i like "social ergonomics" bc like yeah. furniture is usually made in a way that's like "we think this is probably what is needed for a human to immediately perform any given task" and often we are wrong about what types of furniture or spaces will have a detrimental long term impact on our bodies. ergonomics ideally looks at the evidence of the impact on bodies and then works backwards from there to come up with design.
social ergonomics should mean looking at social structures and analyzing the outcomes they have re: human welfare, and then taking that information back to the design board and redesigning things to hurt people less.
this should also be a zine. someday. but that would require me being able to sit upright
My partner is a game designer. He crafts experiences intended to elicit specific behaviors from thousands of strangers as his full time job. He often looks at social structures from this perspective in his free time and we talk about it a lot. and hoo boy are a lot of our systems not doing what they are officially meant to do.
i am thinking about this ALL of the time. maybe I should also be a game designer
if you’re genuinely interested in game design you should check out Radiator Yang’s game The Tearoom (NSFW, unless you work at the Sucking Off Dude’s Guns factory).
I realize it’s weird to show up on someone’s post to say “you like game design. Have you played this game about giving head in a bathroom?” but it’s a really thoughtfully made game (see the artist’s statement, which is also NSFW) that is also about the effects of surveillance on communities. when, after about half an hour of play, I realized what mindset the game had deliberately cultivated in me, I had to turn off my computer and stare at the ceiling for ten minutes. and that’s Game Design, to me
oh thank you for that link to the artist's statement about this game, that was FASCINATING
