A Little Bit of Good
Last week, I wrote about some of the negative side effects technology can have when it alters and ‘updates’ old experiences. This week I wanted to write about the potential technology has to do some serious good in the world. Beyond keeping track of our lives, enabling us to connect with others and being extremely entertaining, technology has the power to make real changes in people’s lives. I’ll give three examples that I encountered this week:
The first happened after watching the Oscars with my family. I learned about a short movie called The Silent Child. If you have not watched this yet, it is 20 minutes well spent. It’s a moving story about a young girl learning to navigate the world with deafness and the challenges she encounters. It seemed that some of the obstacles that someone experiencing deafness encounters could be alleviated if more people knew how to speak sign language. After the film, I decided I would do a quick search for how to learn sign language and to my excitement I was met with a flurry of helpful apps and videos willing to teach sign language. These apps are educating people like me one person at a time and possibly making the world a more accessible place to live. After some quick research I was able to find one I like and I can say I’m on the road to learning how to sign.
The second one happened tonight. My wife came home and told me she had attended a suicide prevention and assessment workshop for her work. As she was telling me about the workshop she told me they discussed all sorts of tech resources available for suicide prevention. Once again, I was amazed at the potential for technology and design to do something really good. How could something like an app really save someone’s life from suicide? After she told me about this workshop I decided I would look at the different technological resources out there for suicide prevention to see how they are aiming to aid people that are contemplating suicide. These resources are incredible. Some of them teach friends to look for signs that someone they know could be suicidal. Others incorporate safety nets by helping make loved ones, hotlines and warning signs more apparent to you. Looking through the lists of apps made me hopeful that there are people out there thinking about these problems and striving to help those affected in any way that they can.
The third came after I had my first doctor appointment in Colorado. Having moved here recently, I needed a new doctor and so I found one and had a new patient visit. Perhaps I haven’t been to a doctor in too long, but I was amazed when after the visit I received an email to sign up online for their health portal. Upon signing up, I found everything we had discussed during the visit to be logged and organized in this account. Having access to my medical information in this way is incredible. It enables me and anyone else that uses it to keep track of your medical records and take ownership of your health in a way that feels much more manageable. Technology like this has the potential to change the way I manage my health going forward.
I’m in awe that there are so many resources available for any number of real life problems. Without technology many of these resources would not be able to have the reach / impact that they do. My hope as a designer is to contribute to this ecosystem of technology aimed at changing people’s lives for the better.
