A little inspired by one of the Frontier Poll posts (Experience design) along with one of the comments I read to one of the discussion posts this week that mentioned the extremely difficult task of maintaining balance when using mobile technology (think how many times you are distracted from your work when your phones buzzes with yet another notification) ignited my thoughts on the topic. Further thrown into the mix was a memory of a video that I had watched in I think one of the past MET course I took on how our mobile phones have been designed to keep us addicted (I think it was ETEC 512- maybe others that took the course can help me on this one).
I came across this incredible site of the Center for Humane Technology (click on the link), that hosts quite a lot of interesting content on digital addiction, mental health, data security, superficiality of social media etc. You might be asking though what’s the big deal since this information is available on a bunch of different websites already. Well, the founder of this space is Tristan Harris (a former Google Design Ethicist) and he is supported by team members that sees the likes of Mozilla’s head of user experience and on their board of advisors one of the co-founders of Siri. These are some big shots in the tech. world and when they speak, I listen. The one feature of their website that really impressed me though was a Design Guide that explores human sensitivities (emotional, attention, social reasoning and group dynamics etc.) and gives guidelines on what supports or inhibits these sensitivities to help developers design more humane technology. This is a pretty bold initiative but one I am excitedly looking forward to seeing in practice. At the very least, I have bookmarked this site to check back regularly on their progress.