I was drawn to Sonia’s speculative futures task because she was prompted to think of a health device that encouraged a sense of optimism and promise for a future society. She created the HealthLink app which “allows the algorithm to locate available medical professionals as well as store and house safely patient medical information so patients always have access to their own important data regardless of which medical professional they see.” This is a really promising medical application that allows users to stay on top of their health and directly convey their health data and information to healthcare professionals. There is no doubt, that a tool like this could certainly improve the lives of many, particularly individuals with chronic or serious health conditions that need to consult several health care practitioners at once. 

I think Sonia almost essentially did the utopian version of my dystopian speculative futures. I refer to a health app that uses biological monitoring to allow users to keep track of their data, until the data becomes public and analyzed by complex algorithms – but not for the better. The key difference here is that in the future, it’s assumed that the data remains private and is treated with care and caution. Whereas, in my narrative, the data becomes publicly available. 

This makes me think about the degree to which we trust large tech conglomerates to make ethical decisions with our personal data and information. I think the question I beg to ask with my narrative is, what would the world look like if we had no privacy? What if the most intimate details of our bodily functions were available to others? If our health data is available for our doctors, then they can make educated decisions about our health and support our needs. But if that data is provided elsewhere, to perhaps insurance companies for instance, then that information can be used against us. The comparison of our two narratives demonstrates how important it is to ensure that our data and information are seen and used by the right people. 

I think Kristine has done a really great job narrating and reflecting on her experience using the Detain/Release simulator. She has included a play by play of her actions and also included some reflection questions, right at the start, to get the reader thinking. As Kirstine notes, using an algorithm in isolation is challenging, especially when dealing with such sensitive information in a highly-consequential situation. She elaborates that the trade off of efficiency is not always the right approach, especially given the narrow data-driven approach of algorithms. 

One of the key points Kristine outlines is, “For each final decision I made, I wondered if it might result in a bigger consequence such as homicide, rape, loss of a home or job, or even death by suicide.” One of the first things that came to my mind was the possibility of sending a violent man back into the world. Why? Because I too was also concerned about rape, sexual violence, and domestic abuse. Clearly, indicating that I had a bias towards men as I sorted through the cases. As a woman, I move through the world, on some level, afraid of men. Covering my drink, taking out my headphones, looking over my shoulder, walking away from the road, etc… are all things that change/impact my life because I am afraid a dangerous man will put my well-being at risk. Throughout this experiment, that sentiment lingered in the back of my mind. Subconsciously thinking, how likely is it that a woman is going to go home and abuse her spouse? But with so limited information, making an honest and accurate assessment is challenging – even with the right resources we can’t always know what’s going on behind closed doors. This simulation certainly forced me, and likely many of its players, to think about their underlying biases. 

While I think that the majority of us who had tried to navigate the User Inyerface faced quite a bit of frustration, both Chris and I had defaulted to seeing another person walk through the game. He had watched a Youtuber, Kittrz, do a speedrun of the game to see where players usually go wrong and how to successfully bypass obstacles to get to the end of the game. I think we both leaned towards watching somebody else navigate the remainder of the game, rather than devoting more time troubleshooting. 

Evidently, the purpose of the game was so that users were not able to intuitively move through the process and struggled nearly at every step – regardless of how small the step may be. Chris’s analysis through a disability vernacular, is a perspective that I didn’t think about deeply enough. Chris’s point prompted me to think about user design in a broader sense. The game really demonstrates how frustrating design might be for individuals with a disability, who struggle when user interfaces are not accommodating. That frustration for design can go well beyond web-based pages and even front facing user platforms, but also to our physical tools and technologies.  

This line of thinking reminded me of a TikTok I watched (I desperately tried to find it for this reflection but it’s unfortunately lost in the abyss). A young woman in a wheelchair was saying that her school was able to offer her some really “fancy” assistive technology. This support was offered through applications and platforms, such as advanced audio recording and transcription services. Which is great and all….BUT, most of the doors in the buildings she needed to access for her university classes were not wheelchair accessible! Accessibility to the building through door-opening buttons and elevators are the designs that she needed to succeed in her learning. That is to say that accessibility and design is not a one-size fits all. I took a UX/UI design course through Google and the number one thing they stressed was that user design needs to be made for the universal user, “universal usability refers to the design of information and communications products and services that are usable for every citizen” (Wikipedia). Ultimately, this exercise shows that a keen eye for detail and a high-level of user consideration is needed to create user interfaces. 

References

Wikimedia Foundation. (2022, July 24). Universal usability. Wikipedia. Retrieved March 29, 2023, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_usability 

Deborah’s initial remarks were, “the biggest challenge for this task was finding the appropriate emojis”. I also faced this issue! I am pretty familiar with the emoji keyboard offered by Apple, however, I found it challenging to copy those emojis over, as Deborah said. So alternatively I opted for the emoji keyboard recommended in the assignment instructions. Unfortunately, there are significantly fewer emoji options on the emoji keyboard than on the Apple keyboard. Clearly, the emoji keyboard needs to do an update. 

Similarly, I also found that I was spending considerable time trying to copy and paste the emojis over and edit my story to include all the relevant emojis. There were SEVERAL instances where I had completed my story (or so I thought) and then later realized that a few emojis were missing or something was in the wrong order. But the keyboard does not let you edit the emojis once they are in their line, so on several occasions I had to redo my whole emoji story. The lack of functionality of the emoji keyboard was frustrating, but then I also found out that WordPress does not support emojis and I needed to take a screenshot, adding another element of resistance to this endeavor. Deborah wrote, “Even when I entered into my post, this platform does not want to support them and all I got at the end was lines of question marks. I finally had to screenshot the Word document to create a .png and upload it onto the page as an image.” The two following factors, limited emojis to convey my story and the inability to edit my story, ended up meaning that my story was relatively short and underdeveloped. 

I think Deborah’s reference to how we are told to present slides (with limited text and supportive images) was a really strong connection to how we interpret the relationship between text and image. It reminded me of how my company uses Slack, with an aggressive amount of custom emojis. I even have a collection of emojis with my facial expressions that I can use to reply to threads, demonstrating how I feel about a situation – without actually having to reply with my words. 

 I think the way that Lubna reimagined the semiotic mode of what’s in her bag, was very creative and interactive. I appreciate that she took the time to embed the application into her WordPress website and have the tool accessible to the class (rather than linking it elsewhere). She used H5P, which is a platform I am not very familiar with, to create an interactive image. The image, which looks like the contents of her bag, is in grayscale with a dark outline around the objects. As the reader hovers over the contents of the bag, little purple plus signs pop up, bringing the viewer to a new interaction. As the viewer hovers over each of the objects, an audio clip curated by her is played. 

Similarly, I dove into the element of audio. We had both taken audio clips of the objects in our bag being used. She mimicked the sound of sneezing to demonstrate that the object in her bag is tissues, almost in a similar way that I shook a pill bottle. We both asked our audience to listen closely and to guess what the object or meaning might be based on the sound. 

Each of the videos uses a unique sound, which might include her speaking, a child speaking, or perhaps environmental sound. When I hover over the keys, I hear her say “how much do you love me, tell me again” with a response from a young boy that says “like every mini second it adds by infinity and beyond.” The capture of this very intimate moment is revealing of her personal identity and space, much like a bag would be. 

Her commentary below the interactive piece reveals that she seldomly approaches academic spaces in her native language, oftentimes defaulting to English. This piece stood out to me because of her integration of cultural and personal elements. She says “I cut a short audio clip from an interesting YouTube video of a Pakistani man living in New York who ‘unboxes’ this quintessential Pakistani flavor and unexpectedly finds fifty Pakistani rupees inside. This would be worth about 19 cents in American currency, but his joy at the discovery is priceless.” She opted for this video rather than selecting the Blue Ribbon cheesy commercial jingle, and I would agree that the humanistic element of the genuinely happy man adds a special kind of warmth. Her interpretation of intertextuality here is particularly crafty and thoughtful. 

I think this was such a creative and multi-layered piece. Even though it’s so accessible and easy to maneuver, there is considerable thought towards what sounds are chosen and the interpretation of the audience. I also really appreciate how vulnerable this medium can be, with the sharing of intimate conversations; however, it was an effective way of engaging the audience and asking them to think critically about the why and what.

Dana uses the voice-to-text feature on Google Docs, stating that she picked the platform because it’s the technology that her students use in class. Her initial observations with the Google Doc voice-to-text feature were extremely similar to mine, she says “At first glance, it’s obvious how the text deviates, there are no indents, paragraphs, and few punctuation markings”. The largest challenge Dana encountered was poor grammar and formatting. I also noted in my experience that I found the punctuation to be the largest concern, in my paragraph there were essentially no periods. However, I used the feature as if I had no experience using the tool, which is not the case as I regularly use voice-to-text to rough draft my papers. 

Further, we both take note of the mediation that occurs with writing that does not occur with oral storytelling. Writing can be reformatted, re-written, and re-structured, changing every detail to sound exactly the way the author intends. A person telling a story can easily jump between ideas or instances, whereas in writing, weaving through time requires craft and consideration. When we share our stories we are not confined by the rules of grammar, as Dana notes, “oral language forgoes many of the rules and standards that written language can represent”. 

I think it’s interesting that Dana has included her own experience of her students struggling with literacy and second language learning, stating that they use this application as an assistive technology. Prior to reading her reflection, I had not considered that learners of a second language would be excluded from using this device. Even as a native English speaker, the text-to-speech function was not always correct with my wording, occasionally missing some of my pronouns or propositions. I could see how this function would be especially frustrating for individuals who struggled with pronunciation. I would be interested to do some digging on ESL apps that use speech/voice recording technology to assist with pronunciation, as I would think they are using similar language processing as Google text-to-speech (though I could be very wrong).