In this session, we hoped to move past inventorization of the status quo and began imagining alternative ways for designers, community members, and citizens to practice data citizenship. Exploring what it would mean to design for data rights and enabling users to dissent as a way of co-creation, this workshop led toward a surfacing of user needs and prototyping artefacts that embody ideas of citizenship and dissent.
TLDR - Here are 7 take-aways that stuck with us: 👉🏼 Design interventions can help dissiminate the burden away from individual advocates and into a collaborative effort between users/citizens, community/advocates, and designers/organizations to mitigate discriminatory outcomes
👉🏼 Even in a time-constrained environment and a very high-level introduction of the data rights, designers are able to quickly wrap their head around rights-driven design and were able to begin imagining alternative ways of interaction
👉🏼 Spaces for dissent and in-app feedback mechanism serve as a valuable source of feedback for designers and organizations to learn from and adapt to
👉🏼 Design for data rights can help users more actively practice their data citizenship, while holding organizations accountable for doing what’s legal and right, by developing new interface conventions
👉🏼 Our personal data lives across various times and spaces, shifting in meaning, value, and ownership across use, and would benefit from an approach of constant calibration opposed to a one-time consent button
👉🏼 Theres a consensus amongst designers to design for customization and allowing users to configure options, preferences and model outcomes, however, there remains a tradeoff between giving the user more agency and building light and intutive interfaces. More rights-postives design conventions that address this tradeoff are needed.
👉🏼 Sandbox and beta testing environments were also a popular option; giving the users the change to opt-in naturally experimental environments and allowing them a front seat in the feedback cycle.
As part of the introductions, we asked the group to share a story or experience they had where they discovered a harm or discriminatory outcome in a project they worked on. Privacy on Uber rides, skin blurring on face filters, user consent in rolling out beta features, payment providers blocking a purchase from a Nigerian card, inaccessibility of voice interfaces to non-native speakers passed the revue and opened the session.
We wanted to better understand what mechanisms are currently in place to allow or restrict the user to give feedback and exercises data rights?
Supporting design patterns included: