User:Rita Graca/gradproject/project proposal 1

Draft I

What do you want to make?

A toolkit to investigate and experience persuasive technology, focused on software, focused on interfaces.

Platforms' users are diverse, human and non-human: they are companies, developers, influencers, hackers, ads, artists, algorithms. They all have different intentions and perceptions. In this way, the structure of the apps serve different interests, sometimes in obscure manners.
 People will, for the most part, use a graphic interface, so design plays a big role in what these platforms allow or constrain. The way these interfaces are built is far from neutral. To behave faster, seamless, intuitive and smarter, design tends to mask the operations behind the interface, where algorithms are predicting our behaviours. These platforms construct personalities for ourselves and then reinforces or blocks personal ambitions, frustrations, fears, dreams. Are we still granted the power of choice and free will?

The emotional aspects of the interaction between humans and technology are valuable because we can manipulate and be manipulated.

I’m curious about what political and social discussions can design allow and which ones are avoiding/What kind of actions are facilitated or blocked by the platforms’ affordances. Analyze the changes and demands happening online, from the users (bottom<up) and the platforms (top>bottom). How software changes our dialogues and influences our lives.

How do you plan to make it?

Start by mapping the core differences in User Guidelines texts throughout the years. Do small prototypes that make an impact in real-time to the interface, thinking of plugins or similar tools. Research existing tactics

— Prototyping Prototyping is important because social media is a place for performance, always active, and algorithms are a very pervasive part of platforms so it only seems reasonable to experiment and prototype with them.

— Finding projects Exploring and finding projects with similar common grounds. This will help me expand my views on what can be my final project.

— Outcomes??? A set of tools/toolkit (I’ve done similar attempts in Special Issue 8) 


What is your timetable?

Read and understand better the concepts I want to talk about. Reduce or enlarge the limits of them. Prototyping to test the concepts. ...


Why do you want to make it?

Feels urgent: If we only allow and upvote certain views of the world, this is what is disseminated. “We shape our tools and therefore our tools shape us”.
Feels contemporary: There’s been a demand for more reliable platforms. The companies picked out the trend and are providing some changes. For example, in July Instagram tested hiding its likes in several countries to benefit their users’ experience. Youtube promised to release soon new features that will allow people to know why a certain channel is being recommended in an attempt to be more transparent with their algorithms. It’s true that the real effects of these features are debatable and also part of well-thought marketing strategies. However, they show the audience is engaging with this type of discourses.
Feels like I can join the conversation: Understanding and making clearer how things happen so we can gain agency.

Who can help you and how?

Marloes de Valk, because of her knowledge on persuasive design, especially with the connection with “Impakt” festival; Xpub staff and students; ...

Relation to previous practice

Last year we discussed decentralised networks on Special Issue 8 and this opened up my interest in the subject. I understand how building new platforms and looking for alternatives reveals the desire for bottom-up changes and more active end-users.

Relation to a larger context

Persuasive technology
Software
User interfaces
Software patterns

References

What I’ve been reading/seeing:
What Algorithms want
Why interfaces don't work
Windows and Mirrors: Interaction Design, Digital Art, and the Myth of Transparency
Ben Grosser
Book series: Digital Barricades
Tomasz Hollanek

...