Overview

Software and algorithms tend to embed the values of society into their design - a term that Batya Friedman and Helen Nissenbaum dub "pre-existing bias." The result is that technology is designed for an "unmarked" user that occupies a high rung in the matrix of domination (Sasha-Costanza Chock, 2020). For this project, you will take a deep dive into software or hardware that relates to identity in some way, evaluate the assumptions embedded therein, and design a new version of the software/hardware. You will conduct user interviews and complete at least one round of user feedback.

This project will be a group project. You may work in a team of 2 - 4 students. Funding is available for interviewing potential users. Please send me a budget if you’d like to compensate your interviewees (I have about $150 per group available, exact amount depends on number of groups.)

Feel free to organize your final report in a way that makes sense for your project (for example, you could have your design analysis and critique together or separate; it is fine as long as the components are all present). See the example projects below for a full report.

This page is an overview of the project; more details for most steps will be discussed in class.

Project Process

Similar to the bodies project, we will consider the three steps in our design process, and expand on some of the work we did before.

For this project, you will:

  1. Select a software app/hardware product to study and propose improvements for (see example projects from previous years below)
  2. Complete an “a priori design analysis and critique”
    1. Analyze the affordances and signifiers of the design (contextualize)
    2. Research and report on the evolution of the design over time (contextualize)
    3. Analyze affordance perceptibility and availability, anti- and dysaffordances, including who benefits from the design and who is harmed (critique)
  3. Interview users to identify an “issue”
    1. Identify people or types of people you’d like to interview
    2. Draft questions for users or potential users of your target application (critique and rebuild)
    3. Interview users on their experience using this app/tool or similar ones (critique and rebuild)
    4. Create a systems map for your “issue,” identifying important loops and actors (contextualize, critique)
  4. Mockup a design that addresses your issue
    1. Identify leverage points and choose one or more to focus on in your design (rebuild)
    2. Mockup designs for how to improve the app/tool you chose (rebuild)
  5. Evaluate how your design addresses your issue
    1. Conduct at least one round of user testing (rebuild)
    2. (If time) incorporate details of user critique into your final product (critique and rebuild)
  6. Report on your findings
    1. Submit a written report outlining the above
    2. Present the report details to the class in an in class presentation open to the department

Select a product to improve

You can choose to work on whatever topic you’d like, so long as you can complete the key components of the course in response to it, namely the a priori critique, interviews, and mockup. Based on the past two iterations of the course, the projects that were most successful were ones where: