effects of Technology use
There is still an uncertain indication of how much control social media companies operate over users and, even being a hot topic, there is a lack of high-quality evidence concerning the effects of technology use (Orben and Etchells, 2018).
Research by Becker, Alzahabi and Hopwood (2013) reports that increased media multitasking is correlated with depression and anxiety. The authors suggest that the habit of multitasking with media may bring a unique danger for mental health problems linked to mood and anxiety. On the other hand, scientists at Oxford University (Orben and Przybylski, 2019) examined data sets about the connection between technology use and well-being in young people. According to their study, the association presents at most 0.4% of the variation in well-being, suggesting that the impacts are too little to justify policy change.
Nevertheless, many people describe feeling anxious, sad or depressed about how they relate to technology and are actively trying to transform this scenario. Research around the concept of Fear of Missing Out, known as FOMO, reports that while social media allows people to know about a variety of social activities, it also broadcasts more options than can be experienced, causing anxiety and the belief that others might be having pleasing experiences from which one is missing (Przybylski et al., 2013; Elhai et al., 2016). To avoid this need to stay constantly connected with what others are doing, people are acquiring phones that do not connect with the internet, known as ‘dumbphones’ (Telegraph, 2019) or doing social media detoxes. It is now possible to find mindful tech-free luxury experiences that remind people of all the things they lose when they are on their phones and how lively screen-free time can be (Raphael, 2019).
Another layer of the impact of internet usage is human agency and decision making. Technology provides facilities, but people might not realise that they are counting on it to make choices daily. Yuval Noah Harari (2018), argues that “governments and corporations will soon know you better than you know yourself” and that believing in the concept of ‘free will’ is dangerous. For the author, humans have a will — but it is not free. The choices made depend on a lot of biological, social and personal contexts and, currently, with big data, the advertising triggers and content suggestions are shown in a way to shape our behaviours and decisions. Without sufficient protection, state agencies may use systems to conduct surveillance, profile voters, or exclude communities (Mozilla Foundation, 2019). Tristan Harris, design ethicist and ex-Google employee, concludes that “everywhere you turn on the internet there is basically a supercomputer pointing at your brain, playing chess against your mind, and it is going to win a lot more often than not” (Thompson, 2018).
Empathy — people’s capacity to recognise one another’s emotions — has diminished in the last century (Przybylski and Weinstein, 2012). Individuals in nations with a more substantial Internet penetrance report lower empathy (Waytz and Gray, 2018) and merely leaving a phone between two strangers as they talk lessens their resulting trust (Konrath, O’Brien and Hsing, 2010). While supposedly helping us, technology softly undermined the connections that keep us human, while channelling our energy to interact with our devices.
Read 2.2.2 The Connected World — Conscious Internet Users Movement & Design for Positive Change
