Artefact

Design

Ability and flexibility:
Designing technology for everyone


Last summer, in a dark auditorium somewhere around Minneapolis, EYEO hosted a series of lightning round presentations. Among the presenters that night was Claire Kearney-Volpe, a doctoral candidate and research fellow for the Ability Project at NYU. At the outset of her talk, she presented a simple form for the audience to fill out. That form had one not-so-subtle transformation: it was all set in Wingdings, a font designed as a series of glyphs that rendered the form incomprehensible.

Why Wingdings? Oftentimes, the simplest tasks – whether it’s entering a building or browsing the web – can be tedious, or even impossible, depending on where someone falls on the ability spectrum. Microsoft’s Inclusive Design Toolkit posits that, “If we use our own abilities as a baseline, we make things that are easy for some people to use, but difficult for everyone else.” Claire used Wingdings to transport a group of designers and coders to a world where they were no longer accommodated for.

I was floored. Her belief in a more purposeful and accessible web deeply aligns with Artefact’s values. To create a better future, it is the responsibility of designers to approach every project with the mindset of accommodating a wide range of ability. By doing so, technology is more usable for everyone.

I invited Claire to conduct a two-day, company-wide workshop at Artefact to help us further strengthen our skills around inclusive design – that is, design that is meant to be accessible to, and used by, as many people possible. I left with three key takeaways on how to approach accessibility and inclusion in my work.

1. Inclusive design makes better products for everyone

Disability is an inherent part of the human experience. There are more than 53 million people that live with some sort of disability in the United States. That’s roughly 1 in 10 people. Those numbers rise significantly, to about 1 in 5, when we factor in temporary, cognitive, or situational disabilities. Design has a major impact on how easily someone can interact with the tech products that our society is so reliant on. Designing inclusively doesn’t just affect those with disabilities, either. It broadens the reach of what we create from a product for many people, to a product for everyone.

“It could be argued that everyone at some point in their lives will experience some form of disability – whether through injury, medical condition, or the natural aging process,” Claire says. “This is particularly important because technology is increasingly integrated into every form of our lives, from work and education to entertainment. It’s important we strive to ensure that people with a range of abilities can participate in these activities.”

This makes sense from both a business and ethical perspective. By explicitly providing a solution for someone who is hard of hearing, for example, the same design solution is also indirectly helping someone in a noisy bar. According to the World Wide Web Consortium for accessibility on the internet, there is a direct business case for inclusive design. “Businesses that integrate accessibility best practices are more likely to be innovative, inclusive enterprises that reach more people with positive brand messaging that meets emerging global legal requirements.”

The most interesting value, however, is societal. Designing inclusively creates a more equitable world, where everyone has equal access to products, opportunities, and experiences. There is far less opportunity for backlash, alienation and frustration. We no longer leave people behind.

2. Design for flexibility of use

Designers tend to create tech products for a singular user experience. In other words, they are focused on a large group of people who have a similar range of ability. This approach has potential to mount measurable frustration by marginalizing all other ability groups. Addressing a narrow range of ability limits the equity that technology should provide. According to a Pew Research Poll, Americans with a disability are three times less likely to even go online. If design can be more inclusive, there is an opportunity to increase equity and access to the internet.

As the grasp of the experience age tightens its grip on our available senses, it is increasingly important to design systems that are as flexible as possible. In order to accommodate everyone, there should no longer be just one way to use products.

How can we improve the technology we create? There are varied industry perspectives on flexible design in practice. Claire suggests starting any project with the baseline question, “Is there only one way to interact with a system, or does it offer some flexibility of use?”

Ronald Mace, a pioneer in accessibility, led a group at North Carolina State University in creating the Universal Design movement. The movement and its principles aimed to facilitate the creation of singular, flexible design solutions to accommodate all users within a variety of spaces, from architecture to product design.

The common critique of Universal Design is that a singular design solution can’t accommodate the variance and range of ability. Designers should not expect that it is possible for a one-size-fits-all solution. “Inclusive design might not lead to universal designs,” according to designer Kat Holmes. “Universal designs might not involve the participation of excluded communities. Accessible solutions aren’t always designed to consider human diversity or emotional qualities like beauty or dignity. They simply need to provide access. Inclusive design, accessibility, and universal design are important for different reasons and have different strengths. Designers should be familiar with all three.”

3. Start early and POUR

To create products and experiences that are flexible, designers must address accessibility and inclusion head-on, from the start of a project. Often, designers view accessibility considerations as features and push them to later iterations in an effort to stand-up products quickly. That should not be the case. “[Accessibility] can’t be a pixie dust that you sprinkle on top of the program and suddenly make it accessible, which is the behavior pattern in the past,” quips Vince Cerf, a leading thinker in the accessibility space and known as one of the fathers of the internet.

As you begin the design process, it is important to note how people are using the existing systems that are in place. “We should not only focus on the accessibility of product consumption – consuming things in accessibility – but production or authorship too,” Claire points out.

The Designer’s Guide to Accessibility Research from Google provides an extensive methodology that is extremely helpful when beginning a new project. It includes tactics such as seeking out assistive technology to use when testing your design, and ensuring that you get perspectives from a wide swath of people who are in different places on the ability spectrum. This can help you better identify potential accessibility interventions and how they would improve your product’s flexibility and usability for a wider population.

When creating digital solutions, designers should adhere to the POUR methodology: that the experience is Perceivable, Operable, Usable, and Robust. POUR is a simplified approach to the extensive Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, the industry standard for evaluating the accessibility of digital products. Implementing the POUR principles helps designers create flexible interaction systems that accommodate a range of inputs and users; can better parse websites and operating systems; helps people contextualize and understand content in different ways; and predicts behavior based on patterns used in other places and on other devices. 

WebAIM, a leading accessibility advocacy foundation based out of Utah State University, puts its best: “The POUR principles put people at the center of the process, which, in the end, is the whole reason for even discussing the issues [of accessibility].”

Inclusive design is human-centered design

Technology has helped people achieve more than we could have ever imagined, and it holds enormous promise to continue improving the human experience. Yet when we design technology for a limited range of ability, we leave many behind.

“Some of the things that are happening in [new technology] around accessibility is full of experimentation; it’s like the Wild West,” Claire told me. “I get excited, but I am grounded in the reality that there is a lot of room to improve with existing technologies.”

Our peers have built an extensive body of inclusive design research and methods to draw from. It’s now our responsibility as designers at the forefront of technology to approach our work as thoughtful advocates of inclusive design. We have the tools, conventions, and patterns to fix it. Let’s get started.





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Trust is the new beauty




Design

How “fair” is your product?
Bringing an ethical lens to your work


Neeti Sanyal
Neeti Sanyal

There is a growing awareness that companies should apply the discipline of ethics to creating products and services. Consumers increasingly care about the ethical impact of the brands they choose to support. In fact, research shows that purpose-driven brands that align with consumers’ beliefs outperform those who fail to adapt. In order to compete, businesses need to evaluate the holistic impact of their work, including their sustainability practices, employee compensation and working conditions, and societal effects.

But incorporating ethics into your work isn’t always easy. It requires a fundamental look at your company’s mission, values, and impact. One way that our team at Artefact assesses the impact of our work is by examining it through a set of ethical lenses. In this article, we’ll explore one ethical lens we feel is often overlooked but has great potential to drive innovation and business value: the fairness approach.

What are ethical lenses?

Ethical lenses offer different ways to look at moral dilemmas. Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics outlines five ethical approaches through which to analyze a product or service. Informed by philosophical tradition and academic thought, these ethical frameworks include: the common good approach, the fairness or justice approach, the rights approach, the utilitarian approach, and the virtue approach.

The lenses don’t provide a solution or suggest an absolute right from wrong. Instead, they help you surface questions about your products and services that you might not have considered and help change the way you frame a challenge. This is why we think ethical lenses can be a powerful design tool. New innovation stems from looking at a problem from a different angle.

The fairness or justice lens

The fairness lens – sometimes called the justice lens – evaluates scenarios based on whether they provide a fair distribution of benefits and burdens across stakeholder groups. According to the Markkula Center, the fairness lens originated from the teachings of ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, who said that, “equals should be treated equally and unequals unequally.” The fairness lens addresses moral questions such as: how fair is this action? Are we treating groups as they should be treated? Is there undue favoritism or unjust discrimination?

In a business context, companies typically consider the impact of their products and services on key stakeholders such as investors, consumers, and those who make and deliver the company’s products and services. It’s intuitive for a business to try to minimize harm to their employees and suppliers, for example, as they are people more likely to fall within a company’s purview. Considering the needs of stakeholders who aren’t part of your value chain takes more deliberate intention. The fairness lens can help you think through your impact on other, possibility forgotten, stakeholders.

The fairness lens in action

How do you apply the fairness lens to your work? We took inspiration from carbon offset programs in the airline industry to demonstrate how to apply this ethical approach. This example takes into consideration an unlikely stakeholder group: the non-user. By thinking about stakeholders more broadly, we demonstrate how you can unlock new forms of value for customers.

1. Make an exhaustive list of your stakeholders and identify the distribution of benefits and burdens created by your business.

When it comes to air travel, our ability to jump on a plane offers many benefits to the user and society. It improves quality of life, creates jobs, and results in increased economic activity. However, it also creates numerous negative externalities including air, noise, and water pollution. In fact, every round-trip trans-Atlantic flight emits enough carbon dioxide to melt 30 square feet of Arctic sea ice. 

What is more striking is that less than 20 percent of the global population enjoys the benefits of flying, yet everyone on the planet shares in these environmental burdens. Moreover, the effects of climate change will adversely affect the global poor who more commonly inhabit the regions of the world most susceptible to global warming.

2. Identify whether this distribution is fair and why.

Is the group that benefits from your business sharing in the burden? These are subjective questions that will likely require your team to reference your mission statement and values. In the case of airlines, their service has an unequal impact on stakeholder groups: non-users carry the burden created by users.

3. Explore how to correct for a fairer distribution of benefits and burdens.

In 2007, Delta became the first U.S. airline to offer customers an option to offset the carbon emissions incurred from their flight. Delta offers a carbon calculator on their website where customers can determine the environmental impact of their flight and what it would cost to offset the equivalent carbon. Customers can then choose to fund efforts led by the Nature Conservancy to measurably improve the atmosphere.

Carbon offsets are one way to consider the needs of the 80 percent of the world who are airline “non-users” – a majority of whom will never fly on a plane. Other efforts in the industry aim to avoid creating the burden in the first place. Emirates states in their annual sustainability report that reducing carbon emissions is best addressed by investing in state-of-the-art planes. With an average fleet age of 5.3 years, Emirates has one of the most modern, low-emission fleets in the industry. 

These initiatives not only have environmental benefits, but also help airlines further strengthen relationships with customers who seek to engage with companies that share their values.

Ethics as innovation

The fairness lens helps you assess whether your product or service is creating inequities that you should be aware of. It can jump-start the process to launching new features or services that not only mitigate harmful effects but also differentiate your offering in the marketplace.

In the case of commercial air travel, carbon offsets and investing in fuel-efficient planes are just a few ways to create a fairer distribution of burdens. Applying the fairness lens could result in other actions such as airlines using renewables as a fuel source, or rideshare companies requiring the use of electric cars. The possibilities are endless. It’s this bold thinking that excites us, and the fairness lens can show us the way.





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Ability and flexibility:
Designing technology for everyone



Technology

The Mirrorworld Bill of Rights


The Metaverse. The AR cloud. The Magicverse. Mirrorworld. Whatever you call it, the concept is coming: a digital layer of reality that coexists over the physical world. It’s been hailed as a new frontier in computing and the “next great digital platform,” according to WIRED. It may not be tangible at the moment, but 10 years from now this digital layer – I’ll call it the AR cloud – will be a fundamental piece of the computing landscape.

Despite all the potential of the AR cloud, such a radical shift in the human computing experience presents a very real possibility for negative consequences or even abuse. We’ve experienced firsthand how technology platforms can shift society in unintended ways, and it is our responsibility as designers and technologists to create the AR cloud responsibly.  

This got me thinking about what a Mirrorworld “Bill of Rights” would look like, and what protections people should have in the AR cloud. A disclaimer: these aren’t legal or political statements, but food for thought around a shared understanding of reality, privacy, ownership, and freedom. I hope these “rights” inspire conversation around how a future AR world can impact people and communities.


The Mirrorworld Bill of Rights:

1. One Reality for All

2. A World Public by Default

3. The Right to Digital Property

4. Freedom to Assemble


1. One Reality for All

Augmented reality will eventually be our only reality. The technology each person chooses to put on will mediate our consciousness and understanding of the world. Today, our screen-based digital services have already created filter bubbles that have ruptured a mutual understanding of fact and fiction. A shared, public reality between different AR systems must be the default experience.

AR is inherently private. Two people standing side by side cannot see each other’s content or activity. Without the ability to read the social cues that help us understand each other in the physical world, this uncertainty leads to miscommunication, social anxiety, and the “glasshole” effect. What’s more, companies making AR products have a track record of creating walled gardens that don’t allow sharing between platforms. Unless a bridge is engineered between competing devices, it would be impossible to share an experience in AR. People already hide behind cell phones, but at least you can easily look up or show the person next to you that cute dog photo. In AR, that’s impossible.

The AR cloud needs a simple, standard method for sharing experiences between devices that any headset can leverage. If sharing in AR requires effort or is harder than holding up a phone to someone next to you, it will train people not to engage. What if the AR world was shared by everyone using it? Think of it as a single massive multiplayer online game in the real world where everyone is playing together.

One reality for all doesn’t mean that two people next to each other would always see the same things. I love what sci-fi novelist and Magic Leap Chief Futurist Neal Stephenson proposed for the MagicVerse: layers you can turn on and off depending on task and mode. Perhaps there will be a public layer, a transportation layer, a learning layer, an Uber layer, a social layer, a private layer, etc.

Image Credit: Magic Leap

2. A World Public by Default

A single, shared AR world is important, but in order to connect and engage, we need to know how to act in this new medium. The AR cloud shifts the boundaries of physical possibility and allows for behavior in ways that can be disorienting and suspicious. In order to have a shared understanding of social and behavioral norms, we need an AR world that is public by default.

What does this mean? Take privacy, for example. Everybody wants to protect their privacy but interacting with invisible content or blocking people without their knowledge in the AR cloud creates divisive behavioral norms beyond what is possible in the existing, physical world. An AR world that is public by default doesn’t mean our actions in AR are always visible, but that we publicly signal to others that we want privacy in the moment – just like in the physical world. How do we do that? Meta AR suggests that users “design their own privacy within the rules of the shared space, not by breaking them.” This could mean using a virtual door or walls to signal that a private work session is in progress. This door could suggest the social cue to knock and join the private meeting. Using Torch’s iOS AR prototyping tool I mocked up this quick scenario to get a feel for privacy boundaries.

Made in Torch AR using free assets from Google Poly and Sketchfab.

Now let’s imagine you’re in the park and see someone walk by in a different AR layer than you. Your AR glasses let you know that they are in a “Pokemon layer.” You don’t need to see exactly what they are doing, but their activity status might reduce your suspicion and be an invitation to connect. You choose to join them, and their layer expands to surround you as well. Now you can see what Pokemon they are battling and choose to challenge them when they finish.

Created with Torch 3D on iOS using free Sketchfab assets.

Privacy veils and AR layers are not foolproof. What happens if they are overused or if a group uses them to spitefully exclude others? My guess is that existing social norms would dissuade this kind of behavior, but we can’t know for sure until people engage together in AR. Who will lead the charge on creating this open framework? Magic Leap? The W3C Immersive Web Group? Microsoft and their new open philosophy? There isn’t a solution yet, but the conversations are happening and companies like 6D.ai are starting to create the technical layers required. The bottom line is, it’s important that people can exist inside the AR cloud together and share the same experiences.

3. The Right to Digital Property

In order to create persistent and shared experiences, the AR Cloud requires maintaining a highly detailed 3D model of the world and everything in it. This will be created by cameras on the AR headsets we might all be wearing. Ubiquitous cameras and centralized control of the network have the all the ingredients for the ultimate surveillance state. We must protect the right to privacy and digital property in AR environments.

One idea is to apply the 4th amendment to the AR Cloud so that no government, individual, or corporation has the right to search the interior 3D model of your dwelling, workplace, audio, user location, and property without a warrant. If you own or lease the physical space, you should own the digital space as well.

How might that work? Instead of companies like Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft storing 3D maps of our homes and businesses, imagine if each home and business hosted their own device that stored this data. These edge computing devices would give individuals complete control over the data of their digital space. This personal data vault could also store 3D digital memories recorded in our private spaces, so you can replay that important meeting, baby’s first steps, or that winning ping-pong point.

In order to prevent surveillance and spamming of private spaces, we would need a public property ownership record. Organizations like Bitland are already making headway in decentralizing ownership records using blockchain. A record of private and public lands would protect private spaces while enabling a shared common space.

4. Freedom to Assemble

Public spaces like parks, streets, and airspace are equally important in the AR cloud. Should cities, counties, and countries maintain public AR spaces like they do public physical spaces? We’re a long way from an answer to these questions, but until then, creators and technologists will need to rely on good defaults to set the norm. We can start by drawing from the First Amendment: people must have the right to peaceably assemble in AR public spaces, regardless of borders.

This is exciting because AR makes public spaces more valuable and brings more people together in new ways. This physical and digital commons could be a bridge between different nationalities, cultures, and identity groups, helping us learn new things and gain new perspectives. People could travel around the world in an instant, “land” in a location, see others walking on the street in real time, and go have a conversation with them. Real-time translation could even allow you to talk with people who speak a different language.

Compilation of Google Earth VR, SketchFab and Sketchbox 3D.

It can also give people access to public spaces that would otherwise be impossible for them. For example, I could go on a walk in the park with my wheelchair-bound father or my family living in different city. I could play Fortnight in Central Park with my remote friends. I could even dogfight in and around the Eiffel Tower.  

Freedom to assemble applies to private spaces as well. My kids and I could build out a physical Fortnight level in the backyard using wood, dirt, and bricks. Once it’s constructed and scanned, we could share out that particular part of the yard publicly and invite players from around the world to play.

Moving forward

We’re only starting to understand the scope, complexity, and possibilities of the AR cloud, and the rules are still being set. I hope we can create a world that bridges the gaps between people, rather than simply strengthening the bonds we already have. Let’s create a world that promotes the ability to think for ourselves. A world where individuals have control and ownership over the reality they live in. A world where the public commons are a safe place where anyone can travel to learn, discuss, and play together.

I believe these “rights” are on the correct track, but they are thought experiments in an evolving medium. I don’t have it all figured out and would love to discuss further on Twitter @paulhoover.





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Welcome to Seattle, Interaction 19 fam!



Design

Trust is the new beauty


Rob Girling
Rob Girling

Editor’s note: In partnership with Design for America, Artefact co-CEO Rob Girling moderated a panel discussion February 2019 at Airbnb’s San Francisco headquarters on trust and social impact. The event featured Alex Schleifer, VP of Design for Airbnb, and Valerie Casey, Head of Design at Walmart. Here, Rob builds on his opening remarks to highlight Artefact’s point of view on product trustworthiness as a component of responsible design.

At Artefact, we focus on designing digital products and services that are trustworthy. Trust is a complicated design challenge, but it can be meaningfully achieved through the practical application of ethics – here’s why it matters:

Machine learning algorithms hold vast potential, but with their great power comes significant responsibility. Over the last year, as perspectives around such algorithms continue to mature, almost all technology companies have endeavored to establish (with mixed effect) ethical principles, boards, and codes of conduct. Their goal? Get ahead of the implicit but very concerning risks associated with the algorithms going wrong for business, people, and society.

As a result, a once highly philosophical and impractical debate on ethics in innovation circles is increasingly relevant to tech – with deep implications for product design. Correspondingly, “responsibility” has begun to replace “desirability” as design’s primary value add, and a new focus on ethics has supplanted our discipline’s longtime focus on beauty and delight. This overall shift from a governance perspective on ethics to the practical awareness of ethics in the product development process represents a significant moment for the tech sector.

The business as well as moral imperatives could not be clearer.

In Artefact’s recent report, Can Social Media Be Saved?, we show that social media technology platforms do not inherently generate positive outcomes. Unchecked, they are also highly susceptible to manipulation and exploitation, which, as we’ve seen with Facebook, can degrade trust and profitability.

Strong ethical principles, policies, and practices are essential to any company that wants to build and maintain trust with its stakeholders – from employees, customers, and partners to governments and shareholders. At the center is a code of ethics that helps make real the organization’s mission and brand promise. When actions (or inaction) appear in conflict with the organization’s ethical code, the trust relationship is undermined and the estimation of the organization in the eyes of its stakeholders can be dramatically reduced, driving loss of share value, customer churn, slower market adoption, low employee morale, and even employee attrition.

As two of the world’s largest companies, Apple and Microsoft, increasingly view their brands and products through an ethical lens, consumer expectations around ethics are on the rise, helping to set new norms that are pushing aspiring organizations to follow suit. Additionally, competitive advantages exist for companies that choose to apply a strong ethical perspective into their product designs.

At Artefact, we help our customers envision and develop trustworthy technology products using a methodology that we call Responsible Design, which prioritizes long-term outcomes, the alignment of corporate mission with practical ethics, and deeply understanding and resolving competing stakeholder interests as much as great design execution. Throughout, we approach design challenges with a systems lens, asking hard questions about unintended consequences as well as net impact to ensure that the design solutions we deliver to market are positive for business, people, and society.

There are of course nuances to every client engagement, but Artefact’s commitment to product trustworthiness is unwavering. We believe designing for trust is a critical, increasingly competitive asset in today’s rapidly evolving marketplace and strongly encourage organizations to integrate ethics into their core product offerings. Responsibly aligning the potential of technology with its future impact is also fundamental to creating a better tomorrow for all of us.





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The Mirrorworld Bill of Rights



Community

Artefact at Interaction 19


Neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night kept the world’s interaction design community from a week of engaging conversations, workshops and celebration at IxDA’s Interaction 19. From our speakers to our studio party, here’s a look at what Artefact got up to at this year’s conference:

Context is king

Senior Design Director Holger Kuehnle discussed the importance of context in giving meaning to data. He shared the experience of designing data visualizations for USAFacts, a nonpartisan civic initiative that reflects “our nation, in numbers.” He urged designers to encourage data literacy by creating visualizations that make data quantitative, historical, and relational.


“I found the energy and enthusiasm in the community inspiring,” Holger said. “It is great that design as a discipline is able to constructively address serious and challenging topics such as ethics and equity in a manner which focuses on our shared responsibility to use our skills and tools to come up with solutions which bring long-term benefits to society as a whole.”

Trust, transparency, and tarot cards

Executive Creative Director Sheryl Cababa took her talk on designing responsible products to Seattle’s historic Cinerama theater. In addition to the chance to win decks of The Tarot Cards of Tech and enjoying the theater’s famous chocolate-covered popcorn, the audience was treated to larger-than-life visuals of everyone’s favorite Jurassic Park character.


“This year’s conference was super focused on ethics and self-reflection about our role in the damage that’s been done through technology,” Sheryl said, “But it had me wondering whether this would result in more action in the industry, or more fatigue. My favorite speaker was John Maeda. I love how he points out the buckets that designers put themselves in (maker vs. talker) and how this can often limit us. He’s always a great speaker.”

Responsibility, inclusion, and the greater good

Some of our favorite presentations this year centered around tech ethics and designing for inclusion and accessibility.

“I learned from speaker and disability advocate Liz Jackson that the word empathy was coined in 1909,” said Director of Community + Talent Dave Miller. “Although the concept has been around since Ancient Greece, it’s only been 110 years since we’ve ascribed a modern word to it!” Liz contends that designing with goodwill alone can have negative outcomes, and emphasizes an inclusive design approach of solidarity over empathy.

“A talk that particularly resonated with me was by Kristian Simsarian about AI and design,” said UX designer Kris Fung. “Kristian reminded us that designers need to use our voice to help shape the future of emerging technologies like AI. I’m excited to see thought leaders in the design space advocate for the greater good.”

“I was very proud to be an Artefactian on Friday, thanks to Sheryl Cababa’s talk,” added visual designer Hannah Hoffman. “Designing responsibly kept popping up as a theme in everyone’s talk. It’s energizing knowing that Artefact is working at the center of those conversations.”

Studio soirée

We were also thrilled to connect with creatives from across the globe at our studio party. We welcomed close to 300 designers representing companies as diverse as Microsoft, Airbnb, Home Depot, Intel and more. It was the place to be during Interaction 19 and we hope you had as much fun as we did!

All photos by Mandee Rae


Thank you, IxDA, for bringing together such a brilliant group of minds and we look forward to seeing everyone next year in Milan!





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Design

Welcome to Seattle, Interaction 19 fam!


On February 4-8, 2019, Seattle will host the world’s premier interaction design gathering: IxDA’s Interaction 19: Design in the Wild. Artefact is thrilled to have the global interaction design community in our backyard to discover the vibrant people, history and landscape that make up the city we call home.

As one of the fastest-growing metro areas in the country, Seattle has experienced the triumphs and pitfalls of a community and economy catapulted to success. This backdrop is a consistent reminder that we’re here not only to do innovative work that improves people’s lives, but that takes into consideration the impact on broader communities and society as well.

This year, we’re proud to have two stellar designers presenting in Interaction 19 who reflect our passion for design ethics and responsibility. They also both happen to be avid cyclists (Seattle loves a good bike lane).


Meet our speakers

Holger Kuehnle

As media and citizens grapple with the implications of misinformation and disinformation, Design Director Holger Kuehnle will explore Designing for Data Literacy in the Age of Post-Truth. In his February 6th talk, Holger will share the designer’s role in surfacing fact over fiction and his experience as Design Lead for USAFacts, a nonpartisan civic initiative to reflect government data in clear and unbiased visualizations.



What neighborhood do you live in?

Columbia City – it’s like its own little town with shops, good restaurants, and a movie theater, and is at the same time close to Lake Washington and Seward Park. It’s also the most diverse zip code, not only in Seattle but also (according to the 2010 census) in the country overall.

Where should designers visit in Seattle?

I like reading old-school physical books, and there are great local and independent options specifically of interest to designers in Seattle. Peter Miller Books in Pioneer Square has a large selection purely focused on design and architecture. Elliott Bay Books on Capitol Hill has a broader range. It’s also a really nice building to hang out in and browse. Get brunch next door at Odd Fellows.

Favorite place to bike?

I love finding new, interesting places by just biking around one of the many different neighborhoods and stopping at interesting places you encounter along the way, such as a brewery or a local coffee shop, hanging out for a while and then biking somewhere else. Good neighborhoods to do that are Ballard, Fremont, Greenwood, Capitol Hill, and the Central District. Don’t be afraid of hills, they build character!

Why should designers attend your talk?

As designers, we have a responsibility to use technology to make complex issues understandable, not to bias or obscure with false simplicity. Specifically with regards to data visualization, my talk will explore the importance of being critical of individual numbers, and how to design ways which communicate the full context that they exist in so that people gain an unbiased understanding from the data.


Sheryl Cababa

On February 8th, Executive Creative Director Sheryl Cababa will challenge our product assumptions with her talk on Trust, Transparency + Tarot Cards: Envisioning Outcomes to Build Better Products. She’ll explore how to surface and mitigate the unintended consequences of the things we make, with a little help from our creative tool the Tarot Cards of Tech.


What neighborhood do you live in?

I live in Ravenna, which is a few minutes walking from the University of Washington. This means proximity to really great Asian food because of all the international students. A couple of my faves are Xi’an Noodles and Korean Tofu House. I also love that I’m a few blocks away from Seattle chef Eduardo Jordan’s iconic restaurant Junebaby. I highly recommend it.

Where should designers visit in Seattle?

Hit up Artist & Craftsman in the U-District. It’s my favorite employee-owned art supply store and they have EVERYTHING. Nearby is Hardwicks, an old-school hardware store that is part of disappearing Seattle. Lots of vintage and weird things in there. Another great place to shop is the Fremont Sunday Market. It’s a big weekly flea market in a fun neighborhood, if you love quirky vintage items and clothing, this is the place.

Favorite place to bike?

The other thing I love about my neighborhood is that I’m two blocks away from the Burke-Gilman Trail. It’s a former railway trail that goes all the way from Ballard to the Eastside. I’m lucky to be able to use it for my commute – no hills!

What do you want designers to take away from your talk?

We don’t have to feel hopeless about the distressing direction in the tech industry. We can improve our tools to make better decisions that would lead to better societal outcomes, which is why at Artefact we’ve worked to create tools like the Tarot Cards of Tech. Key to changing the current trajectory is to stop putting our heads in the sand, stop telling ourselves nice stories about what we do, and start doing the uncomfortable work of interrogating our complicity in creating products that lead to unintended consequences. I believe in designers!


Party with Arte

We work hard to be the best at what we do, but we also know how to kick back. Don’t miss the top Interaction 19 party in town at the Artefact studio on February 6 from 6-10pm – get your free ticket here.

You’ll get to explore our historic waterfront studio and discover some of our favorite projects – from our UX work with Magic Leap to the industrial design vision behind the NFL’s VICIS ZERO1 football helmet.

Grab a drink with new friends from the conference, play a friendly game of foosball with our designers, or take to the dance floor overlooking beautiful Elliot Bay. It’s the perfect way to get to know Seattle and kick off Interaction 19 – we’ll see you there!





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Using blockchain to reverse climate change: A conversation with Nori



Technology

Using blockchain to reverse climate change:
A conversation with Nori


From smart contracts in the homebuying process to swiftly and securely transferring money overseas, blockchain solutions are becoming increasingly common in sectors such as finance, real estate and the Internet of Things. Distributed web solutions like blockchain provide crucial security and accountability functions that transform our relationship with data. In other words, blockchain delivers trust and transparency – two things we at Artefact take very seriously when it comes to technology and its impact.

At Artefact, we’ve been exploring what role blockchain can play in wrestling with the many intractable, systemic problems facing our world. Moreover, as designers and technologists, how can we harness blockchain solutions in ways that contribute to accessible, equitable and sustainable outcomes?

One of our favorite companies working at the intersection of blockchain and social impact is Nori, a Seattle start-up creating a blockchain-based marketplace for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. We sat down with Nori’s Founder and CEO Paul Gambill to talk distributed tech, social impact and seaweed.


What does Nori do and how did you get the idea for it?

Nori is on a mission to reverse climate change. We are building a marketplace that makes it easier for people to pay to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Climate change is a really straightforward arithmetic problem: there is simply too much greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. What we need to do is draw it out – undo the emissions – to restore the balance of the carbon cycle and ultimately reverse the effects of climate change. Most people working in the environmental space are trying to make climate change less bad, but nobody is trying to actually reverse climate change – until now.


Why do you think carbon removal isn’t more widely discussed as a solution for combating climate change?

People make a moral hazard argument against carbon removal. Many environmentalists don’t want a focus on carbon removal because they think that creating technologies and processes to remove carbon would give humanity a license to continue emitting carbon dioxide. What these environmentalists want to see is everyone reducing emissions.

The fact of the matter is, climate change is simply too far gone. Even if we halted all emissions tomorrow, the environment will not naturally recover to a place of balance without serious harmful impact. According to the math, we have to draw carbon dioxide down. There’s no other choice.


How does Nori use blockchain to help reverse climate change?

In the Nori marketplace, buyers pay to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and suppliers remove the carbon dioxide. When a supplier in our marketplace removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, we have an independent, third-party verifier come in and assure that that carbon has been removed according to peer-reviewed standards. Nori then issues that supplier a Carbon Removal Certificate (CRC) that exists on the blockchain. The CRC can be sold to a buyer in exchange for one NORI token. One token always purchases one tonne of carbon dioxide.

We do this on the blockchain because proving who has removed carbon dioxide, who has paid for it, and who should get credit has been a longstanding problem in legacy carbon markets. We are eliminating those risks by putting the process on the blockchain, making it incredibly straightforward to prove who owns what and at what time.


The other half of your business is the NORI token. Why is a token necessary for your carbon removal marketplace?

Creating the NORI token as a separate asset from the CRC gives us the ability to create a global, market-driven reference price for carbon dioxide. One NORI token will always be used to buy one tonne of carbon dioxide. The price of the Nori token in the exchange markets – relative to the dollar or to bitcoin or any other currency – can be seen as a global reference price, sort of like Brent Crude or West Texas Intermediate pricing for oil.

A global carbon price is also useful for people who aren’t participating in our marketplace, like policymakers, economists, auditors and anyone else who needs to know how to value carbon. These groups have wanted a price for carbon for decades, and Nori does that by creating the cryptocurrency asset.


Why hasn’t carbon pricing worked in the past?

There are lots of problems with the legacy carbon markets. One major point is that when people talk about putting a price on carbon, what they’re often trying to do is create a cost for emitting carbon, like a carbon tax or the cap-and-trade market in the European Union. They’re putting a price on what it costs to emit. We think that’s a very negative action.

Nori wants to turn carbon dioxide from a waste product into a new value stream. The carbon price Nori is talking about creating is the value of removing one ton of carbon dioxide. Think about carbon dioxide like garbage, where for decades we’ve been throwing our garbage out in the street and nobody has been doing anything about it except try to throw less garbage out. The trash is still piling up out there. Nori makes it possible for the garbage collectors to get paid for coming around and picking up the trash.

We’ve discussed on our Reversing Climate Change podcast why carbon pricing has consistently failed in the past if you want to dig into the nuance.


What are some common concerns companies have with a blockchain-based carbon removal marketplace and what’s your response?

The cryptocurrency aspect of the Nori marketplace makes some people wary. They’re concerned about the volatility of the currency and what we at Nori are doing to ensure that the Nori token doesn’t fluctuate wildly which makes it difficult and unpredictable to use. There’s a lot more detail in our white paper, but the short version is that we are slowly releasing NORI tokens over time, so that we should as closely as possible tie the value of NORI to the value of removing one tonne of carbon dioxide.

They are also concerned about security. If you lose your bank account password you can get that reset, but if you lose your password to your cryptocurrency wallet, that money’s gone. Those concerns are valid and real, but there are plenty of tools and solutions out there that make this workable. Blockchain is just something new that companies must get used to. When talking about large sums of money, people are hesitant to commit to something that’s entirely novel. It’s similar to when credit cards were first used to make payments for websites. People were uncomfortable, but then tools were developed to make it safer. The same will happen and is happening with cryptocurrency.


Speaking of novel solutions, how do you design for and around blockchain infrastructure that your customers may not yet relate to or have as much trust in?

It’s true that existing blockchain applications are not user friendly at all. My background is in computer engineering, I worked in software development my entire career, I’ve been using bitcoin and blockchain technology since 2010, and even I find these applications incredibly difficult and confusing to use. There’s a lot of low-hanging fruit in terms of what designers can do to improve the ways people can interact with the blockchain.

Ultimately, the future I want to live in is where blockchain is something that simply runs in the background, just like how most people don’t know how HTTP works to load pages in your web browser or how SMTP works to send e-mails. These are protocols that don’t matter to the user experience. At the end of the day, just don’t make users think about it. They shouldn’t have to learn how blockchain or cryptocurrency works at a fundamental level. Only show them what they need to know in order to make responsible decisions about how they need to interact with the application.


What business opportunities do distributed web solutions like blockchain present?

Blockchain isn’t a cure-all solution for everything and there are many cases where a centralized database is still a better solution than blockchain. There are many fantastic use cases for blockchain, however. For example: issues of provenance (proving who owns what at what time, like with Nori’s CRCs); creating markets; and creating incentive structures to encourage people to make some kind of behavioral decision using a token.

The use of blockchain is often not going to be anything the consumer sees on the front end, but will instead power behind-the-scenes solutions, such as in the supply chain. Walmart, for example, tracks the movement of their produce from seed to sale using the blockchain so that if there is some sort of bacterial outbreak they can trace it to exactly where it came from and who’s responsible. T-Mobile uses blockchain for handling the audit trail for an internal identity platform.

Companies with operations that can use better tracking or could benefit from incentive structures can find the most opportunity in distributed web solutions. I can guarantee you that many large Fortune 500 companies are experimenting with blockchain solutions right now.


Last but not least, what does “Nori” mean, anyway?

There are lots of different ways to sequester carbon dioxide, and one really cool ecological approach is to grow kelp or seaweed. It’s very easy to do using just rope, water, and photosynthesis. “Nori” is Japanese for seaweed!

Learn more about Nori or invest in their mission.

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Context: The secret of impactful data


Holger Kuehnle
Holger Kuehnle

April 18, 2017 wasn’t just any other Tax Day. Around this time one year ago, Artefact was knee-deep in numbers working on a unique feat of data visualization: USAFacts – the first comprehensive database of US government statistics illustrating where tax dollars go and why. In the year since USAFacts launched, close to one million people have visited the site, demonstrating a clear desire to better understand government data. Seeing the impact of the platform got me thinking about why USAFacts resonates with so many, when government data already existed in the public domain. The key? Making the data approachable, and placing it into context that ensures accuracy while encouraging exploration and understanding.

When creating data visualizations, it’s our responsibility as designers not just to make beautiful graphics, but to give users the tools to grasp the wider context of the information before them. Yet context can be a challenge, adding in complexity when we seek simplicity in our visualizations. After a year of working on USAFacts, I’ve learned three design approaches to help place data in context and create beautiful, accurate visuals that empower users to understand the complete picture.


1. Show data as parts of a whole

Statistics lack meaning in isolation. If you show select numbers divorced from their larger context, at best people walk away with numbers without substance. At worst, you’ve introduced bias or implied causation where there is none. The solution: when showing parts of data, always ensure there is a view of the whole.

One of my favorite visualizations for USAFacts illustrates the impact of the federal budget. It can be difficult to grasp the practical implications of a budget that tosses around numbers in the trillions. To introduce context for the user, we added benchmarks for comparison by juxtaposing the plan against actual historic budget data and independent projections from the Congressional Budget Office. Then, we introduced controls for inflation and per-capita adjustment that allow users to understand the significance of the numbers in comparable terms.



Historic context is vital to painting a holistic data picture. Consider annual US foreign aid spending. On the one hand, $46.7 billion is a lot of money, but on the other hand, the figure is less than 1 percent of total federal expenditure. Moreover, annual foreign aid in aggregate increased for about a decade since 2000 but has been in decline again since 2012. Trends and cycles show the historic significance of a particular data set. Whether or not the numbers necessitate policy reform is for the user to interpret, but it is our role as designers to demonstrate how discrete data is part of a larger whole.


2. Layer in factors of understanding

Designers often pare down data visualizations in the name of beauty, but oversimplifying information can strip away the very context that gives data meaning. One way to retain that valuable context in a digestible manner is to add information in layers. This allows users to navigate through related data that can help them gain a more holistic perspective.

USAFacts’ State of the Union visualization maps out how often a president mentioned certain topics in each State of the Union address, overlaid by related metrics for that year. For example, you can see how often a president used the words “budget” and “spending” in relation to total federal revenue and expenditure in the corresponding year. The issues are broken out into several categories such as education, jobs and healthcare, allowing users to toggle back and forth between topics. The visualization provides an intuitive understanding of which issues were paid lip service and which were prioritized.


3. Create pathways to comprehension

Visualizations that thrill data enthusiasts can overwhelm others. One way to improve clarity is by creating pathways of discovery that let users choose their own adventure. This provides context while making the data digestible to a wide audience.

We designed USAFacts to encourage exploration, with a “simple first, detail upon interaction” process that progressively discloses information. In illustrating the impact of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, for example, we created an automated timeline that runs through projected changes in revenue and spending based on current policy compared to the new reforms. Casual users can start from a bird’s-eye view and let the visualization walk them through the data. Those seeking specific information have the ability to jump into the visualization and explore on their own.

We took a similar approach with the visualization for immigration statistics, starting with the broader question of, “Why do people come to the US?” Purposes for immigrating – such as tourism, work or safety – are color-blocked in one simple treemap chart. Users can then dive into their category of interest. For example, selecting “work” zooms into the types of work visas issued, with further detail on which countries of origin are most represented. In this way, users can quickly understand what broad forces drive immigration, while also having the capability to drill down to such granular figures as the percentage growth of agricultural workers immigrating from South Africa since 2011.




Cumbersome government reports discourage engagement. USAFacts makes the data approachable, dynamic and – dare I say it – even fun.

Lies, damn lies, and statistics

“There are three kinds of lies,” Mark Twain famously observed, “Lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Today more than ever, the sheer volume of data propelling our world makes extracting meaning from statistics difficult at best. Those of us entrusted with framing data have the opportunity to encourage data literacy. Designing context into data visualizations give numbers significance and help differentiate the “damned lies” of data from the valuable insights we all seek.

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VR changes how we think. Now what?

You’ve probably seen someone with a VR headset jump or lose their balance in reaction to their virtual surroundings. Although it may seem strange to the observer, VR is a highly persuasive medium capable of having a deep impact on the brain. Just how persuasive? VR experiences have the capacity to alter our emotions and behavior well after we unplug.

VR is still an evolving medium, but we know enough about its influence to give us pause. There is an ethical responsibility to explore the impact of VR experiences on users and empower them with awareness and control. Let’s look at how VR influences emotions, perceptions of self and behavior – and what we can do to support users along the way.

Emotions transcend the virtual

Social interactions in VR aren’t constrained to the hardware. Not only are the thoughts and emotions that bubble up during VR experiences genuine, we bring them back into the physical world with us long after the headset is gone. They affect us just as much as an in-person interaction, giving the emotions we feel in VR the healing power of a trusted friendship or the psychological stress of a bully.

The 360-degree short film Clouds Over Sidra is a compelling example. The video captures the perspective of a 12-year-old Syrian girl living in a refugee camp with thousands of others. As a viewer, you become fully immersed in her world – making eye contact with others in the camp, who in turn react to your presence. The experience often triggers emotions as if you were physically there. In fact, the same mirror neurons fire when we perform an action ourselves as when we observe someone else perform the same action. This makes VR experiences a powerful way to build empathy.


Of course, social interactions are far too often negative. I hadn’t considered the significance of bullying or abuse in VR until reading about one woman’s experience in a multiplayer game. Despite having the same non-gendered avatar body as other players, the author’s partner in the game mission recognized her female voice and proceeded to grab and pinch where her chest would be, virtually groping her. Although it didn’t look or physically feel like assault, remember the mirror neurons. Our brains can’t tell the difference. VR bullying and abuse have real, emotional repercussions.

How do we give users the opportunity to experience the emotional benefits of VR while protecting them from abuse? A good first step is to give victims the tools to protect themselves, such as the ability to evade and block other users. Platforms could require persistent bullies to undergo empathy training in VR, as well. Massachusetts preparatory school the Concord Academy created a VR project specifically to combat bullying. Users experience a bullying incident from multiple points of view: as a bystander, victim and perpetrator. In this way, VR can help people understand one another on a deeper level and decrease abusive behavior in the virtual and real world.

Avatars impact perceptions of self

Ever wondered what it would feel like to live in someone else’s body? Taking on a virtual avatar may be the closest comparison. Research shows that inhabiting a virtual avatar alters your sense of self as well as your capabilities in the real world.

When our brains receive sensory, visual and perceptive feedback that align, it can be fooled into feeling ownership over another body. Several studies have demonstrated this body transfer illusion, notably the rubber hand experiment. In this investigation, participants hid one hand out of sight and a realistic, synthetic hand was put in front of them. Both real and artificial hands were stroked simultaneously. When later told to point to their other hand, participants reflexively pointed to the rubber hand rather than their actual, physical hand. The effects of body transfer illusion are even more powerful in VR. Another study gave participants VR avatars and then introduced physical threats in the VR environment. Not only did participants’ heart rates change in reaction to the perceived threat, they later reported feeling significant ownership over their avatar body.


Creating an illusion of body transfer can have great benefits, especially in training for dangerous or high-stakes situations. Virtual experiences trigger genuine emotional and physical reactions in users, making it a great tool for learning, confidence-building and communication. For example, a surgeon can practice open-heart surgery in VR and later use that retained muscle memory and visual feedback to perform the operation on a patient with confidence.

Creators of VR need to be aware of how much a user should embrace their virtual avatar. For example, individuals with avatars entering a high-stress situation should mentally prepare for the task ahead in the same way they would if performing it in the physical world. Depending on the application, it may be necessary to integrate environmental elements that remind the user of the virtual nature of their world. To prevent desensitizing a user playing violent video games, for example, VR could introduce a transition where the user “puts on” the avatar body, or crosses over a bridge or gateway into the virtual world. This helps compartmentalize where violence is acceptable and where it is not. In a VR application that is meant to be therapeutic or empathy building, a grounding element may detract from the experience. In this scenario, the user benefits from the long-term impact of fully embracing their VR avatar and experience as their own.

Immersive experiences influence behavior

Imagine waking up to a flashy new sports car in your driveway. You get inside the vehicle for a virtual test drive, and your avatar is wearing swanky driving gloves. You’re really starting to feel like a luxury car owner now – the only thing left to do is sign your name on the purchase contract. Do you do it? Your decision might surprise you.


Studies show that VR experiences influence behavior and decision-making. Consider one study that gave participants avatars resembling aged versions of themselves. When interacting as their older avatars, participants were more likely to sacrifice immediate financial rewards for long-term benefits. Researchers concluded this experience opened up cognitive channels that increased real-world interest in saving for retirement. Another study gave participants VR avatars of differing heights and asked them to participate in negotiation exercises. Those with taller avatars behaved more confidently and negotiated more aggressively.

The heightened ability to persuade and influence decisions in VR makes it a powerful way to deliver advertising. Although there can be benefits – such as a higher fidelity means to test and better understand products – it can be difficult to identify where the environment ends, and advertising begins. The immersive nature of VR could lead users to lose control and make decisions that they wouldn’t in the real world.

Users should be able to recognize behavioral influencers like advertisements and have the opportunity to opt in or out. An ad callout and different visual treatments can help users distinguish promotions from other content. Furthermore, advertisements should take up no more than 20 percent of a user’s field of view to protect the user experience. Companies are starting to adopt policies and limits to VR advertising. For example, Unity – a VR development company – has an immersive advertising product called Virtual Room that requires users to opt in to see branded content. Their VR advertisements display for no more than two minutes each hour.

Power and peril

VR is still a “wild west” of sorts. Immersive virtual experiences, the role they play in our lives and the policies that govern them are evolving. It’s clear, however, that VR experiences have a tangible emotional, cognitive and behavioral impact on users. And the impact carries over into the real world.

For creators, this means the stakes are higher in VR than other digital mediums. We have the opportunity to help users harness the power of VR experiences while protecting them from harm. I believe that starts by creating VR experiences with a thoughtful, research-driven approach and ensuring users have awareness and control throughout their virtual experience. As designers, developers and even advertisers, it’s important to approach the VR medium with caution and remember to consider the full impact of VR experiences: who benefits, as well as who “pays.”

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It’s time for industrial design to think beyond the beautiful and useful


Foresight is inherent in design. A central part of our role as designers is to look ahead, propose a vision of what might be, and help navigate towards the products and experiences we imagined. In the early days of design, we worked to create products that were appealing and easy to use. Then, we broadened our view beyond products to create experiences that are helpful and desirable. Today, it is easy to see the many ways designers contribute to human well-being by making technology more useful, usable and beneficial.

Yet that progress has also come at a cost to well-being. Many of the items we so thoughtfully designed – and the packaging used to deliver those items – have ended up in an enormous patch of discarded plastic in the Pacific Ocean. The fossil fuels that supply the energy to operate these products contribute to climate change, and many of the most beneficial products we design are beyond reach for all but a privileged few.

These – and many more – are hairy, complex, wicked problems.

The occasion of World Industrial Design Day is an appropriate time to reflect on the many great things we have accomplished, but it is also a good time to ask: if we contribute to unsustainable practices, do we also bear a responsibility to help address these issues and prevent future ones?

Beyond beautiful objects and delightful experiences, designers have indeed contributed to improving individual human health and well-being – but we have set our sights too narrow. It is time to shift our focus beyond the objectives of design towards the outcomes we wish our design to deliver. Using outcomes can guide us to create things that surpass the immediate benefits of use to contribute to the greater well-being of individuals, society and the environment. Here are three ways designers can start putting outcomes thinking into practice.

Design beyond the stakeholder bubble

If the old adage used to be “you are not the customer,” today we need to acknowledge that the client and target audience are far from the only stakeholders. A successful product not only contributes to the client’s bottom line, but impacts its employees, suppliers and community. By building broader stakeholder maps that include user groups, secondary stakeholders and wider society, we gain a deeper understanding of the systems and connections that underpin our work.

In looking at user stakeholder groups we should ask not only “who is included?” but also “who is excluded?” Microsoft’s Xbox Accessibility is an admirable example of doing more for audiences that have previously been excluded. The objective “To make gaming accessible, equitable, and sustainable for all,” inspired the creation of gaming systems with wider reach: from screen narration for the visually impaired to adaptive, customizable controllers for people with motor disabilities.

Of course, the products we create affect secondary and tertiary stakeholders beyond the user. In medical design, for example, we are accustomed to considering not only patient and caregiver, but also loved ones, biomedical technicians and hospital administrators. Similarly, we should acknowledge who or what in wider society may disappear as a result of a product or service. While self-driving cars promise to make driving safer, they likely also eliminate jobs that currently sustain millions of families. It is our responsibility as designers to consider these broader impacts of a product on people, company and humanity.

Shift narrow objectives to holistic outcomes

Shifting our thinking from objectives (our goal) to outcomes (what we wish to happen as a result or consequence) helps us gain a deeper understanding of the changes we wish our design solutions to deliver. One way to do so is by asking yourself, “To what end?” in a process similar to the five whys.

Say you are designing a medical device. Your objective might be: “To create an extremely usable and intuitive injection device.” Identify the outcomes by asking, to what end? “So that patients can better manage their chronic condition day-to-day, so that they can have fewer serious health complications.”

When you continue to ask the question from the standpoint of different stakeholders, you gain an even broader perspective. For the patient, a desired outcome may be “So that I can have greater freedom, and less dependence on medical personnel.” For the device manufacturer, it may be “So that patients associate our devices with that freedom,” and for the caregiver “So that our relationship with patients is focused on the big health picture, rather than day-to-day problems.”


Identify both sides of the coin

Identifying outcomes-focused mission statements helps you design with a more holistic outlook. In practice, however, systems are complex and interconnected. In addition to the positive outcomes we aim to deliver we must also consider the potential negative outcomes we want to avoid.

Consider the design of food packaging. Focusing strictly on the positive outcomes of “Every item of food we deliver is safe, uncontaminated and devoid of any physical damage” can produce unwanted packaging waste. A better outcome statement might be “Every item of food we deliver is safe, uncontaminated and devoid of any physical damage (the positive outcome) while eliminating non-biodegradable waste and minimizing added cost, bulk or weight (the outcomes we wish to avoid).”

Six-pack rings are notorious for ending up in oceans and harming wildlife who eat or become entangled in them. How might outcomes thinking help avoid this negative consequence by minimizing the harm that discarded six-pack rings inflict on turtles, fish and birds? The company E6PR has actually created such a product: the Eco Six Pack Ring. While nobody claims they constitute a healthy diet, the Eco Six Pack Ring is completely biodegradable and harmless if eaten. Going a step further might be to turn that neutral into a positive: what if those six-pack rings could actually provide beneficial nutrients for those turtles, fish and birds?

Outcomes as a compass

A disclaimer: this is both hard and complex. Outcomes thinking is not black and white, and even the most well-intentioned initiatives can result in unexpected financial, behavioral and environmental consequences. When a global nonprofit supplied mosquito nets to communities at risk of malaria, people used them instead to fish – sustenance the more pressing concern in the eyes of the local community. An additional unintended consequence, the fine mesh of the nets caught young fish as well as mature ones, posing a threat to sustainable fish populations. How do these outcomes alter our way of looking at the scenario?

There are no easy answers to the many problems of human – and humanity’s – well-being. But that shouldn’t stop us from tackling these challenges in our work. Let’s champion a broader set of stakeholders; think in terms of outcomes instead of objectives; and address not only the positive consequences we wish to deliver but the negative ones we wish to avoid. When we put these approaches into practice, we can build toward a more sustainable and equitable world – and truly begin to improve human health and well-being. As designers, let’s embrace the role we play as integrators, connectors of dots, visionaries, explorers of opportunities and navigators of uncertain futures. Let outcomes be our compass.

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