Behavioral design in a new age realm
I recently stumbled across a post on a compellingly named site “Human Design Consulting & Certification”, expecting the pieces to be in the design and technology field, and was surprised the strong point of view leaned much closer to life-coaching of the spiritual kind. Despite this, thinking fondly of Adam’s client Ascend and all of the warm-feeling, thought provoking sessions emanating from our then shared-office battle-station. I found myself so compelled by one piece [INSERT LINK https://www.humandesignlifecoaching.com/blog/2022/3/9/the-science-of-differentiation-being-a-human-design-scientist-part-1 ]that I nearly picked up a pen to attempt redrafting the same prompt, expecting the outcome to be something next to plagiarized, with the economics bits changed to ux design and/or consulting.
Upon further reflection, I came to realize that the very formulas used with various opaque Official Metaphysical Names for Variables, is exactly how we write open ended questions for user research in behavioral design. Heck, even my professional career ‘focus track’ is in Human-Centered Design. [LINK TO LINKED IN CREDENTIAL]
This section about the LENS METAPHOR that I feel strongly about, tie it into the original google search seed around the human design system, and the science of differentiation https://www.humandesignlifecoaching.com/blog/2017/2/17/how-to-know-your-ideal-work-identity-and-direction
I had been stewing on this idea of “knowing my design story”, a concept I was well taught back in college but have lost practice in. Scrolling and clapping my way through medium articles [could link https://uxplanet.org/whats-your-design-story-2bc98c1620a0 ] and chewing on ideas like using myself as the metaphor of my own UX of me [LINK https://medium.com/mikewcurtis/introducing-the-you-design-system-design-the-ux-of-you-67f4f8e6b645 ]
A further argument/direction for this piece could be questioning the baseline of the question ‘what is practicing science’ and reminding of behavioral science and psychology, as well las design and visual literacy as an extension of the sciences. Hello! It’s STEAM! Using narratives and storytelling is even shown to be more effective in communicating with non-expert audiences than high-brow, logical explanations. [ SOURCE https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4183170/ ]
https://www.humandesignlifecoaching.com/
When I learned about the invisible backpack
There are two times during my life that my privilege was made horrifyingly evident to me: a too-personal story of failure to learn from (or two)
Excerpts and reflections from Children’s Literature paper, MassArt
Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry was the first book that ever introduced me directly to the concept of prejudice when I was in middle school. I came from a nearly all-white community, so the ideas presented to me at such a young age seemed very extreme. Of course, as I got older, I learned more about the events happening during the time frame of this book, and I wised up. I think that this novel is an effective tool to introduce children to such a tragic, complex, and hard to understand topic as racism and segregation, as it was used for me. Upon re-reading this, I noticed elements within the story that I think are part of a sort of template used frequently in stories and movies touching on the same topic. Here are the elements:
Primary black family is part of the larger black community, but is fiscally better off than many of their neighbors, usually through assets like property or business ownership. (in this case: property)
One member from the family sees the injustice in the way they or other people from their community are treated by white people. (Cassie)
There is another sibiling that, while understanding that they way they are treated is unfair, accepts and/or silently suffers through mistreatment.
There is a sibling that, despite the knowledge of their ‘place’ in society, and the desire to rise above it, succumbs to a stereotypical action attributed to the community by the white community, and suffers, acting as a sort of martyr or a ‘what-not-to-do’ type of figure. (T.J.)
The family unit is compromised through temporary or permanent abscence of one parent. (Father for the first half of the novel)
Older, hot-headed figure within the family that acts as a time-bomb for other members of the family. (Hammer)
One very strong example of these elements reoccuring in another piece on the same topic is John Singleton’s Boyz in the Hood (1991). This film, while set in the 90’s, mirrors almost every aspect found in this novel as listed above. I think this approach is used because it positions the family as a group of well-meaning, insightful people and allows readers from a middle-class or higher background to relate because the family is still set in an environment that is relatable (instead of something more extreme like a half-way house or homeless, etc), and has us follow the character who understands the injustice of the situation (Cassie) instead of following the character ultimately set up to fail (T.J.) so that we may ‘learn from his mistakes’ through seeing it play out as an outsider.
A too-personal story of failure to learn from (or two)
There are two times during my life that my privilege was made horrifyingly evident to me.
The first of those times was my DUI. I was stupid, 25 or 26. In retrospect in that “untouchable” phase still. My privilege was made clear to me way after the initial arrest (I would like to call out that the bail was set using this method: “well, what do you have on you?” and it was $45. Forty-five dollar bail. Think about that compared to Kalief Browder’s unreasonable price of $3,000.) It was made clear during the course of obtaining a lawyer and fighting the charges. I was able to win that case because I am from an upper middle class white family with the means to pay to play the system for me, because I had the personal means to wear a fashionable and presentable “part” outfit to court (that part being the usually-a-good-white-kid), being able to take vacation time off from work for court appearances, to have a support network happy to drive me to and from work so that no one was the wiser. No life impact other than money, a little time, and a lot of jaded insight.
The second was during the pregnancy and subsequent birth of my daughter. I smoked pot while pregnant, in a legalized state. Talked with my doctors about it, decided to be pretty un-apologetic together. Everything was fine until the day of delivery. That day they asked me if I had marijuana recently (which I’m sure was in my chart, and to which I answered yes) which set of a series of events leading to my urine being tested to see if I, indeed, did smoke the marijuana I just admitted to—and ultimately DCF involvement in my life for six months from the moment she was born. I could go on about how awful that was...but my real point is this:
They do not test every pregnant woman’s urine at delivery for substance presence. Not everywhere, not every state, no consistency. And that call was made only on my admission of the presence of marijuana in my system. If that is the case, then who is calling the shots on those tests being done? In a world where all of the systemic racism is showing, how can we possibly doubt that women are being profiled and subsequently separated from their children? In my case, I was transparent with my doctors, pursuing truth of care—and was able to act so confidently. Knowing that this test is not performed automatically on all women, that I was asked and perhaps one was administered “because it had to be” where if my skin was darker I would not have been extended the grace of being asked, and even worse — my children taken or compromised based on an assumption.
Recommended and mentioned reading:
Facecrook
Robbing artists of their right to freedom of expression
In this generation, technology is an integral part of how one communicates, functions, and schedules one’s self. Communities no longer exist only in schools and towns and neighborhoods— the largest community we have access to is inside our homes, available on our computers. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and other online networks have so many of the same elements of the real world; relationships, statuses of friends, stories, recorded memories — endless interactions. All of these interactions, however, are monitored by and dictated to the standards of what the website deems as acceptable or appropriate. Social networks are privately owned and operated corporations that do have the right to limit the ways in which their product is used or interacted with by the public. However, social networks such as Facebook unjustly control the exposure of personal statements and artworks based on inflexible Terms of Use which distorts and limits our basic rights to freedom of speech and expression while using their website.
My experience with Facebook has always been a placid one, and how closely the site was monitored had never been of particular interest to me. In January 2010, I had been working on a series of photographs exploring the versatility of the human body as a close friend of mine was going through a transgender surgery. While Jace was healing from his mastectomy, I asked to photograph him to try to capture the ambiguity of his appearance and explore and document transgender issues. The photos ranged from topless close ups, to full body with the bottom half clothed, and a few full body nudes with all genitals carefully covered.
As a thank you to Jace, as well as to allow my friends to see the final edits, I created a Facebook album containing these photos. Jace was very proud of both the surgery he had gone through and the photographs that were taken of him, and he chose to post one of the waist-up chest shots to display as his profile picture. We both carried on with our usual routines both online and in the real world after these images were posted.
Photo © 2010 Lindsey Daniels: from the Confused series
On February 2nd, 2010, we both received e-mails from Facebook administrators that read as follows:
You uploaded a photo that violates our Terms of Use, and this photo has been removed. Facebook does not allow photos that attack an individual or group, or that contain nudity, drug use, violence, or other violations of the Terms of Use. These policies are designed to ensure Facebook remains a safe, secure and trusted environment for all users, including the many children who use the site.
Jace and I were both caught off guard by this message, mainly because neither of us saw the photos as an attack, or even containing nudity. Jace felt targeted for being a transgender person, and I felt as though my work was being marked as offensive as opposed to conveying an enlightened commentary on trans issues. Worse, still, the e-mail from Facebook did not offer the opportunity to defend my work or argue the case.
Facebook has a very in-depth and elaborate Terms of Service posted on their website. The Terms of Service is put in place to protect the company from unwanted or notorious affiliations to material that could be considered controversial. The company understandably needs to consider that another server or search engine can indirectly access material hosted on their website, and this could cause legal complications for Facebook if offensive or illegal material posted by a user was pulled up through another site. These terms cover general usage of their site as well information regarding copyright and what the company has the right to do with the material users post on their account.
““It nullifies the laws that pertain to the individual user and eliminates the decentralized nature of the internet.””
Interestingly, Section 5 is titled Protecting Other People’s Rights, and the section refers to the exemptions to freedom of speech in regard to your actions to other users, and the administrators right to remove any material seen as unfit for the website, but nothing about your right to freedom of speech. The terms of service also state that filing a claim against Facebook with intentions of taking it to court requires submission of personal jurisdiction and submission to the laws and practices of Santa Clara County, California. This is an acceptable procedure for a private company to implement, however it nullifies the laws that pertain to the individual user and eliminates the decentralized nature of the internet.
Social networking sites have other tools built into the software that promotes smaller offenses of censorship. For example, one of the newer features of Facebook allows any user to ‘flag’, ‘report as spam’, or ‘mark as inappropriate’ on any post, photo, or comment made by their peers. These tools can function beneficially when used properly (i.e. viral posts of advertisements or if a page has been hacked by some other user) but there also is no check or defense if one of those tools is used spitefully or unfairly on an undeserving post.
The Internet has become known as an information superhighway, and it allows Americans a vast resource to sites, images, and documents. The primary feature of the Internet is that it is decentralized, meaning that it is not clearly sourced from one definite location, which allows the content to cross jurisdictions. This indirect association with a country or a state, and ultimately an identity, invites users to explore their freedom of expression. It allows the internet to become an unrestricted and publicly accessible medium. A more recent internet development is the phenomenon of social networks, and how they allow the members to have publicly posted content available to the online community with little to no effort: an eternal, resonating voice. However, post 9/11, state action has begun to change the online policies. These changes include more wide swept proxy usage and blacklisting particular websites based on meta-data content. Proxy usage and blacklists are a blanket way of routing around material and information that is determined inappropriate by machines that pull out key words or images that have potentially negative or illegal connotations. However, because machines are doing the filtering, a lot of content can easily be misread as inappropriate. For example, my photographs could have been scanned by one of these proxies or blacklists and registered as offensive because the content could not be read for its conceptual value.
““Overblocking limits the average user from obtaining material that should rightfully be available to them, as well as infringes on the rights of the authors of unrightfully banned or blocked material.””
These tools are implemented on Facebook to prevent the company from being associated with any potentially offensive content causing them to be listed on a ‘blacklist’ or violate any state laws. The technical and non-technical proxies and technologies required to sift through user content properly is more expensive and time consuming than just eliminating the problem user or website; so high profile companies such as Facebook are more willing to completely removing the content and/or source of content that causes any form of objection. Facebook is a private company that does have the ability to write documents, such as the Terms of Service, which prevents spamming and unwanted material. However, within these recently applied censoring tools, there is much oversight of the rights of some users. When sites are blacklist filtered, many websites with so called controversial material can be easily perceived, or overblocked, as a site that deserves to be blocked by a robot filtering through search results. Seth Kreimer gives the example of an ISP or search engine reading a series of family photos as child pornography. Overblocking limits the average user from obtaining material that should rightfully be available to them, as well as infringes on the rights of the authors of unrightfully banned or blocked material. For example, the court found that 1.2 million websites were wrongfully banned when the state ordered that four hundred target sites were shut down in Center for Democracy & Technology v. Pappert. Facebook suffers from overblocking because of its unchecked system of reporting ‘flagged’ content and by the computerized system for filtering though content and deleting material that registers to that computer as offensive or inappropriate. Another example of a company that had fallen into censorship and overblocking is the popular search engine Yahoo! which agreed to a Public Pledge in China that agreed to not displaying results to certain material deemed unacceptable by Chinese government, which resulted in the group Reporters Without Borders fighting for the right to public expression, and claimed that the company violated their human rights as well as attacked the foundation of democracy.
The aforementioned injunctions such as proxies, firewalls, and blacklists lead one to wonder about the future for the Internet as well as the definition of Freedom of Speech as we know it. Technology has allowed us to openly post and access content of all different opinions and values, and even more recently has developed tools that put all internet users at risk of encountering or being censored. The up rise of state interference of online communities and postings jeopardizes the depth of our human right to freedom of expression and the democratic opportunity of having our voices be heard.