Fresh Start Brainstorming
In-class divergent thesis brainstorming with classmates on the first day of our last semester
Problem Space
How might we design for more civility in digital conversational spaces?
Brainstorm Results Part 1: Ideas came from classmates
What is the specific problem you are trying to solve; civility is the overall goal, but what problems exactly lead to a lack of civility?
This question came from Graham, our co-teacher, and I’m embarrassed that I had trouble answering it. I’d been focusing so much on “adapting restorative justice for the internet” that I admittedly lost sight of the specific problem.
But the truth is, I didn’t begin this project journey by identifying a problem. I began it more with a “How could I adapt this for that…” question, and then I have spent most of the last several months thinking about the how, less on the why, which is the question I now have trouble answering.
But I don’t feel like any of the research or experimenting I’ve done has been meaningless or a waste of time. I read this from Nina Lysbakken recently, and perhaps I’m looking for things to justify my poor design skills, but it resonates with where I’m at:
In research you can explore a material, challenge perceptions, demonstrate an argument, or show how something can be used. When exploring a material, you don’t know if it will become useful. Maybe it will, maybe it wont. A lot of great things has come out of exploring, and research is the place where this is possible to do. An institution for curiousness. Even though it seems meaningless to some.
So. I don’t know. I definitely feel some ambiguity around this right now.
Anti-nastiness plugin: filter out nasty comments; “like Grammarly, but for jerks.” Either the plugin corrects them or you can’t see them.
This concept of filtering out the ugly parts of the internet or just the stuff you don’t want to see is certainly novel, but somehow not as important to me as finding ways to prevent it from happening, or finding ways to correct it rather than hiding it. Even though I gave my classmates the prompt above, to brainstorm ways to design for civility that are not restorative justice, there’s something that I’m really resistant to about designs that mask or hide bad behavior. I can’t help but think about the person who committed the bad behavior. My instinct is that I want to understand where they are coming from and what their thought process was.
Rating system: Similar to a credit score; some spaces are using this already — how? If you take an action to amend the behavior that made your rating bad, your rating will get better.
Behavior rating systems are interesting too, but they concern me for the same reasons that social credit scores concern me. Who is deciding the criteria for the rating system, and why does that person or entity have the power to do so? I do like the idea of doing something to amend your bad behavior, and this made me remember that something similar had come up in another brainstorming session. My concern with that is that it motivates people in the same way that points do or incentives do, and what if they aren’t doing the amending behavior with sincerity?
Brainstorm Results Part 2: Staying with restorative justice / My own ideas that came to my mind during the activity. Clearly I had trouble leaving restorative justice behind.
Big takeaway from restorative justice training: restorative circles encourage groups to share their thoughts and experiences, but to not exchange them or have a give and take conversation; to put the words out there, to offer them and not expect anything in return (not necessarily how it works as conflict resolution).
Video app for teens to practice RJ, for things that happen “after hours” i.e. not at school; or for family and other communities who can’t be in the same place and want to participate
Remember that RJ is about relationships and community; it can happen as a way to nurture relationships. It doesn’t have to always happen in response to conflict resolution; in fact, it shouldn’t.
Reflection Questions
What are you most excited to work on next?
I’m most excited to review my Disqus prototype with the new insights I got from attending the restorative justice training. I definitely feel like I have more clarity about what restorative justice feels like in practice, which I’m hoping will help inform how I approach designing it into existing platforms.
What specifically are you dreading working on next? (General answers not allowed!) Try to identify what aspect of that task causes the most anxiety, and a concrete step you can take to deal with that aspect.
What am I NOT dreading working on next? Nearly every aspect of this project gives me anxiety, even the one I feel excited to work on.
I think though that what I am really dreading working on next is testing my prototype. This causes anxiety because I’m afraid it will prove I’ve been wrong about everything. I’m also really worried about figuring out how to measure whether not the prototype works. I think this stems back to needing to define the problem that I’m trying to solve, which I think will help me better determine success metrics. So I think that’s the probably the most concrete step I can take, to clearly define the problem.
But. This also brings up another thing that gives me anxiety: acknowledging that maybe I’ve approached this whole thing in the wrong way. I had an idea, and then have been trying to find the evidence that it works. This seems to contradict what we learned in Entrepreneurial Design, which is to start with a community and then investigate their problems and needs; then use those findings to design an offering. I feel like I started with what I considered an offering, restorative justice, and have been trying to find a way to shape it for a community that might not even need or want it. And while it’s been a really compelling thought experiment for me personally, I’m not sure it’s leading me towards this, as described in our Thesis Advisor Guidelines:
[Students] must demonstrate that their idea, realized through a product or service of their making, is both novel and viable. The thesis can be anything from a product to a service or more, but it must be an original contribution of knowledge. More broadly, the goal is to be practical and functional in application yet delightful and elegant in use.
Is it “normal” to be concerned about achieving this in a process like this? Or should I take my feelings of concern (dread) as indications that I’m heading in the wrong direction? I think a lot of this concern comes from feedback I get from my classmates and faculty; I know this is the point of critique, to challenge you and ask you hard questions. But I always wonder, are they asking these questions because my work is so flawed? If it was not flawed, would they still ask challenging questions?
