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The context and impact of interaction design

Writings from Seminar One at Carnegie Mellon in the first year Master of Design/Master of Professional Studies program

From Lucas Benjamin, Unsplash

Syllabus: Interaction and Service Design Concepts, Fall 2019

Seminar One (51–701) | School of Design at Carnegie Mellon University | Professor Molly Wright Steenson, PhD | TA, Hajira Qazi

Molly Wright Steenson
23 min readAug 26, 2019

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The context and impact of (interaction) design

“Digital design cannot operate outside its social context because files, systems and media only gain meaning as part of a community’s practice.”
—Arturo Escobar, Designs for the Pluriverse, p. 41

Design is everywhere, and everyone knows it. But if that’s the case, then what’s the role of the designer? Where does the designer play, and how does the designer lead? Designers make a greater impact than ever before — making it more important than ever to understand the contexts in which we apply our work.

With that in mind, we’re going to ask some fundamental questions in different contexts. What is interaction, what is design, where did these notions come from, and where are they going? Where do you situate yourself as a designer and design leader? Through this grounding, you will return to questions of what kind of designer you are and wish to be, what you believe in, and how that will extend to your research and practice.

Interaction design wasn’t invented from scratch as a singular, monolithic practice. It was born out of the intersection of a number of disciplines from within design and human-computer interaction, and also from art, media, architecture, politics, and philosophy, and beyond. There are many different definitions of what it is and where we fit into it, and no two people we meet in this class will likely have the same definition. And that’s the way it should be.

Through our suggestions, we will turn to design questions around us in the natural world, the built environment, and in digital culture, film, tv, fiction, gaming, music, art and beyond as we together frame our understandings. You will be writing continually throughout the class as you grapple with questions in the readings, answering writing prompts on Medium throughout the semester, and developing argumentative papers that explore and argue points. As you read, discuss, and write, you’ll put a stake in the ground on what matters to you in design and find ways to apply it in your work — developing your own tools to think with and your own perspectives on design.

Happy birthday!

The Master of Interaction Design program was started 25 years ago this year. The program you’re in has been a major force in shaping design and everything that design touches. That’s hundreds of students and many faculty who are now at many companies, organizations, and institutions.

In short, it’s 25 years of impact. We’ll make use of that notable quarter century. We’ll look back to look forward, looking at history and futures. We’ll look around at different ways to frame design, as we consider questions of race, gender and sexuality, decoloniality, labor, bias, ethics, and more. What is it to be starting an interaction design master’s in 2019? We will look at the world in which design operates and how you want to operate within that world. (And if things go right, we’ll have fun doing it.)

The readings here are intended to spark your thoughts and our discussions, and if you find them engaging, borrow the book from our library or purchase it. You’ll want to return to them over time as your own ideas change.

A few logistics

This syllabus page is a living document. I will be updating it continually, outlining your missions and dropping in images, links and videos. It is not only subject to change, it will so that we can accommodate guest lectures and topical changes where appropriate. Please return to it in preparation for each class.

Each week typically has readings, sometimes things to watch, and a “Your Mission” prompt or other writing assignment.

Visit Reading, Writing & Research for the Grad Student — I keep this page as a resource and will add useful things that we find to it. Miriam Sweeney’s article “How To Read for Grad School” gives you a strategic approach to reading for grad school, which is different and much more strategic than how you read books for pleasure. https://miriamsweeney.net/2012/06/20/readforgradschool/

Our readings are on Google Drive (CMU only: you will have to log in with your CMU Andrew ID.)

Please review the course policies and grading here. https://medium.com/p/c84088e4c42/

Talk to us if you have questions, thoughts, and concerns.

Hajira and Molly are here to help you when you need it: please ask us questions, share your concerns and your thoughts. Molly has office hours that you can reserve on Tuesdays (if those times don’t suit, please ask for another time). Hajira is available as needed.

Personal and classroom philosophy

I believe in sharing, in making more than less, in helping you to develop your own, personal, unique critical angles and yourselves as people. Here are two sets of resources that reflect that thinking and that I’ll uphold in our classroom.

Shine theory!
“I don’t shine if you don’t shine.” — Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman

“Shine Theory is a practice of mutual investment in each other… an investment, over the long term, in helping someone be their best self — and relying on their help in return. It is a conscious decision to bring your full self to your friendships, and to not let insecurity or envy ravage them. Shine Theory is a commitment to asking, “Would we be better as collaborators than as competitors?” The answer is almost always yes.” Shine theory, Sow & Friedman

Guidelines for Respectful Discussion. These guidelines were developed by an organization that supports gay-straight alliances for young students and they work well for us in a graduate classroom. Some of the tenets include:

  • Step up, step back
  • Lean into discomfort
  • No assumptions — except for best intentions
  • Uphold commitments

and above all: let’s dig in and make this valuable and fun.

Schedule

Week 1: Introduction and gathering

Monday, 8/26: We’ll discuss course structure, expectations, purpose. We’ll talk about why we gather—and why these questions are useful for interaction design. You’ll meet your professor, Molly, and your TA, Hajira, and you’ll continue to get to know each other.

Your first mission: Introduce yourself and tell us what brought you here.. Start a Medium profile (if you don’t wish to tie it to your personal or school Google account, you can start an account only for this class). Use images and video in addition to sound. If you’d like, you can talk about who’s at home (partner, dog, cat, bunny, houseplants). What brought you here? What do you bring here? And what do you think you’d like to find? Due by 8/27 at 10 pm.

Wednesday, 8/28

  • Reading: Priya Parker, The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters, “Decide Why You’re Really Gathering.” [Google Drive] Why a book about how people gather? It’s at the core of what it is to interact and Priya Parker has an especially thoughtful perspective in how she designs the ways that people come together.
  • Watch:
Bill Moggridge’s famous story about designing the Grid computer and discovering that it was the inside—the interaction—that interested him more than the form factor of the outside.

Your mission: A second Medium post, separate from your introduction.

Based on your own experiences and your own values,answer the following: what is interaction design? In a Medium post separate from your introduction, write a headline, write no more than 300 words, and include a sketch or diagram to help us know what you mean. You may do it on a whiteboard, or on paper, or with some of the make tools you’ll find in the Grad Studio kitchen‚ photograph it, and then incorporate that diagram in your Medium post.

Print out your diagram, write your name on it, and bring it with you to class on Wednesday, 8/28. Throughout the semester, we will return to these statements to see how they — and you — change (or don’t).

Week 2 (9/2): What is interaction design?

Monday, 9/2: NO CLASS (enjoy the Labor Day holiday)!

Wednesday, 9/4: Let’s start taking a look at the expanses of interaction design in a broader context. This year, we’ll start with Arturo Escobar’s work.

Reading:

  • Arturo Escobar, Designs for the Pluriverse, Chapter 1: “Out of the Studio and into the Flow of Socionatural Life.” [Google Drive] Arturo Escobar is a Colombian anthropologist at University of North Carolina whose work on design theory and practice addresses the possibility of approaches beyond capitalist ends, looking at the possibilities of collaborative, place-based design. He draws from decolonial approaches (looking beyond the typically white, northern hemisphere hegemonies toward the Global South) toward a designed world that is more equitable and just.

Your mission: This one is a formal, more traditional reading response of at least 300 words. Let’s break it down. What is the main point of the reading and what are the arguments he’s making? What counterarguments might you make? In addition to the argument, sketchnote or diagram it in order to follow the different design traditions and trajectories. We’ll share these in class. (You will also post this on Medium.) Please bring a copy with you, whether printed out or on your laptop.

Recap from Molly & Hajira:

  • Molly: We decided to include this chapter for a few reasons. For one, Designs for the Pluriverse is one of the most important design studies books to be published last year—and it’s written by an anthropologist, not a designer. What might an anthropologist be able to offer in a study of a world of designers? Arturo Escobar is decidedly not a designer. This interview gives some insight into his concerns. Much of his career has focused on the problems of development—the way that countries like the US come to countries like his native Colombia and try to improve and change the conditions there. These approaches are colonial in their approaches (he calls coloniality “the hierarchical classification of peoples in terms of race and culture,” p. 31)… so how might design practices lead to a different approach that puts power in the hands of people within a place? Interestingly, he titled this chapter “Out of the Studio.”
  • Hajira: For me this chapter is intended to offer an overview of design trends and how the practice of design has changed in the past several decades. He is arguing that, in the past, design has been “an expert-driven process focused on objects and services” within a Capitalistic framework, but recent trends have begun to emphasize participation, embrace complexity, and challenge consumerism (Escobar 2018, p. 27). I don’t think it’s important to understand each of these trends intimately, but to know that they’re out there and that there are a number of different ways to think about and approach design practice. Also significant is that he is provoking our conceptions about ‘what we think we know’ about design by challenging us to think about how design can change yet again to respond to issues around decoloniality, politics, power, and the pluriverse (which he gets into in later chapters).
    Someone asked about decoloniality erasing labels. I don’t think decoloniality is about erasing labels, but recognizing them and the quality we place on them (such as “modern,” “advanced,” “primitive,” etc.). These labels are loaded with certain judgments that have historically been used to subjugate some groups and elevate others. In this sense, decoloniality intends to undo the harm by giving a voice to peoples who have otherwise been marginalized.
  • Molly: Design is about possibilities. It is about questions about the nature of being—and the nature of being is what we mean by “ontology.” In Chapter 4, “On Outline of Ontological Design,” he asks why we shouldn’t consider design as something that addresses these questions of being and existence. He quotes Terry Winograd & Fernando Flores, who view design as “‘the interaction between understanding and creation” (Winograd & Flores, 1986, p. 4)—”it is a conversation about possibilities…

“…in designing tools, we (humans) design the conditions of our existence and, in turn, the conditions of our designing. We design tools and these tools design us back” (p. 110).

  • Hajira: I think it’s worth clarifying what is meant by ontological design: that the things we design and put out in the world significantly shape now only how we live but the type of people we are. For example, if we’re living on a farm intimately connected with nature or living in a high-rise building completely removed from it, our thinking and approach to the world will be fundamentally different depending on the ‘designed things’ around us. He hints at this throughout the chapter, but specifically addresses this on page 33.
  • Molly: We talked about the scholarly tone of his work. There’s an argument to be made about tracing the lines of an argument so that you can follow the thoughts of the writer. There’s also an argument to be made for writing in a more straightforward manner, which is a question of voice. For our own purposes, it’s something to think about for yourself. How is it to write in a more colloquial tone versus a more formal tone? What’s it like to structure an argument versus write more creatively?
  • Hajira: On the question of “are these approaches enough”: I see his survey of design trends as a way to illustrate that design has come a long way but has a long way to go, and that it is up to us to make the way for these types of conversations not just in academia but in design practice, too. On a personal level, one of the things I most enjoy about design is that it is not rigid/ossified; it is nascent, expansive, and constantly changing. There is room for many voices — yours, too.
  • Molly: Indeed!

Week 3 (9/9): Learning from buildings

Monday, 9/9: We’ll be turning to How Buildings Learn, a book about buildings and cities that has long captivated interaction designers (even though Stewart Brand is not an architect and neither are many interaction designers).

  • Reading: How Buildings Learn, by Stewart Brand, Chapters 1 (“Flow”), 2 (“Shearing Layers”), 11 (“The Scenario-Buffered Building”) 11 and 12 (“Built for Change”). If this is a book you like, there are many inexpensive used versions on Amazon.

Wednesday, 9/11: A shearing layers walk. We will meet in the Grad Studio and then set out for a shearing layer walk. Bring your phone or other cameras and sketchbook and document the trip.

Assignment 1:

“Our basic argument is that there isn’t such a thing as a building.” —Frank Duffy

On our walk, we will set out as a group to wander Oakland. You’ll document a building or other lived/worked-in structure that you visit on your shearing layers walk, and then you’ll couple that description with the design of something else—an interface, an object, another building, a city, an article of clothing, a system of government and a million things that are not listed here… your choice. How do these notions of shearing layers work? This particular assignment, done properly, will take some 750–1000 words and good photographs, drawings, and diagrams. Bring it to life. What do we gain by looking to buildings and cities? Why are architectural metaphors useful? And when are they not?

You will be submitting this as a Medium post intended for a general audience of designers and those interested in design issues. We will also engage in peer review of your posts, and then you’ll do a final version.

  • First draft: due Sunday 9/15 at 7 pm (you may wish to complete it before the weekend, however, while your walk is fresh in your mind).
  • Peer review/pinup: Wednesday 9/18 in class
  • Final: due Sunday, 9/22 at 5 pm

Week 4 (9/16): Affordances and inclusive design

Please note that there is more in the syllabus than we will get through in this class! This is a case in reading for strategically. Do watch the first Sara Hendren video, and if you have time, tune into the second lecture below — she’s a wonderful speaker and she changed how I see design. If you are someone with an interest in health, accessibility, or inclusivity, this week will have a lot for you to enjoy.

Monday, 9/16: We’ll look at how the built environment acts upon us in terms of what it affords, and read part of Don Norman’s classic, The Design of Everyday Things. We may have guests join us from CMU and outside, depending.

Your mission IN CLASS, to be done in small groups: There are affordances all around you.

First, we will all talk bout what an affordance is, referring the ways that James Gibson and Don Norman (p. 10 of the text/p. 25 in the PDF is a good passage — where Norman defines it).

Then in class: affordance walk! Find an affordance in the building and come back to describe it in detail: what you see, what you feel when you touch it, how it feels. Bring it to life by focusing on it. Take pictures. Side note: This is one of my favorite missions (and that’s why I’m adapting it to an in-class exercise.)

Wednesday, 9/18: part of class will be peer review for your shearing walk assignment

Readings:

  • James Gibson, “Affordances,” in The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception [Google Drive] (to discuss Monday)
  • Donald Norman, Design of Everyday Things, Preface, Chapter 1, 2, 4 & 5. This one, you might want to own if you don’t already. I’ve chosen to assign more rather than less for a few reasons: it’s a classic, and the ideas here are ones that you’ll see referenced in other places. Read strategically to capture the main ideas, move quickly through the text and pay attention to what interests you.

To read for Wednesday: a magazine article, a blog post, and a website to visit.

To watch:

A quick video to introduce you to Sara Hendren’s work
Sara Hendren, here at CMU School of Design in 2017 in the Design the Future lecture series... this is longer, but it’s worth watching all the way through. (You can skip the Q&A at the end.)

Week 5 (9/23): Speculative & Critical Design (and their related practices)

(Hajira out)

Design can be used to show possible worlds and futures. The practices of speculative and critical design show these futures—sometimes positive, sometimes uncanny and dystopian—in context.

Readings:

Watch:

Prof. Deepa Butoliya, PhD (CMU Design PhD 2018), University of Michigan gave a TEDx talk at CMU in 2019 about “jugaad,” a practice of ingenuity and making do that she argues is a form of speculative design.

[WE ARE NOT DOING THIS EXERCISE BECAUSE OF YOUR OTHER DEADLINE. Your mission: Your own critical or speculative design or design fiction. We’ll leave this open-ended: have fun with it. We will share them in class.]

Week 6 (9/30): Interrogating Autonomy (Computation & Creativity)

How are systems made and by whom? What’s the role of the people who design and build them? What about the question of agency?

I’m reframing this week in light of some questions you’ve had about the Department of Defense, technology, and universities. AI and computation back to the 1950s have a long history of defense funding. On one hand, it could be argued that these technologies wouldn’t exist without it. On the other hand, what are the implications of this funding? This is a subject of research for both Molly and for Prof. Daniel Cardoso Llach, and we’ll bring our classes together on Wednesday to discuss. From Daniel’s syllabus: “we will consider how interactive technologies inscribe worldviews, assumptions, and “underlying conceptions of the activity that [they are] designed to support” (Suchman). We will thus explore the — often overlooked — agency of technical systems, and of the people who design and build them, in shaping design practices and ideas.”

Readings:

Required

Skim

  • Recommended: Steenson, Molly Wright. 2017. Architectural Intelligence: How designers and architects designed the digital landscape,: MIT Press. (Especially pp. 165–190 and pp. 221–22; Chapter 6). This is from my book and you can skim it
  • Cardoso Llach, Daniel. 2015. Builders of the Vision: Software and the Imagination of Design. London, New York: Routledge 2015. (Especially pp. 1–4 and Chapter 4 (pp. 49- 72); Chapters 1 and 3). This is from Prof. Cardoso Llach’s book. I recommend it because it fundamentally changed how I understand computers and creativity.

Optional

  • Daniel’s class will also be reading the following piece for their seminar. Lucy Suchman, “Anthropological Relocations and the Limits of Design.” Annual Review of Anthropology 40, no. 1 (2011): 1–18.

Your mission: borrowed from Daniel’s syllabus

In Human-Machine Autonomies, Suchman and Weber offer a brief history of the concept of technological “‘autonomy.“’” What problems do they identify with this concept as it’s used in the context of military technologies? Your Medium response should address all of the following.

  1. Citing the text, explain their position about this phenomenon and the reasons the authors find it worthy of analysis, intriguing, or problematic.
  2. Recent reports that CMU is hosting a Project Maven offshoot make these issues very tangible. Following the reading and additional materials found online, describe the project, relating it to the issues raised by Suchman and Weber.
  3. Using one or more examples, explain how the concept of ‘autonomy’ plays out in discourses about design and computation/tech, and consider how the issues raised by Suchman and Weber apply in this context.

Wednesday, 10/2: Joint class on computation and creativity, 1960–today, with Prof. Daniel Cardoso Llach and the Master of Computational Design students in the School of Architecture

Daniel & Molly both do similar research about the history of computation, artificial intelligence, architecture and design—we are longtime friends and sometime collaborators, and we will share some of this work with you, as well as source material from the 1960s–present. We’ve always loved putting our classes together and hope you’ll enjoy the session.

Week 7 (10/7): Futures and forecasting

Guest: Prof. Stuart Candy. Via Stuart and Anna, Shambhavi & Jiyoung, the discussion leaders:

Monday: the readings by Boulding, Nandy and Dator are for Monday.

1. Read the brief editors’ introductions (Volume I; Volume II) and take some time to skim through the contents of both. You may like to dive deeper into, or save for later, any that catch your eye. These are for Monday.

https://jfsdigital.org/articles-and-essays/vol-23-no-3-march-2019/

https://jfsdigital.org/articles-and-essays/vol-23-no-4-june-2019/

2. Read the three pieces selected with the discussion leaders for Wednesday’s class:

• Decolonising Design Collective, A Manifesto for Decolonising Design

• Candy & Kornet, Turning Foresight Inside Out: An Introduction to Ethnographic Experiential Futures

YOUR MISSION: Your reflections on grad school so far. We’re midway through the semester. How’s it going? What do you know now that you didn’t before? What questions do you have looking ahead? How’s this grad school thing going? (Please note that you should still read the readings, even though they’re not being addressed by the mission. My thinking here is a little time to reflect on your journey might be useful in a week where we’re reading about futures and forecasting.)

Week 8 (10/14): Ethics and value-sensitive design

Ethics is on everyone’s mind, but what does ethics really mean? We’ll dive into questions of ethics with some guest speaker contributions. We will also be diving into and applying Batya Friedman’s value-sensitive design framework as a way to analyze the ethics and value tradeoffs.

  • Batya Friedman & David Hendry, Value-Sensitive Design: Shaping Technology with Moral Imagination. Chapters 1–3. Required. (I’ve also provided a shorter version of this as an optional skimmable text)

Secondary texts that will be useful:

  • The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University: Please have a look around the (enormous) resources that the center offers on technology ethics, in particular. You may want to return to their materials for the paper you’ll be writing, as well as through the rest of this class as we discuss questions of bias, data, and AI.
  • Kathy Baxter, Salesforce’s Ethics & AI architect is working to integrate ethics and AI at Salesforce and beyond. “Creating the World We Want: How to Build an Ethical AI Practice” outlines some of what she’s doing.

Your mission, due Sunday at 10 pm: In preparation for our in-class work and your paper, you’ll be taking a look at your current Interaction Design Studio project from a value-sensitive design perspective that Batya Friedman and David Hendry introduce.

Your Medium post this week will involve you working individually to look at your project in the IxD studio and to do the following:

- define direct and indirect stakeholders
- what are the benefits & harms to each?
- what values are in conflict?
- how do values map to these benefits and harms?

Diagrams will be useful and should be included.

You will be using this Medium post in our class work this week, and in the paper that you will be writing that is due on 10/20 (see below).

Paper 2 assignment

You will hand in this paper as a document, not as a Medium post (although it begins with a Medium post in preparation (due 10/13) and two in-class group exercises (10/14 & 10/16). We will discuss this further in-class on 10/14.

Your paper should address the following:

  • What’s your project, as well as you can describe it at this point?
  • Who are the stakeholders, direct and indirect? Who should be prioritized? Does this look different in the future?
  • What are the values that the stakeholders hold and what tensions are there between them? You should consider the list of values that Friedman and Hendry list, and add your own where they are needed.
  • How do design decisions your team is making (or might make) lead to different approaches in order to address these values? What about your values as a designer: where are there tensions?
  • If you were to do an empirical investigation, what tools might be good approaches? Friedman & Hendry list many; are there others you might use or perhaps are using? Choose and explain briefly your choice
  • Friedman & Hendry include a technical investigation as part of their method. While that’s beyond the scope of this class, we can still ask critical questions. What are the technologies that are implicated in your virtual assistant project, and what questions might need to be considered to ensure a value-sensitive approach to your design? That is, if you were a product manager or founder of a company or organization, what would you need to consider in order to work with the value tensions in your virtual assistant project?
  • A good introduction and conclusion.

Your paper will be between 1300 and 1800 words long (this has been adjusted for a longer page count—please alert me if you find you need more), minus reference material or images. This is a more formal paper that you will hand in as a PDF or Word document (not Pages). If you wish, you may post to Medium but it is not a requirement.

  • First draft due Sunday, 10/20 at 5 pm: This is your best first draft, not a rough draft. This will also include references.
  • Peer review: 10/23 in class (see below for details)
  • Final paper due Friday, November 1 at 7 pm

Week 9, (10/21): Decolonizing design (with Hajira Qazi)

Hajira Qazi will be teaching this week.

  • Otto von Busch & Karl Palmås, “Social Means Do Not Justify Corruptible Ends: A Realist Perspective of Social Innovation and Design,” Sheji, 2016 [Google Drive]
  • Please reread the Decolonising Design Manifesto that was a part of the Futures week.

Peer review: 10/23

On Sunday 10/20, your peers will have completed a draft of their papers, and you will be reading the papers of those who were in the value sensitive design group exercise (after you were mixed and matched with new classmates, not your existing studio teams). You should spend 20–30 minutes reading and responding to each paper. Print out and write on the paper itself. Feel free to use colors and even stickers, if you’re so moved (who doesn’t appreciate a sticker?). This needs to be done before you come to class on 10/23. Bring the paper printouts of each other’s papers to class on 10/23.

  • What’s your favorite part of the paper? What are the 2–3 biggest strengths of the paper?
  • Provide feedback on the way the author is putting the various tensions into play: stakeholders? values?
  • How is the introduction and the conclusion?
  • How does the structure flow? Might it work better if it were rearranged differently?
  • What questions do they raise for you? How might they be improved? Is there enough evidence and examples to support it?

FOR YOUR OWN PAPER:

  • What are you most certain about with your paper?
  • Where do you think you most need feedback?
  • If you could ask your fellow authors one question about your paper, what would it be?

I’m looking forward to seeing where this essay took you and to reading what you have to say.

Week 10, (10/28) The role of the designer in (tech) culture

We are condensing these two weeks into one.

Yiwei, Eustina, and Deepika are the discussion leaders for this class.

10/30:

Bhakti, Anuprita, and Diana are discussion leaders for this class.

Optional:

Week 11, (11/4): Data humanism

Prof. Chris Goranson will visit the class on Wednesday.

Your mission: Mimi Onuoha asks — “How does our attitude towards data change if we see it as the result of a relationship rather than an end in itself?” Imagine you were to start collecting data about yourself over the next ten years (2020–2030) to store in a time capsule. What data would you collect and why?”

Watch: Giorgia Lupi’s TED Talk, “How We Can Find Ourselves in Data,” 2017

Giorgia Lupi, in her 2017 TED talk on data humanism

Week 12, (11/11): It’s people all the way down: the question of labor

Readings this week: Note that you will also choose one of the 3 readings (Irani, Levy, or Roberts) under “your mission” to bring into dialogue in your Medium post.

  • Karl Marx, Capital vol. 1, Chapter 7 [Google Drive]. A surprising thing about Marx is that he’s sometimes funny and pretty snarky. We’re reading this to situate a conversation on labor-process and use-value so that we can talk about it in a digital sense. Guest: Cathryn Ploehn, second year Master of Design student, who will sketchnote Karl Marx.
  • Mary L. Gray and Siddharth Suri, Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass, intro & chapter 1 (if you’re really motivated, Chapter 3 [Google Drive]
  • One additional text on content moderation, Mechanical Turk, or trucking.

Your mission: There are a number of other books and sources that take on questions of the impact of AI and computation on humans and their labor: your job is to bring them into this discussion. In so doing, you will choose one of the following texts on digital labor to review in your Medium post as examples for the Gray/Suri text.

Assignment 3: the design and editorial curation project. We will brainstorm our final publication as part of Wednesday’s class.

Week 13, (11/18): “If you don’t have anything to hide, then you don’t have anything to fear:” why privacy is actually everyone’s business

Monday, 11/18: Guest: Prof. Lorrie Cranor, director of the CyLab Usable Privacy and Security Lab at CMU

Prof. Lorrie Cranor, Director, CyLab

Readings:

  • Daniel Solove, Nothing to Hide: The False Tradeoff between Privacy and Security, Introduction.
  • Julia Angwin, Dragnet Nation, chapter 1–2. [Box]
  • For you to explore: the New York Times Privacy Project.

Your mission: Present two articles from the NYT Privacy Project (there are many!) in a 300–500 word Medium post, in which any quotes you make are referenced appropriately. What are the themes and arguments? The questions and implications?

Week 13, (11/25)—Thanksgiving week, class Monday, no class Wednesday

Meet 11/25 about the final design editorial curation project.

Week 14, (12/2): What is interaction design?

Now that we’re at the end of the semester, what is interaction design? Revise your definition from the beginning of the semester or explain why your first definitions still stand.

Sharing your design curation contributions in lightning talks on Wednesday morning. If you wish, you may do so in your native language.

Final posts and project due 12/5.

Design
Cmu
Interaction Design
UX
Ethics

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The context and impact of interaction design
The context and impact of interaction design

Published in The context and impact of interaction design

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Last published Aug 26, 2019

Writings from Seminar One at Carnegie Mellon in the first year Master of Design/Master of Professional Studies program

Molly Wright Steenson
Molly Wright Steenson

Written by Molly Wright Steenson

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2.3K following

President & CEO, American Swedish Institute. Author of Architectural Intelligence (MIT Press 2017).

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