Abstract
The legacy of the so-called human-centered design for online technology (social media, apps, networking tools) is radically being questioned today in the light of what it often supports: surveillance capitalism based on unjustified data collection and exploitation, privacy threats, lack of transparency regarding the functionality of specific protocols of interaction, algorithms and filters, and other practices violating digital civil rights. Confronted with several issues of technological innovation and disruption today the role of the designer is to take a critical standpoint towards own design practice, and propose such alternative solutions for culture and society, which are deeply ‘humane’, that is: shape technology of tomorrow not dominating its users in a top-down approach, leaving them with a limited agency for constructive feedback and involvement, but rather emancipating them through an interactive, engaging grassroot, participatory, inclusive, do-it-yourself (or rather do-it-together) creative process driven by a higher sensitivity to the values of human rights. The paper defines the essential design principles for ‘humane technology’ following the ethics of transparency, privacy, freedom, equality and sustainability. Based on a couple of relevant case studies of critical, socially-engaged interaction design practices in such countries as Ecuador, Brazil and India the application of these principles is discussed in the specific (post)colonial context of the Global South, seeing technology as a catalyst for a positive, progressive social change on a local level, creating alternatives to the existing universal, global solutions conserving the status quo.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2021 Special Focus: Towards a (Design) New Deal
KEYWORDS
Humane Technology, Global South, Postcolonial, Interaction Design, Ethics
