It’s Not Your Algorithm, It’s You!
Sara Wachter-Boettcher’s book, Technically Wrong, is an exploration into some of the missteps and failures of tech companies and the sacred products they tout. These “failures” however are not measured by the company’s financial statements, but rather by the transgressions they’ve made towards the people they claim to serve. Wachter-Boettcher takes a deep dive into how various tech products such as mobile apps, digital camera features, and recidivism programs with “complex” algorithms have offended, alienated, marginalized, or even kept incarcerated people who don’t fit a certain persona, which they were designed for.
Reading this book forced me to examine not only the type of designer I hope to be, but also the type of person I want to be. Even though I wear my big boy pants, pay my bills on time, know the difference between interest and principal on my massive student loans, and consider myself a full-fledged adult, I am aware of how juvenile a statement such as, “the type of person I want to be,” makes me sound.
What I believe is that designers should never stop being curious, never stop learning, and as a result never stop growing. In design, we love trendy new buzzwords that eventually become cliché, “unpack,” “disrupt,” “sprint,” “agile,” etc. Wachter-Boettcher points out another term commonly used throughout companies who all think they have the best intentions — “empathy.”
Is empathy apparent in the app that has no choice for women to monitor their menstrual cycle without the expectation of getting pregnant? Is it in the photo-tagging program, which tagged black people as “gorillas?” Does empathy exist in the digital camera that assumed all Asians have their eyes closed in photos? Where does empathy show up in the algorithm that kept a certain population of people in prison, while being more lenient towards another because of the color of their skin?
This book helped me take stock of my own thesis project where I am looking closely into the matter of pet ownership for people who can’t have pets. Themes of companionship and reducing stress have emerged quite often from my research. After reading, Technically Wrong, I have dived into a loop of second guessing my design decisions. Which is good and bad. Good in the sense that I as a designer I need to be more aware of when I fall into the trend of brushing off someone’s situation as an “edge case” (add that to the buzzword list). Bad in the sense of being a little bit more apprehensive of pulling the trigger to design something that many people will get to experience and find useful. Like a lot of the components of design, it’s a messy balancing act.
Do I design something that can keep a person company, while entertaining them, and reducing their stress but might possibly put certain industries out of business; i.e. dog walkers and groomers? Could it possibly reduce the time they spend with their friends or family? I don’t have the answers but Technically Wrong has opened my eyes to at least ask those questions.
