Using design to surface discussion about what privacy means with new technologies in new situations

What is it about?

Emerging wearable and sensing devices, such as Google Glass or smart-home devices have raised questions about ways in which privacy and other social values might be implicated by their development, use, and adoption. However we often don’t have privacy concerns well-conceptualized in advance when creating systems. Our research shows that design approaches (drawing on a set of techniques called speculative design and design fiction) can help better explore, define, perhaps even anticipate, the what we mean by “privacy” in a given situation. Rather than trying to look at a single, abstract, universal definition of privacy, these methods help us think about privacy as relations among people, technologies, and institutions in different types of contexts and situations. We created a set of slightly provocative conceptual designs to help engage people in reflections or discussions about privacy (rather than propose specific solutions to problems posed by privacy).

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Photo by Halacious on Unsplash

Photo by Halacious on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Using techniques of speculative design and design fiction, we investigated some technologies that are emerging or on the near horizon, and think seriously about ways in which they might get adopted, or used and misused, or interact with existing social systems — such as the workplace, or government surveillance, or school systems. How might privacy and other values be at stake in those contexts and situations? But our design work isn’t meant to predict the future. Instead, we aim for for these designs to help shed light on the space of possibilities, in an effort to help technologists make more socially informed design decisions in the present. Using these techniques that focus on the potential adoptions and uses of emerging technologies in everyday contexts helps raise issues which might not be immediately obvious if we only think about positive social implications of technologies, and they also help surface issues that we might not see if we only think about social implications of technologies in terms of “worst case scenarios” or dystopias.