The Design Challenge: Meaningful Inclusion

Do we tend to focus more on the ‘things’ than the people when it comes to design for the Internet of Things (IoT)? It could be. In their book, Rowland et al. (2015) highlight that the label IoT is not perfect, as it says nothing about the people, who are also a fundamental part of the network. The book describes how the term Internet of Things presents “an ideal world in which automation and centralisation of data comes first, and the interaction of people and communities comes at a distant second, if at all”. Focusing on designs and things instead of people can lead to overstated claims of efficiency for the benefit of communities who are never consulted, a waste of public and private resources, and unnecessarily heightened modes of surveillance.

Why centre on the people? 

Let me introduce you to Will, Emily and Hadia, three of my research participants (pseudonyms) in co-designing the IoT with communities, where we explored how IoT technologies can support community fridges. These are social spaces that bring people together to eat, connect, learn new skills and reduce food waste (Hubbub, n.d.). At the time of our interviews, Will was a recent graduate, Emily recently retired, and Hadia was a volunteer. They all enjoyed meeting people, hence their decision to become volunteers at the community fridge in Dundee, Scotland. For Hadia, meeting people was the most interesting thing about volunteering. She always cheerfully narrated how Christmas time was the best – local businesses donated a lot of food items, creating an abundance for the community. When we talked about technology specifically, Emily was quick to say that she hoped that whatever we thought about would not fail at some point. Will preferred something he can engage in and not something “to keep in front of his face while his brain is running on idle”.

While they did not use ‘standard’ terms used in design, Will hoped for interactivity, Emily for reliability, and Hadia to maintain relationships with others. As a researcher, synthesising these viewpoints was not easy; never mind these are three of many interviews we conducted. To the participants, automation was good, centralising the data even better, but maintaining the relationship with people was the most important. For this community, like many others, IoT technologies would not be helpful if they take away the reason they dedicate many hours each week to volunteer. But gaining these insights would not be possible if participants are not given an opportunity to share their views and provide feedback during the process. This is why we, as researchers, need to continue advocating for design processes and practices that are centred on people.

In describing community-based co-design, Ssozi-Mugarura et. al (2016) note that a lot of time is spent on conversations not relevant to design but essential for building trust and relationships. Similarly, Mozilla’s work through the Data Futures Lab (2021) presents a case, emphasising that failing to build a trust relationship with users may affect if they continue to use a product or service. While engaging with communities, we need to go beyond token representation and attempt to achieve true digital inclusion where diverse intersections – languages, (dis)abilities, identities, localities and contexts – are represented. This involves deeper engagements that result in iterative designs that have evolved from multiple levels of feedback. For example, design tools like probes, prototypes, storyboards, etc., can be supplemented with discussions to allow context and comprehensive feedback. As stated by Krippendorff (2005):

While a picture is said to convey more than a thousand words, pictures never tell the whole story. They cannot say “no”, they cannot give reasons; they cannot plan, and they cannot provide feedback on how they are being understood by others.
Klaus Krippendorff – The Semantic Turn: A new Foundation for Design

Data, Metadata and Devices

IoT devices may generate and lead to the collection of massive amounts of data. Additionally, they can also be designed with privacy in mind (i.e., privacy by design), even though they typically are not. It is important for the people who use these products to understand the scope and implications of privacy design decisions, data collected (whether it includes their personal information or the data of their community), as well as how they can access it or delete it, and decisions about how it should be used. This essentially means that having consent to collect data is not enough. We also need consent for the kinds of inferences made from the data (i.e., full implications of raw data and results of processing that data).

As researchers, designers and technologists, we are obliged to help users understand these intricacies, what their choices are, and perhaps assess risks together. It is through these trust relationships and even power sharing around design that people can feel secure enough to bring up their ideas and perspectives when we are the ones bringing technology to them. This is not just because it is a nice thing to do; it leads to better project outcomes and enables us to better foresee unintended consequences of design choices that are difficult or impossible to change after the fact. Some researchers have already begun this work, which we shall hopefully continue to build on.

References

1. Hubbub Foundation (no date) Community Fridges, Hubbub Foundation. Available at: https://www.hubbub.org.uk/the-community-fridge.
2. Krippendorff, K. (2007) ‘The semantic turn: A new foundation for design’, Taylor & Francis, 1(1), pp. 56–59. doi:10.1080/17493460600844157.
3. Mozilla. (2021) Data for Empowerment. Available at https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/data-futures-lab/data-for-empowerment/.
4. Rowland, C. et al. (2015) Designing Connected Products: UX for the consumer Internet of Things. First Edition. 1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebasopol, CA, USA: O’Reilly Media, Inc.
5. Ssozi-Mugarura, F., Blake, E. and Rivett, U. (2016) ‘Supporting community needs for rural water management through community-based co-design’, in Proceedings of the 14th Participatory Design Conference: Full papers – Volume 1. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery (PDC ’16), pp. 91–100. doi:10.1145/2940299.2940311.