What is your topic and who is the target audience?
My topic is technology, and I want to focus on how technology is seen and treated socially, and how our relationship with it might change in the future as new kinds of technology are invented. I also want to focus on the tech industry, the toxic work culture, the mistreatment of end users, and the impacts on the environment. I want to explore how these things overlap and connect with each other.
My target audience is young people who are about to start or who have just started their careers. I want to encourage these people to reflect on the practices of their industries and think about how they might be able to shift the culture.
Identify lenses we have discussed in class that your topic may rely on most
Speculative Design
If I were to address the topic of technology and it's social/labour role from a speculative design perspective, I could create a prototype of a product or service that highlights a feature of the topic. One idea I have is an AI-powered service for employers to track their employees actions and habits, which marks them for promotion or supplemental training, or maybe marks them as potential union sympathisers, so that employers can make "better informed" decisions.
Challenging Mental Models
There are several mental models that I'm interested in challenging in my project: elitism among tech workers based on how prestigious of companies one has worked for; the lack of support for workers and unions in the tech industry; the belief that technology is less biased than people, and that technological progress is a signifier of social progress; the feeling of disempowerment of everyday workers, especially early career ones; and technocracy.
Data visualization
Some kinds of data that I could visualise for this topic are labour statistics and trends, environmental impacts of tech infrastructure, individual psychological impacts of technology use, and technological development timelines.
Utopian / Dystopian narratives
The utopian narrative around technology is that it can solve our social problems by eliminating the economic problems that "cause" them. There is some truth to this, if technology is accepted and implemented ethically and efficiently. However, powerful people who have a vested personal interest in maintaining the status quo will use their resources to stop this from happening and even use technology to bolster their own power, to the detriment of society at large. This is where the dystopian narrative emerges.
What are some of the features you imagine your project/product would include?
I imagine my project would include a fictionalised/narrative element or framing, taken from speculative and critical design. I would for like there to be a way for visitors to contribute something to the project, or at least to influence/personalise their experience.
Are there possible tangents, challenges, concerns, or vague ideas related to your ideas? (It could go this direction... I am not sure about X, and I don't know how I might deal with Y).
I'm wondering how much of a historical/educational element to include in the project, or how much I should allow it to be a self-learning/reflective experience.