design | Chris Aldrich

Checked into Cross Campus

A great talk about the importance of design in building almost anything, but particularly companies. The take away: while it may be somewhat more expensive to hire the people and do the work in the beginning, the ultimate products and the company will be measurably better off for it in the long run.

I stayed after until almost noon having an extended discussion with Robbie about a handful of design related topics including IndieWeb.org.

RSVPed Attending Innovate Pasadena: Differentiated by Design: Strategy for Early Stage Startups

Friday, February 14, 2020
8:15 AM to 9:30 AM
Cross Campus, 85 N. Raymond Avenue, Pasadena, CA

Design consistently improves the most profitable companies and products but why do many startups fail to integrate design strategy as they grow. Learn ways to utilize design to build teams, streamline products, connect to users and acquire customers.

Bio:
Robbie Nock is the Director of Entrepreneurship and Professional Practice at ArtCenter. His background spans media production, new technology and venture development and he is driven to connect design, business and engineering partners to develop new synergies for early-stage innovation. Robbie produces academic programs and provides strategic services for a global community of entrepreneurs, educators, investors and philanthropist.

Read Eliminating the Human by

David Byrne (MIT Technology Review)

We are beset by—and immersed in—apps and devices that are quietly reducing the amount of meaningful interaction we have with each other.

This piece makes a fascinating point about people and interactions. It’s the sort of thing that many in the design and IndieWeb communities should read and think about as they work.

I came to it via an episode of the podcast The Happiness Lab.

The consumer technology I am talking about doesn’t claim or acknowledge that eliminating the need to deal with humans directly is its primary goal, but it is the outcome in a surprising number of cases. I’m sort of thinking maybe it is the primary goal, even if it was not aimed at consciously. ❧

Annotated on January 22, 2020 at 10:35AM

Most of the tech news we get barraged with is about algorithms, AI, robots, and self-driving cars, all of which fit this pattern. I am not saying that such developments are not efficient and convenient; this is not a judgment. I am simply noticing a pattern and wondering if, in recognizing that pattern, we might realize that it is only one trajectory of many. There are other possible roads we could be going down, and the one we’re on is not inevitable or the only one; it has been (possibly unconsciously) chosen. ❧

Annotated on January 22, 2020 at 10:36AM

What I’m seeing here is the consistent “eliminating the human” pattern. ❧

This seems as apt a name as any.
Annotated on January 22, 2020 at 10:39AM

“Social” media: This is social interaction that isn’t really social. While Facebook and others frequently claim to offer connection, and do offer the appearance of it, the fact is a lot of social media is a simulation of real connection. ❧

Perhaps this is one of the things I like most about the older blogosphere and it’s more recent renaissance with the IndieWeb idea of Webmentions, a W3C recommendation spec for online interactions? While many of the interactions I get are small nods in the vein of likes, favorites, or reposts, some of them are longer, more visceral interactions.

My favorite just this past week was a piece that I’d worked on for a few days that elicited a short burst of excitement from someone who just a few minutes later wrote a reply that was almost as long as my piece itself.

To me this was completely worth the effort and the work, not because of the many other smaller interactions, but because of the human interaction that resulted. Not to mention that I’m still thinking out a reply still several days later.

This sort of human social interaction also seems to be at the heart of what Manton Reece is doing with micro.blog. By leaving out things like reposts and traditional “likes”, he’s really creating a human connection network to fix what traditional corporate social media silos have done to us. This past week’s episode of Micro Monday underlines this for us. (#)
Annotated on January 22, 2020 at 10:52AM

Antonio Damasio, a neuroscientist at USC wrote about a patient he called Elliot, who had damage to his frontal lobe that made him unemotional. In all other respects he was fine—intelligent, healthy—but emotionally he was Spock. Elliot couldn’t make decisions. He’d waffle endlessly over details. Damasio concluded that although we think decision-making is rational and machinelike, it’s our emotions that enable us to actually decide. ❧

Annotated on January 22, 2020 at 10:56AM

And in the meantime, if less human interaction enables us to forget how to cooperate, then we lose our advantage. ❧

It may seem odd, but I think a lot of the success of the IndieWeb movement and community is exactly this: a group of people has come together to work and interact and increase our abilities to cooperate to make something much bigger, more diverse, and more interesting than any of us could have done separately.
Annotated on January 22, 2020 at 10:58AM

Remove humans from the equation, and we are less complete as people and as a society. ❧

Annotated on January 22, 2020 at 10:59AM

A version of this piece originally appeared on his website, davidbyrne.com. ❧

This piece seems so philosophical, it seems oddly trivial that I see this note here and can’t help but think about POSSE and syndication.
Annotated on January 22, 2020 at 11:01AM

📺 Embedded in the Fabric: Georgetown Domains and the Master’s of Learning, Design, and Technology | Lee Skallerup Bessette, Randal Ellsworth | Domains 2019

Watched Embedded in the Fabric: Georgetown Domains and the Master's of Learning, Design, and Technology by Lee Skallerup Bessette, Randal Ellsworth from YouTube

The mission of the new Master’s of Learning, Design, and Technology program at Georgetown University is “to give our students a deep foundation in the tools and theory of learning design, technology innovation, learning analytics, and higher education leadership, a foundation on which they can create engaging and innovative learning experiences for all students.” Working in and with Georgetown Domains is a key part of this engagement; the students learn about and create their domains during the opening week-long foundations course, and build on it throughout the duration of the degree, ending with a final portfolio on their domain of their work. In between, the students have the option of taking a one-credit course in Domains, as well as showcasing their coursework and projects on the site. For some, their personal Domains specifically and Georgetown Domains more generally have become the subject of their research and study. What this allows is for students to engage directly with the technology, as well as questions of accessibility, privacy, surveillance, and tools. They learn about and apply these lessons as they move through the program, perform and reflect on their research, and build their sites. But most importantly, this allows for students to own their own intellectual property, as well as provide the tools to apply what they have learned in a practical and holistic way. The e-portfolio requirement at the end of the degree highlights this commitment to students’ intellectual property as well as professionalization, while also providing an experimental and reflective space for students to connect their work. This short presentation will discuss curricular examples (Intro week, Domains course, Studio and Studio Capstone) of how Domains has been integrated into the program, sharing some student sites, projects, and portfolios.

Slides

“Domains is a Trojan horse for thinking about ed-tech.”—Lee Skallerup Bessette

Randal Ellsworth uses the phrase “thinking space” to describe Domains here.

📑 Dumb Twitter | Adam Croom

Annotated Dumb Twitter by

Adam Croom (Adam Croom)

Here’s my pitch for a Dumb Twitter app: The app forces you to tweet at the original 140 character tweet length. You can reply. You can’t like or retweet. You most certainly can’t quote tweet. There is no private DMing. Linear tweet stream only. ❧

Perhaps he’s unaware of it, but this sounds a lot like the design decisions that micro.blog has made in it’s platform which is very similar to DoOO, but for the broader public.

📖 15% done with Ruined by Design by Mike Monteiro

📖 15% into reading Ruined by Design: How Designers Destroyed the World, and What We Can Do to Fix It by Mike Monteiro

Read Chapters: The Ethics of Design, How Designers Destroyed the World, and Moving Fast and Breaking Things

I was very reticent about this book at first, but it is way more essential than I initially thought! I knew I was going to know almost all of the examples, and I’ve generally been right on that account so far, but he’s going beyond the problems with potential solutions. I was worried it was going to be something that I would appreciate and heartily recommend to others without getting much out of it myself, but it reads quickly and easily and there’s a lot here that I want to come back and ponder about further.

Despite the fact that I don’t feel like a professional web designer by trade, what he’s talking about here are standards of human care and interaction that anyone who makes anything should be thinking about on a daily basis. Whether you’re building or creating things for others or even making your own daily life, at heart, you’re designing something.

If Chuck Chugumlung hasn’t come across this book yet with respect to his Design X Pasadena group, I’ll recommend it heartily to him.

I also find myself thinking a lot about how people are building and designing technologies in the edtech space. May of the researchers, professors, and instructional designers I know are immersed in some of the ethics and morals behind using these technologies. Generally I hear them talking about what they “wish” they had as tools, but often they seem to be stuck with things they don’t really want and are then attempting to figure out ways around these technologies after-the-fact so that they can use them in an ethical manner. They really need to stand up, refuse to use what they’re given, and demand better design from the start. Even if they’re incapable of building their own tools, they’re slowly, but surely going to loose the war if they don’t move upstream to where the actual decisions are being made. Fortunately some of the work I see in the OER space is being done at the grass roots where people have more choice and say in the design, but I worry that if they’re not careful, those tools will be siloed off with bad design choices by for-profit companies as well.

Annotated Ruined by Design: How Designers Destroyed the World, and What We Can Do to Fix It by

Mike Monteiro (Mule Books, March 2019, ISBN: 978-1090532084)

Highlights, Quotes, Annotations, & Marginalia

But if you want to wade into the murky waters of the tech industry; if you’re wanting to think more deeply about the power and ethical responsibility you have in this industry; if you’re perplexed but not in despair; if you’re ready to think about the direct impact our work has on the individuals and families exposed to the experiences and products you help create; if you’re ready to turn off the faucet; rip the plug out of the sink, and put your mop to use—this book is for you.

2:45 pm

The world is on its way to ruin and it’s happening by design.

2:44pm

The goal of this book is to help you do the right thing in environments designed to make it easier to do the wrong thing.

2:45 pm

We’re going to learn how being a designer is being a gatekeeper. We’re about to become humankind’s last line of defense against monsters.

2:46 pm

I intend to show you that design is a political act. What we choose to design and more importantly, what we choose not to design, and even more importantly, who we exclude from the design process—these are all political acts. Knowing this and ignoring it is also a political act, albeit a cowardly one. Understanding the power in our labor and how we choose to use it defines the type of people we are.

2:48 pm

Speaking of Victor Papanek, this book wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t read Design for the Real World as a young designer.

2:49 pm

In the words of the great Margaret Mead:

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

2:55 pm

Always a great quote and it reminds me of The West Wing (1999, Warner Bros.)

For years, the libertarian con artists of Silicon Valley have been telling us they want to change the world. But when the people at the top tell you they want to change the world, it’s generally because they’ve figured out how to profit even more from those below them.

2:56 pm

Our labor is what makes us special, and what gives us power. When we turn that labor into a force for making the world better for the largest number of people possible instead of using it to make a few people even richer than they already are? Then, and only then, we may be actually able to change the world. Then we get to go home and live ordinary lives.

2:57 pm

Most professions worth their while, and capable of inflicting harm, have ethical codes of some sort. It’s a sign of maturity and responsibility, and there’s a price paid for not following it, which may include losing your license to practice.

3:00 pm

The internet is a harassment and abuse factory in part because designers implemented things they shouldn’t.

3:02 pm

About a year ago, I decided to write a code of ethics. It’s open-sourced. Take it. Make it better. Treat it like a living document:
A designer is first and foremost a human being.

3:06 pm

These were part of a Medium post from 2017 entitled Dear Design Student.

When you do work that depends on a need for income disparity or class distinctions to succeed, you are failing at your job as a human being, and therefore as a designer.

3:07 pm

A designer is responsible for the work they put into the world.

3:08 pm

When we ignorantly produce work that harms others because we didn’t consider the full ramifications of that work, we are doubly guilty.

3:09 pm

A designer values impact over form.

3:10 pm

A designer owes the people who hire them not just their labor, but their counsel.

3:11 pm

A designer uses their expertise in the service of others without being a servant. Saying no is a design skill. Asking why is a design skill. Rolling your eyes and staying quiet is not. Asking ourselves why we are making something is an infinitely better question than asking ourselves whether we can make it.

3:13 pm

A designer welcomes criticism.

3:13 pm

A designer strives to know their audience.

3:14 pm

What about empathy? Empathy is a pretty word for exclusion.

3:15 pm

A designer does not believe in edge cases.

3:16 pm

A designer is part of a professional community.

3:17 pm

A designer seeks to build their professional community, not divide it

3:19 pm

A designer welcomes a diverse and competitive field.

3:19 pm

A designer takes time for self-reflection.

3:44 pm

No one wakes up one day designing to throw their ethics out the window

3:45 pm

We are not hired hands, we are not pixelpushers, we are not order-takers. We are gatekeepers.

3:46 pm

On November 6, 2016, Donald Trump received 2.9 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton. The Electoral College—originally designed by elite white men to entice agrarian, slave-owning states to join the union—handed the election to the candidate with fewer votes, who also happened to be a white supremacist. It was designed to work that way.

3:52 pm

The world isn’t broken. It’s working exactly as it was designed to work. And we’re the ones who designed it. Which means we fucked up.

3:53 pm

There are two words every designer needs to feel comfortable saying: “no” and “why.” These words are the foundation of what we do. They’re the foundation of our ethical framework. If we cannot ask “why,” we lose the ability to judge whether the work we’re doing is ethical. If we cannot say “no,” we lose the ability to stand and fight. We lose the ability to help shape the thing we’re responsible for.

3:54 pm

Sure, everyone remembers Frankenstein’s monster, but they call it by his maker’s name.

3:55 pm

Excessive speed gets products through that gate before anyone notices what they are and how foul they smell.

3:56 pm

We need to measure more than profit. We need to slow down and measure what our work is doing out there in the world.

3:59 pm

People don’t see the things they’re rewarded for as problems to fix.

4:01 pm

A good algorithm is the equivalent of breaking up with someone over a text message and then turning your phone off. It’s cowardly. Good leaders should aspire to have their fingerprints all over hard decisions.

4:05 pm

When you hire me as a designer, I do not work for you. I may practice my craft at your service, but you haven’t earned the right to shape how I practice that craft.

4:08 pm

Those of us who grew up designing things online need to realize the repercussions of the work we do. We’re no longer pushing pixels around a screen. We’re building complex systems that touch people’s lives, destroy their personal relationships, broadcast words of both support and hate, and undeniably mess with their mental health. When we do our jobs well, we improve people’s lives. When we don’t, people die.

4:12 pm

ABOUT THE TALK

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Show Notes

Highlights, Quotes, Annotations, & Marginalia