2.2.2 The Connected World — Conscious Internet Users Movement & Design for Positive Change
Chapter 2 of Design for Human Connection within Global Communities — An exploration through digital experience design and participatory action research
Conscious Internet Users Movement
There is a global movement that is mobilising a significant number of conscious internet users. For instance, the Internet Health Report by Mozilla Foundation (2019) invites people to reflect on “what it means for the internet to be healthy, and to participate in setting an agenda for how we can work together to create an internet that truly puts people first” (p.7).
Screen time is a subject which has recently gained more visibility; people are tracking and becoming more aware of the time spent on their screens. The Royal Society for Public Health created in 2018 a campaign in the UK called Scroll Free September inviting people to reflect on their relationship with Social Media. The campaign suggested that “maybe it is starting to have a negative impact on your life” (RSPH, 2019) and polling found that 65% of adults would consider taking part. The same poll showed that people believe that abandoning social media for a month would help their sleep (33%), real-world relationships (33%) and general mental health and wellbeing (31%) (Campbell, 2018).
According to the Center for Humane Technology (2019), an independent nonprofit organisation that works to realign technology with humanity, “the companies that created social media and mobile tech have benefited our lives enormously. But even with the best intentions, they are under intense pressure to compete for attention, creating invisible harms for society”. The Center highlights six main problems (Figure 3) and tackles them by using “a combination of thought leadership, pressure, and inspiration to create market demand and momentum for products and services based on Humane Technology principles”.
The Center for Humane Technology partnered with Moment, an app that helps people tracking their screen time, to create a ranking that asked users how much screen time in apps left them feeling happy or unhappy (Figure 4).
The research recognised that positive or negative feelings about apps depend on the time spent on each application. Contrasting “Happy” and “Unhappy” quantities of usage of the same apps, their miserable amount of time is 2.4x the amount of pleasant time (Figure 5).
Above all, the ethical question that arises is that people’s goals while using these apps are not the same as the business goals. It is difficult to draw the line considering that the more time people spend on the apps, the more unhappy they become and, at the same time, the app’s focus is precisely to keep people’s attention because of their business model structure. According to Dan Ariely, “the easiest ways for companies to do what they want is to tap our emotions and to tap into these buttons that we don’t have full control over”. He follows affirming that “what technology has done has basically built on some of our biggest weaknesses” (Forbes, 2016). A possible reflection from society concerns how we feel about companies capitalizing on our cognitive and emotional vulnerabilities, designing products and services that can make us feel unhappy and addicted.
Design for Positive Change
Krippendorff (2006) described design and designers’ work as a subject of creating meaning, changing the logic of artefacts to the understanding of the relationship between the design and the intention behind it. The rise in consciousness and action named ‘socially active design’ (Fuad-Luke, 2009), considers the centre of the design activity the society and its development to a more sustainable reality. According to Lockton, Harrison and Stanton (2013), “products and services explicitly intended to influence users’ behaviour are increasingly being proposed to reduce environmental impact and for other areas of social benefit”.
Manzini (2015), argues that new design culture is emerging and weaving the foundation of sustainable well-being as the rise of new ideas, practices and approaches are affecting the perceptions of time, space, work, health and relationships. For instance, design sprints for the Sustainable Development Goals (United Nations, 2018), are happening globally, inviting people to engage and contribute by designing short-term interventions with long-term impact. Initiatives like this invite non-designers to experience the learning process of tackling problems in a collaborative and human-centred way, promote empathy towards other perspectives and contexts, and gain ownership concerning each one’s impact in shaping the future.
For instance, Julier (2013) suggests that design activism implies intention — an interest to act on a context. According to the author, “design activism is a movement that is more self-consciously and more knowingly responsive to circumstances”. Similarly, Fuad-Luke (2009) defines a design activist as “a person who uses the power of design for the greater good for humankind and nature”. The author acknowledges that design is a “motive force in suggesting and realising new materialisations for our world” and proposes that design set its agenda for positive change.
Read 2.3.1 Building Connection — Communities, Belonging & Psychological Safety
