User:Kim/reading/Tactical Design

Nolwenn Maudet, translated from french, 2024

Digital technology shifted design practices and outcomes. We cannot compete with platforms (on equal terms) but with trickery and tactic counter existing systems.

Recent forms of design protests

tactical design is part of longer history with critical design. Difference: core idea in critical design is to identify issues and make them visible.

Tactic and Design

Tactic from Michael de Certeau, refers to appropriation of everyday objects by users. Different from strategy, tactics unfold in relation to what already exists.

Creeping in the opponent

example 1 of tactical design "Turkopticon"

Operating against amazon mechanical turk

so called contractors, hired through platform, have no minimum wage, no rights, no exchange

Turkopticon is a browser extension, when installed gives contractors means of exchange and rating system on the amazon owned latform

Turning the opponents strength against himself

example 2 of tactical design "Consent-O-Matic"

extension designed to counter cookie banners

detects and fills cookie banner automatically when site open

almost all cookie banners are built the same (weakness)

adversarial interoperability (Cory Doctrow) Interoperability = ability of system to communicate and function with other. Adversarial Interoperability = interfacing with other systems without their permission or support. (fundamental to history of computing)

Diverting an opponents strength to a competitors advantage

example 3 of tactical design "Amazon Killer extension"

use Amazons strength (high quality search engine for books) to then serve another competitor

in this case Place de libraries which lets you search for books available in nearby bookshops

Cleaning up the existing

final tactic (used most widely) is cleaning up, hiding interface elements. (ad blocker)

example 4 tactical design "Unhook"

extension that removes all distractions on youtube platform, leaves only interface elements related to video you are watching

The Browser, a tactical design enabler

web extension, based on browser, transfers control + power to user (not designer)

This capacity for control, widely exploited by designers, is far from being the result of chance; it is inherited from the client/server paradigm and the technical constitution of the Web, which from the outset decoupled content from its formatting.

Modest Design

Tactical design is modest in its ambition

tackles specific and circumscribed problems

no real claim to its own autonomy

Individualized solutions

All the here proposed Tactical Design solutions have to be installed, known of by the individual.

those who have protected themselves forget that it would probably be more beneficial to fight this nuisance on a systemic level.

Another paradox/ problem of Tactical Design is its role in legitimizing and accepting digital technologies.

Don’t we reinforce dominant systems if we help make them more liveable and therefore more acceptable?

Who can afford Tactical Design?

Tactical design (like critical design?) is very different from day to day, service based design work that brings money.

By becoming more explicitly involved in activist approaches, tactical design could perhaps overcome the dichotomy between localized individual response and necessarily organized systemic activism.

Postface by Doriane

From Interjecting tools to folkloric fabulations
Exploring browser extension as a new zone of agency to study CSS that entangle user and designer.

browser extensions remind us that whenever we acces a page, it's locally on our machine, readable

folkloric and situated remix of the web

danger of a live fiction, a web that seems not to be broke anymore (but only for a small community) could prevent us from looking outside, make us forget, numb urge the need to fight against its wrongs, because they're less of a reality for us