Technology and Change

a design danger, maybe especially when persona driven, is believing that people have consistent traits throughout the experience of a design, especially if it is a service over a period of time

A design process is a series of decisions. Decisions should be informed by evidence. Artefacts, whether design or research artefacts, can support this process, but the decisions and the insights are the important part. Shiny artefacts often provide cover for weak thinking.

The digital world is a steady march towards a new kind of feudalism  in which nothing is "sold" to us, only rented, making us tenant farmers of everything that was once our property

The activism against Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) is yet another way in which the ignorant affluent use morality to harm the poor.

We cannot divorce 'making things work' and 'impact on society' when it comes to applied artificial intelligence. Frankly, your AI does not "work" if it is biased, perpetuates social inequality and discrimination, or reinforces unequal power structures.

Design, if it is to be ecologically responsible and socially responsive, must be revolutionary and radical.

There’s only XX and XY! Biology 101!” Viable chromosome variations: XXY: 1 in 500+ people XYY: 1 in 1000 people X: 1 in 2000+ people XXXY: 1 in 18,000+ people There are more than 7 billion humans on the planet and millions of them aren’t XX or XY. Time for a new textbook.

Urban designers in the bid to create structured reading of the city end up trying to simplify the highly complex order of social circuits in the city.

Design education has very little appreciation for the role of Politics in their practice. It keeps designers from designing for beyond individual gratification.

Technology designers are the new policymakers; we didn’t elect them but their decisions determine the rules we live by.

Code is an excellent tool for communicating things about code. Interaction design is not about code but rather it’s about what the code accomplishes, and for whom, and why.

A claimed aversion to MSG without general avoiding other high-glutamate foods has deep historical (and present-day) roots in anti-Asian racism. I’m much more concerned with tamping out the lies that fuel that than preserving the comfort of those who perpetuate it.

Designing technology is designing humanity, in a sense. Any technology will help to shape human actions and experiences, and will therefore have an impact that can be understood in ethical terms. Designers materialise morality.

We used to design ways to go to the moon. Now we design ways to never have to get out of the bed.

Move away from techno utopian-dystopian binary, make space for humble, speculative yet skeptical, critical experiments with discrete tech. artefacts AND the social, cultural and political aspects of their production and consumption.

Design education needs to move beyond "design=problem-solving" to "design= mode of specific & situated inquiry" to foster such experiments challenging mainstream & majoritarian discourse on AI & ML

How do we move from merely designing for intelligence to bringing more intelligence into designing?