Sebastian Deterding: What your designs say about you

33,085 views ・ 2012-05-31

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:15
We are today talking about moral persuasion:
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What is moral and immoral in trying to change people's behaviors
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by using technology and using design?
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And I don't know what you expect,
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but when I was thinking about that issue,
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I early on realized what I'm not able to give you are answers.
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I'm not able to tell you what is moral or immoral,
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because we're living in a pluralist society.
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My values can be radically different from your values,
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which means that what I consider moral or immoral based on that
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might not necessarily be what you consider moral or immoral.
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But I also realized there is one thing that I could give you,
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and that is what this guy behind me gave the world --
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Socrates.
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It is questions.
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What I can do and what I would like to do with you
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is give you, like that initial question,
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a set of questions to figure out for yourselves,
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layer by layer, like peeling an onion,
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getting at the core of what you believe is moral or immoral persuasion.
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And I'd like to do that with a couple of examples of technologies
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where people have used game elements to get people to do things.
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So it's at first a very simple, very obvious question
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I would like to give you:
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What are your intentions if you are designing something?
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And obviously, intentions are not the only thing,
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so here is another example for one of these applications.
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There are a couple of these kinds of Eco dashboards right now --
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dashboards built into cars --
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which try to motivate you to drive more fuel-efficiently.
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This here is Nissan's MyLeaf,
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where your driving behavior is compared with the driving behavior
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of other people,
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so you can compete for who drives a route the most fuel-efficiently.
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And these things are very effective, it turns out --
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so effective that they motivate people to engage in unsafe driving behaviors,
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like not stopping at a red light,
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because that way you have to stop and restart the engine,
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and that would use quite some fuel, wouldn't it?
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So despite this being a very well-intended application,
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obviously there was a side effect of that.
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Here's another example for one of these side effects.
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Commendable: a site that allows parents to give their kids little badges
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for doing the things that parents want their kids to do,
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like tying their shoes.
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And at first that sounds very nice,
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very benign, well-intended.
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But it turns out, if you look into research on people's mindset,
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caring about outcomes,
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caring about public recognition,
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caring about these kinds of public tokens of recognition
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is not necessarily very helpful
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for your long-term psychological well-being.
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It's better if you care about learning something.
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It's better when you care about yourself
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than how you appear in front of other people.
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So that kind of motivational tool that is used actually, in and of itself,
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has a long-term side effect,
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in that every time we use a technology
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that uses something like public recognition or status,
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we're actually positively endorsing this
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as a good and normal thing to care about --
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that way, possibly having a detrimental effect
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on the long-term psychological well-being of ourselves as a culture.
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So that's a second, very obvious question:
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What are the effects of what you're doing --
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the effects you're having with the device, like less fuel,
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as well as the effects of the actual tools you're using
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to get people to do things --
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public recognition?
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Now is that all -- intention, effect?
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Well, there are some technologies which obviously combine both.
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Both good long-term and short-term effects
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and a positive intention like Fred Stutzman's "Freedom,"
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where the whole point of that application is --
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well, we're usually so bombarded with constant requests by other people,
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with this device,
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you can shut off the Internet connectivity of your PC of choice
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for a pre-set amount of time,
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to actually get some work done.
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And I think most of us will agree that's something well-intended,
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and also has good consequences.
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In the words of Michel Foucault,
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it is a "technology of the self."
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It is a technology that empowers the individual
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to determine its own life course,
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to shape itself.
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But the problem is, as Foucault points out,
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that every technology of the self
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has a technology of domination as its flip side.
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As you see in today's modern liberal democracies,
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the society, the state, not only allows us to determine our self,
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to shape our self,
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it also demands it of us.
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It demands that we optimize ourselves,
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that we control ourselves,
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that we self-manage continuously,
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because that's the only way in which such a liberal society works.
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These technologies want us to stay in the game
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that society has devised for us.
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They want us to fit in even better.
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They want us to optimize ourselves to fit in.
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Now, I don't say that is necessarily a bad thing;
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I just think that this example points us to a general realization,
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and that is: no matter what technology or design you look at,
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even something we consider as well-intended
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and as good in its effects as Stutzman's Freedom,
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comes with certain values embedded in it.
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And we can question these values.
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We can question: Is it a good thing
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that all of us continuously self-optimize ourselves
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to fit better into that society?
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Or to give you another example:
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What about a piece of persuasive technology
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that convinces Muslim women to wear their headscarves?
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Is that a good or a bad technology
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in its intentions or in its effects?
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Well, that basically depends on the kind of values you bring to bear
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to make these kinds of judgments.
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So that's a third question:
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What values do you use to judge?
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And speaking of values:
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I've noticed that in the discussion about moral persuasion online
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and when I'm talking with people,
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more often than not, there is a weird bias.
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And that bias is that we're asking:
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Is this or that "still" ethical?
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Is it "still" permissible?
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We're asking things like:
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Is this Oxfam donation form,
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where the regular monthly donation is the preset default,
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and people, maybe without intending it,
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are encouraged or nudged into giving a regular donation
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instead of a one-time donation,
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is that "still' permissible?
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Is it "still" ethical?
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We're fishing at the low end.
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But in fact, that question, "Is it 'still' ethical?"
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is just one way of looking at ethics.
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Because if you look at the beginning of ethics in Western culture,
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you see a very different idea of what ethics also could be.
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For Aristotle, ethics was not about the question,
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"Is that still good, or is it bad?"
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Ethics was about the question of how to live life well.
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And he put that in the word "arΓͺte,"
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which we, from [Ancient Greek], translate as "virtue."
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But really, it means "excellence."
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It means living up to your own full potential as a human being.
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And that is an idea that, I think,
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Paul Richard Buchanan put nicely in a recent essay,
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where he said, "Products are vivid arguments
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about how we should live our lives."
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Our designs are not ethical or unethical
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in that they're using ethical or unethical means of persuading us.
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They have a moral component
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just in the kind of vision and the aspiration of the good life
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that they present to us.
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And if you look into the designed environment around us
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with that kind of lens,
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asking, "What is the vision of the good life
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that our products, our design, present to us?",
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then you often get the shivers,
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because of how little we expect of each other,
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of how little we actually seem to expect of our life,
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and what the good life looks like.
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So that's a fourth question I'd like to leave you with:
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What vision of the good life do your designs convey?
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And speaking of design,
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you'll notice that I already broadened the discussion,
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because it's not just persuasive technology that we're talking about here,
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it's any piece of design that we put out here in the world.
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I don't know whether you know
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the great communication researcher Paul Watzlawick who, back in the '60s,
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made the argument that we cannot not communicate.
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Even if we choose to be silent, we chose to be silent,
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and we're communicating something by choosing to be silent.
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And in the same way that we cannot not communicate,
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we cannot not persuade:
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whatever we do or refrain from doing,
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whatever we put out there as a piece of design, into the world,
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has a persuasive component.
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It tries to affect people.
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It puts a certain vision of the good life out there in front of us,
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which is what Peter-Paul Verbeek,
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the Dutch philosopher of technology, says.
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No matter whether we as designers intend it or not,
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we materialize morality.
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We make certain things harder and easier to do.
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We organize the existence of people.
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We put a certain vision
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of what good or bad or normal or usual is
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in front of people,
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by everything we put out there in the world.
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Even something as innocuous as a set of school chairs
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is a persuasive technology,
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because it presents and materializes a certain vision of the good life --
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a good life in which teaching and learning and listening
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is about one person teaching, the others listening;
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in which it is about learning-is-done-while-sitting;
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in which you learn for yourself;
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in which you're not supposed to change these rules,
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because the chairs are fixed to the ground.
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And even something as innocuous as a single-design chair,
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like this one by Arne Jacobsen,
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is a persuasive technology,
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because, again, it communicates an idea of the good life:
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a good life -- a life that you, as a designer, consent to by saying,
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"In a good life, goods are produced as sustainably or unsustainably
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as this chair.
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Workers are treated as well or as badly
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as the workers were treated that built that chair."
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The good life is a life where design is important
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because somebody obviously took the time and spent the money
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for that kind of well-designed chair;
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where tradition is important,
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because this is a traditional classic and someone cared about this;
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and where there is something as conspicuous consumption,
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where it is OK and normal to spend a humongous amount of money
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on such a chair,
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to signal to other people what your social status is.
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So these are the kinds of layers, the kinds of questions
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I wanted to lead you through today;
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the question of: What are the intentions that you bring to bear
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when you're designing something?
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What are the effects, intended and unintended, that you're having?
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What are the values you're using to judge those?
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What are the virtues, the aspirations
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that you're actually expressing in that?
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And how does that apply,
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not just to persuasive technology,
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but to everything you design?
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Do we stop there?
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I don't think so.
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I think that all of these things are eventually informed
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by the core of all of this,
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and this is nothing but life itself.
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Why, when the question of what the good life is
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informs everything that we design,
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should we stop at design and not ask ourselves:
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How does it apply to our own life?
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"Why should the lamp or the house be an art object,
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but not our life?"
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as Michel Foucault puts it.
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Just to give you a practical example of Buster Benson.
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This is Buster setting up a pull-up machine
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at the office of his new start-up, Habit Labs,
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where they're trying to build other applications like "Health Month"
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for people.
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And why is he building a thing like this?
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Well, here is the set of axioms
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that Habit Labs, Buster's start-up, put up for themselves
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on how they wanted to work together as a team
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when they're building these applications --
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a set of moral principles they set themselves
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for working together --
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one of them being,
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"We take care of our own health and manage our own burnout."
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Because ultimately, how can you ask yourselves
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and how can you find an answer on what vision of the good life
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you want to convey and create with your designs
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without asking the question:
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What vision of the good life do you yourself want to live?
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And with that,
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I thank you.
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(Applause)
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