What your designs say about you

What does your chair say about what you value? Designer Sebastian Deterding shows how our visions of morality and what the good life is are reflected in the design of objects around us.

We are today talking about moral persuasion.

What is moral and immoral

in trying to change people's behaviors

by using technology and using design?

And I don't know what you expect,

but when I was thinking about that issue,

I early on realized

what I'm not able to give you are answers.

I'm not able to tell you what is moral or immoral

because we're living in a pluralist society.

My values can be radically different

from your values.

Which means that what I consider moral or immoral based on that

might not necessarily be what you consider moral or immoral.

But I also realized that there's one thing that I could give you.

And that is what this guy behind me gave the world --

Socrates.

It is questions.

What I can do and what I would like to do with you

is give you, like that initial question,

a set of questions

to figure out for yourself,

layer by layer,

like peeling an onion,

getting at the core of what you believe

is moral or immoral persuasion.

And I'd like to do that with a couple of examples

of technologies where people have used game elements

to get people to do things.

So it's a very simple, a very obvious question

I would like to give you:

What are your intentions if you are designing something?

And obviously intentions are not the only thing,

so here is another example for one of these applications.

There are a couple of these kinds of eco-dashboards right now --

so dashboards built into cars

which try to motivate you to drive more fuel efficiently.

This year is Nissan's Leaf

where you driving behavior is compared

with the driving behavior of other people,

so you can compete for who drives around

the most fuel efficiently.

And these things are very effective, it turns out,

so effective that they motivate people

to engage in safe driving behaviors --

like not stopping on a red headlight.

Because that way you have to stop and restart the engine,

and that would use quite some fuel, wouldn't it.

So despite this being a very well intended application,

obviously there was a side-effect of that.

And here's another example for one of these side-effects.

Commendable:

a site that allows parents to give their kids little badges

for doing the things that parents want their kids to to --

like tying their shoes.

And at first that sounds very nice,

very benign, well intended.

But it turns out, if you look into research on people's mindset,

that caring about outcomes,

caring about public recognition,

caring about these kinds of public tokens of recognition

is not necessarily very helpful

for you long-term psychological well-being.

It's better if you care about learning something.

It's better when you care about yourself

than how you appear in front of other people.

So that kind of motivational tool that is used

actually in and of itself

has a long-term side-effect,

that every time we use a technology

that uses something like public recognition or status,

we're actually positively endorsing this

as a good and a normal thing to care about.

That way possibly having a detrimental effect

on the long-term psychological well-being of ourselves as a culture.

So that's a second, very obvious question.

What are the effects of what's you're doing?

The effects that you're having with the device,

like less fuel,

as well as the effects of the actual tools you're using

to get people to do things --

public recognition.

Now is that all -- intention, effect?

Well there are some technologies

which obviously combine both.

Both good long-term and short-term effects

and a positive intention like Fred Stutzman's Freedom,

where the whole point of that application

is well we're usually so bombarded

with calls and requests by other people,

with this device you can shut off the internet connectivity

of you PC of choice for a preset amount of time

to actually get some work done.

And I think most of us will agree,

well that's something well intended

and also has good consequences.

In the words of Michel Foucault,

"It is a technology of the self."

It is a technology that empowers the individual

to determine its own life course

to shape itself.

But the problem is,

as Foucault points out,

that every technology of the self

has a technology of domination as its flip side.

As you see in today's modern liberal democracies,

the society, the state,

not only allows us to determine our self, to shape our self,

it also demands it of us.

It demands that we optimize ourselves,

that we control ourselves,

that we self-manage continuously

because that's the only way

in which such a liberal society works.

These technologies want us to stay in the game

that society has devised for us.

They want us to fit in even better.

They want us to optimize our selves to fit in.

Now I don't say that is necessarily a bad thing.

I just think that this example

points us to a general realization,

and that is no matter what technology or design you look at,

even something we consider as well-intended and as good in its effects --

like, for example, Stutzman's Freedom --

comes with certain values embedded in it.

And we can question these values.

We can question: Is it a good thing

that all of us continuously self-optimize ourselves

to fit better into that society?

Or to give you another example,

What about a piece of persuasive technology

that convinces Muslim women to wear their headscarves?

Is that a good or a bad technology