Week 8 & 9_Generative research workshop and insights
March 2- March 15, 2020
The first week was dedicated to the generative research phase of the project. Our research methodologies class with Hajira and Sofia proved to be instrumental in helping us through this process of understanding the theory of generative research and to further develop tools to convert this ideology into an actionable output- a generative research workshop with target stakeholders.
What is ‘generative research’?
A research-driven design approach with a focus towards a deeper understanding of user needs and desires, and concept development through participatory design activities.
Developing a generative research workshop pertaining to data privacy-
Selecting a target audience
We narrowed down upon ‘young adults’ as our target audience for the workshop for a number of reasons. Firstly, having been born in the digital age, young adults are heavily exposed to data-driven services. Secondly, they are the future workforce. Hence, cognizance about data use and privacy is of importance for them. Lastly, this target audience was the most accessible to us being on a school campus.
Defining the goal
We first started off by defining the goals of the generative research workshop. We realized that the topic of data privacy is not familiar to many. People are aware of data collection but lack understanding in terms of the types of data collected, the sources of collection, etc. Hence, we decided to split the generative phase into 2 stages-
- Stage 1: Workbook- Workshop participants were required to go through a workbook designed to help them get acquainted with the idea of digital privacy. Starting from the idea of privacy in the physical realm to gradually introduce the concept of digital privacy and data agency. Helping participants reflect on their digital patterns to further ease the into the next stage.
- Stage 2: Workshop- The goal of the workshop was to help the participants broaden their understanding pertaining to data privacy. It provided a means for us to understand the value tensions that exist between ‘service values’ and the value of privacy. It also provided an opportunity for the participants to think about ‘preferable futures’.
Designing the workshop
- Workbook- We started designing a small workbook with the inputs that we received from Liz Sanders who was a guest lecturer a couple of weeks back. She talked about the importance of a workbook to better prepare and equip the target audience for what lies ahead during the workshop. We started developing questions associated with the participants’ everyday life incidents dealing with privacy. Do they remember a time when they felt vulnerable? Through a series of such real-life questions, we then moved on to a small activity that required them to map their relationship with a digital service. It was a fun activity involving metaphoric representation of trust and privacy which helped us understand the participants’ mental models related to digital data. The second part of this activity involved selecting a prefered relationship for a desirable future. Asking them to list the number of apps on their phones as well as the data points that the apps collected was a way to introduce them to the workshop.
2. Workshop- We recruited a diverse set of participants for the workshop involving undergraduate as well as graduate students from within the school belonging to different departments- CS, ECE, English Literature, Interaction design, business, etc. This helped us gain a multi-disciplinary perspective to this wicked problem surrounding digital data privacy.
We designed the workshop around 3 digital services used by everyone- Venmo- a payment app, Uber- a ride-hailing app, Youtube- video sharing platform. We wanted to understand the prioritization of values that the participants were willing to make pertaining to each service. We developed a deck of cards for each of these services with different service values listed on each. For example-
The card deck for venmo consisted of- Transparency, convenience, transaction log, and access for all as the core service values. Blank cards were also provided for participants to include certain values that they thought confirmed to the values of the service. The participants were then asked to arrange the cards based on the way they prioritized these service values-starting from the most important to least important. A dystopian scenario involving privacy, anticipated to motivate the participants to reconsider their choices was then introduced.
For example- A ‘bad scenario’ for venmo-
Every day during lunch, you visit one of the food carts outside your office building. You love french fries and twice every week you treat yourself with a small portion of it along with your lunch. Business as usual, you pay the cart vendor using Venmo and head back to your table to eat.
This morning, the HR manager informed that your paycheck will have some deductions from the coming month onwards. You were confused so you confronted her and you have discovered that this abrupt change is because of an increase in your health insurance premium. Your company pays your health insurance, but on doing some digging you have learned that Venmo sells its data to health insurance companies. Your transaction history on Venmo has highlighted your habit of eating unhealthy food and has put you in a high-risk health category with the health insurance companies.
This opened up discussions around value tensions and trade-offs involving digital privacy transitioning into the last stage of the workshop involving brainstorming concepts through the lens of futures and forecasting. This exercise helped us ideate around concepts dealing with data-trade models, the use of technologies like block-chain, the need for protocols and aggregators, the extent of agency and ownership, etc.
Venmo- the deck of cards, ‘bad scenario’ card, participants prioritizing values
The workshop was conducted on March 4, 2020, in the graduate design studio at Carnegie Mellon University. The workbooks and workshop insights were further evaluated through a mind-mapping and affinity mapping session discussed through further blogs.
Week 9: This was the spring break and we spent a few hours working individually and then coming together to discuss the insights each of us had from the process
