Week 11_Presenting Generative Research followed by sense making
March 22 — March 29, 2020
<03/22 Working for the presentation>
Since this was the first presentation after going virtual in the aftermath of COVID-19, we struggled to come together as a team, with all our different schedules still falling in place. We often ended up working in pairs or groups of 3 at a time to accommodate each others schedules, which made our presentation not be at par with our past performances.
<03/23 Presentation of Generative Research>
We received the following feedback on our presentation:
- Data commodification: What kind of system is in place right now for data collection. Think about how data has come to have an intrinsic value beyond the products and services that companies are selling. What is the digital equivalent of shell corporations if you try to trace the data? Obviously you are aware of the larger economic context, it is valuable if you can unpack and track the shell corporations, if you can unpack them into simple easy to understand interactive tools for people, you’ll be doing people a service. You can’t work at the level of doing business model re-invention per say, I think your way of going at it is great! (Arnold)
- Think bigger and broader: Take a step back and take a helicopter view to understand the value of data to see the bigger picture of the relationship with the individual. Initiatives like the Ocean protocol which are not just individual initiatives or communal protocols, but actually new forms of capitalism constructed so as to shift the vested interested. What kind of entirely new systems can be designed that try to shift the landscape at a larger level instead of just an individual trying to get ore control over their data? (Lisa/Mariano)
- Knowledgeable protest: If enough people get angry, there will be hope for changing from a bottoms up approach, so there’s value in even doing a small intervention at the small level (Arnold)
- Individual v/s a system: Mariano thinks it should be a system, having a plug in wont cut it. You don’t have to make a choice between an individual and a system, they should co-exist. It could be an open source system, for example a system that has players, like privacy banks, that take care of your privacy, your stuff exists there and you have the option to forget about it.
- Re-wiring of what capitalism is, you either go all in at 100 miles an hour, or the solution you come up with won’t incrementally shift the needle (Lisa)
<03/24 Temperature check within the team>
We met briefly to huddle (virtually, of course!) and share with each other what we thought of the feedback. We agreed that expanding out idea to the systemic level would be valuable, although we couldn’t figure a direction at immediately. Thinking systemically is hard and the complex nature of our topic doesn’t make it any easier!
Additionally we finally were able to come to a consensus on the fact that moving beyond awareness and understanding to give real agency to the users would be really important for our project.
<03/25 In-class>
In order to help us moved ahead in the process, Peter urged us to think about two key things:
- Show us the larger context and the system within which data is being taken, and clarify your position with respect to it.
- What kind of a persona are you designing for?
Through today’s feedback session we have realized that even though our intent is clear to us (about the fact that we don’t advocate shunning the use of data altogether by creating a sense of fear among the users), it has not been communicated properly through our presentations . We’ll be mindful of communicating this as our stance in our next presentation, hopefully supported by sketches. Isha (that’s me!) has a vision of demonstrating this through a spectrum of ideologies and marking other experts’s opinion with respect to ours.
For our audience: We decided that individuals in privacy paradox would be the ideal audience for our concept and would be building on this further.
<03/26 Chat with Privacy Expert>
We have been doing regular check ins with Lorrie Cranor, the director of the CyLab Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory (CUPS) at CMU. Her work focusses heavily on actionable privacy, similar to our intent with the project. We had another quick feedback session with Lorrie to share the four concepts we came up with during our generative research phase. Talking to her confirmed the fact that any one of our concepts by itself might help user to get some control, but might not shift the landscape by a whole lot.
<03/29 Refining intent and Competitive Analysis>
Jiyoung found this app called ‘Jumbo’ that was close to our our idea of data overview. It provides as easy and friendly way of controlling privacy settings through a single app. We all liked it for how convenient it made to control settings for different apps but we still kept questioning how this gave real control to the user for their data. This seems hard and has been a huge struggle for us but we’ll be picking up on this thread again tomorrow.
