There is a lot of debate right now about the impact of technology, whether it is enriching our lives or dumbing us down or somewhere in between. We’ll talk about how to make sense of the often opposing viewpoints and how to interpret those attention-grabbing headlines. As designers, how should we decipher this information and apply it to our work? How do we make sense of the debate?
4. “Teen battling Internet
addiction cuts off own hand”
“Girl starved to death while parents
raised virtual child in online game”
“Student ‘addiction’ to technology
‘similar to drug cravings’, study finds”
14. “True cases of Internet
addiction are rare, and the
panic about social isolation is
likely completely backward”
15. The Digital Revolution and
Adolescent Brain Evolution
Computers;
Persuasive Social Actors
Futures Beyond Dystopia: Creating
Social Foresight
Brain Plasticity Through the Life
Span: Learning to Learn and Action
Video Games
Digital identity: Finding Me
The Digital Native
- Myth and Reality
17. “We shall not cease from
exploration, and the end of all
our exploring will be to arrive
where we started and know
the place for the first time.”
- T. S. Eliot
Tech makes progress… All these different experiences change the way to think and behave. It only gets more complicated.
Who knows what will become of us. \easy to see where scary dystopian visions come from.
JULIET
We thought it was worth looking into…
More balanced view
Looked at a range of things
Lots of books on this topic
Here are some
More balanced?
Still opinion based and polarised
Sells more books
negative
He disagrees
Cites examples of tech enhancing our lives
MIKE
Scientific articles
Observational studies
No control group
Facts not all in – need to wait 50 years
So we can’t have all the facts, and we have a lot of conjecture from elsewhere.
You could be easily confused.
We want to share what we have learned personally, and how our own practices have changed.
Full circle to look at UX in different light
JULIET
Our framework for thinking about this
We start by understanding people
Nothing new
But maybe a wider focus
Think about technology = new
But need to understand in same way as people
The interaction is the heart of it
Nothing new
But beyond can they find the right button to share
What are the wider effects e.g. reading, relationships, value
Within a business context
Further complications – different priorities
How we personally might use this
MIKE
So we start with people. But its not just user stories on a post-it note, its a much wider psychology.
Obviously there’s lots…
List a few, then ask audience.
Do same thing with tech.
Complex decisions
List a few, then ask audience.
My framework – good/bad.
If people are good – don’t try make tech do too much. Goodnight lamp.
If people are bad – then tech has to work harder. Email addiction, new tools to help manage. May require concessions or organisational change
If BOTH bad, then why are you building it??
When we get this wrong, tech makes us worse. Then there is potential for negative effects.
JULIET
But don’t be nostalgic
Writing, Books, TV, phone, etc
Mental models – way you think things work is an artefact of the available tech
Don’t just build it because you can
Negotiation
Challenge & question is it a good thing
Identify the bad ideas
MIKE
Tech advances.
Understand that. Understand people. Result = Experience
Eg: collaboration, talk through 1 way, 2 way, visual, real time, empathetic
Understand experience as it is, why people want to collaborate, which aspects of that are they good at and how tech can help.
For me this sums it up. Viewing tech as a separate scale – it is everything that doesn’t quite work yet. And its up to us to help shape the experience of it.