Making Space for Love: The UX of Sustainable Societies

B Cordelia Yu—@thebestsophist

CONTENT WARNING

How do we build a society that takes care of all who live in its communities?

User Experience

Human Experience

Human Living

People Living

Living People

Living Communities

User experience is about living in community.

What is within the scope of UX?
And what is the designer’s role in fighting climate change?

What is sustainability?

Racism trumps class. Even middle income African Americans are more likely to live in more polluted neighborhoods.

Dr. Robert Bullard

Those with power put the ugly parts of our world out of sight so they stay out of mind…

…because their wealth depends on our ignorance and our apathy.

The language of sustainability—as commonly practiced—is in the language of affluence.

Designer is just a fancy word for
“creators of solutions to problems”.

🚮🔥

+3℃

What. Went.

How this affects sustainability work
in UX and tech

+3℃

3℃, I see New Orleans still rebuilding.

☛ B ☚

(and this is where i tell you it’s okay to mute me for the next few moments, I’ll bring the screen back up when it’s safe)

I remember white environmentalists in the largest nonprofits telling me that it is too hard to partner with environmental groups from marginalized communities. That creating programs to galvanize those with the most at stake is not financially sustainable.

I see Trump saying that climate change is a hoax perpetuated by China as the lede but the fact check doesn’t happen until paragraphs later.

I see hateful attacks on my Muslim friends, my immigrant family, my trans friends, deportation raids in the middle of the night in the uk in the middle of the day in the us. I see Twitter full of people with chronic illnesses and parents of children with disabilities worrying about medical care, school access.

I remember getting on a bus to go speak on social justice and a man yells “Go back to China!” his friends laugh and no one standing up to defending me.

i think about The Dakota Access protestors being treated like animals and their connection to the outside world jammed. All of this to create a culture of fear and hate.

☛ B ☚

The Marshall Islands sinking below the sea. Black children drinking lead-tainted water. I see white men writing articles about how we must come together while my family is bleeding.

What we have here is a failure to communicate. What we have here is the foundation of democracy crumbling.

Yes, I work in tech. But I studied as a political philosopher. And I am telling you right now the stakes are that high. This is not a drill. Western democracy is on a path leading to collapse.

But there is hope.

Democratic Theory & Democratic Design 101 (abridged)

🕐🕝⁉️💤

#sorrynotsorry

[A] method of group decision making characterized by a kind of equality among the participants at an essential stage of the collective decision making.

Why bother?

Now, some of you might scoff at this question, and yet…25.4% of the voting-age population of the united states voted for an authoritarian. Not only that, they consciously voted for an authoritarian. and another 44.7% were either unable to—or more likely—didn’t bother to vote at all. So “why bother” is a question a lot of people answered with “I can’t.” or “Don’t.”

People keep saying government is so inefficient, and having one strongman making all the decisions is a good way to speed it up!

But the world is complicated, and a small group is deeply limited in how much information they can parse—even if they are perfectly moral or well-intentioned. One of the reasons we need democracy is that everyone has a different perspective and different needs. That one person’s great decision is devistation to another. the legitimacy of those decisions requires everyone’s input.

[Democracy] is not about good decision-making but about legitimacy. A government gains its right to govern by the assent of the people.

John Armstrong, The Philosophy of Voting

But what about good decision making?

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

Thomas Jefferson, practitioner of chattel slavery, president

Folks in the US love this tree of liberty quote from Thomas Jefferson.

But do y’all know the full context?

He was talking about british propaganda. How tyranny always perpetuates lies. Ignorance create complacency and is anathema to democracy and healthy society. The only way to fight that is through popular education and truth.

I think about research in political psychology. How our political ideology even makes it hard for us to do math when it is around a politically-charged topic.

How when we see people suffering under inequality we are often more likely to blame them than confront the truth the the world is unjust. And when we are uncomfortable because we feel uninformed, we are more likely to avoid it than educate ourselves.

And these falsehoods and bullshit are only one part of what make democracy sick. Through them bad decisions are made. And the tools that we built: Facebook, Twitter, and all the rest? Those are the tools that made it happen.

Technology is never neutral.

When civic engagement is superficial, so too is our civic knowledge.

Democracy is about empowerment and having agency in the decisions that affect our lives.

“Design for everyone.”

Choice and access are necessary but insufficient for democracy.

Democracy is about empowerment and having agency in the decisions that affect our lives.

Wherever there is an injustice and wherever people are exploited, the ecosystem as a whole will collapse.

Sarra Tekola

The people can not be all, and always, well informed.… If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty

Thomas Jefferson

Taiwanese Healthcare

During the mid-Aughts Taiwan needed to update its national health insurance system—at that time public trust in the government was at a low.

And we know how the US passes major healthcare reform—a bunch of congresspeople put something together, try to get enough support from other legislators, and convincing the public is mostly an ancillary consideration—which is why despite major success many years later and on the eve of its repeal, a huge portion of the public is still confused about the what Affordable Care Act is.

What Taiwan did was different: They put together a task force of public health officials, academics, policymakers to collect public health data and go into communities to hold forums. They asked local activists and organizers, citizens, and health providers to not only go to the forums to watch a bunch of speakers, but gave them the data, taught them to read and analyze it, and give their input on what they think needs to change. The task force took that information back to policymakers to create legislation. Taiwan’s national healthcare system is now considered one of the best in the world both by patient satisfaction and folks in public health.

And this sort of participatory governance happens locally, too.

Protest is democracy by other means.

Another story: A developer wanted to build a new property on an underutilized park block in a Taipei neighborhood—as an aside, Taipei has roughly the same population density as New York City—so as part of the planning, the public commissioner put up signs next to the park, published ads in the newspaper to tell the public of the plan, nobody responded or attended the public meeting so the plan went ahead. right before demolition—when they were already starting to bring in equipment—a student was walking home and noticed that they were about to start something. She asked neighbors who knew nothing about it—so she saw the sign and contacted the local commissioner to find out what was happening. And then she organized all the neighbors to protest the plan in a matter of days. They halted demolition held new forums.

As anyone who has done community organizing can tell you, even on your best days not all attempts at organizing works. You can try your damnedest to do your due diligence and oftentimes nobody pays attention—which reminds me of a different example here in the US

When the Standing Rock protests were gaining more public attention last year, the backers of the Pipeline started putting out a lot of ads in opposition, one that was all over Youtube said “the Standing Rock protesters say they were never consulted, that is untrue…” and they used that as justification for why the pipeline should be built.

This is the language of abuse.

“You didn’t say anything before, so now you have no choice in the matter” is not only straight up the language of abusers, it is also a gross misunderstanding of consent. And it completely overlooks the reality that marginalized communities are usually intentionally ignored, and many attempts to “consult” with them are structured in a way that makes it easy to silence them.

Back to Taiwan, through new public forums, they discovered that the reason the park was barely used was that it didn’t really have anything the people in the community needed. So the neighbors, public commissioner, and the developer put together a new plan and received resources from the federal government to build new facilities in the park that neighbors wanted, while still allowing the developer to construct a new building with public commercial space that also helped bring life to the neighborhood. After the park renovation was completed people started using it daily.

The important point here isn’t that public outcry is critical to democracy—though it is. The really important point is that Taiwan’s political culture is such that if there is new public interest, there are systems of practice to stop and reconsider—rather than “you didn’t follow procedure therefore forfeit your voice”.

Efficiency in government is a tactic, not a strategy.

We’ve developed a dangerous conceit that the functions of governance should be efficient above all else—an idea imported from capitalism. But government and democracy aren’t about efficiency, government is about efficacy, democracy is about legitimacy. Dedication to real and substantive public input is necessary for that legitimacy. Efficiency is in service of those practices, not the other way around.

This isn’t to say that creating public education task forces will immediately make government more legitimate. While Taiwan was reforming its health insurance program many activists didn't trust it and refused to participate. It is through repeated practice and engagement that these systems gain the public trust. As someone’s grandma always says: you only gain trust through trusting others.

AI-mediated democracy

What’s this got to do with UX?

That is when they decided to build a tool called vTaiwan using a system called pol.is. In polis, anyone can ask questions and everyone else can answer agree, disagree, pass. Through that, they can find where there are groups of consensus and disagreement in real time.

The way vTaiwan works is pretty amazing, already it has been used to both create substantive policy and reshape healthy political dialog in measurable ways.

A real thing that happened: Taiwan had been considering laws for selling booze online for 6 years, it was taking that long because there was deadlock in public discourse and in the legislature. On one side was their version of Mothers Against Drunk Driving who were against it because they did not want an increase in public drunk driving; on the other was the liquor lobby that said that the lack of online sales was bad for business.

To give you an idea of how vTaiwan (and pol.is) works:

Two statements were put in: One, “we can not have an increase in drunk driving”, over 75% agreed. Two, “we need to have legal online liquor sales”, again over 75% agreed. Tens of thousands of citizens participated and they agreed with both sides, the deadlock was a false dichotomy based in political rhetoric.

After putting the issue through vTaiwan, they passed legislation in 3 months. Let me repeat that: six years of political deadlock, broken in 3 months because citizens were given the chance to substantively contribute to the policy discussion.

Design is no longer about designing the thing, you design the conditions for the thing to emerge–the conversation.

Indy Johar—Democratizing Cities

This was impossible before the internet and machine learning.

github.com/canada-ca/welcome

But only concentrating on the tech is dangerous. Yes, the digital tool is important, but 1. there was buy-in at the highest levels of Taiwanese government from the beginning; 2. the digital tools are an augmentation to an established culture of participatory governance. The technology is only the surface of the deliberative democracy work in Taiwan, they have a history of doing it, and that is powerfully important. We cannot just build the technology and hope that all the problems of governance will be solved.

(and yes, that is the github repo where Canada’s digital services team is talking about building deliberative practices into government. if you’re canadian, go contribute.) ☟

The technology is only part of the process. They use it to find what issues need focus. Through the public question and answer process, they build agendas for committee meetings where stakeholders have to build consensus. The meetings are in-person, with policy makers, activists, and other stakeholders live streamed for public viewing. If there is deadlock around an issue, it is put off for reconsideration in a later meeting. Draft policy is created only where there is unanimous agreement.

Minimally Viable Policy

This is agile law making!

opengovpartnership.org

From participatory budgeting to the modernizing of services, I will take steps to make city government easier to navigate, easier to participate in and easier to understand.

Tishaura Jones

participatorybudgeting.org

USians! ☛ runforoffice.org

How should we think about UX in sustainability?

Design is no longer about designing the thing, you design the conditions for the thing to emerge–the conversation.

Indy Johar—Democratizing Cities

Unless we actually find a means of change to deal with the complexity we’re in…we’re stuck between the hard choice of centralist populist ideas or actually really investing in democratizing the the capacity for people to change society. So if we want to drive change, we’re going to have to build a new organizational model. And that requires us to build an architecture of large conversations.

Indy Johar

Build this into your own work.

1. How do you recruit all the relevant stakeholders?

2. How do you give them all the data they need as well the necessary training to make good decisions based on that data?

3. Are your stakeholders empowered to make substantive contributions?

4. Are you able and willing to listen and act on those recommendations?

This is about the neighborhood park and Standing Rock examples. How do you make sure the people who have a stake in the decision give their input? Not only “have the chance to give their input” but are actively involved in the process.

☟

This is about the health insurance task force. Good decisions come from good information. How do we gather the necessary data, educate stakeholders to analyze and understand that information so they can better contribute?

☟

When Taiwan was starting their experiments in participatory democracy, a lot of peopole were deeply skeptical. There was no direct avenue where their input at a community forum would shape policy making. Now, the government believes that every major piece of policy that passes through the legislature must go through a public comment.

☟

One of the first things Obama’s White House implemented when he entered office was We the People, which allowed anyone to create a petition that—if it garnered enough signatures—would receive an official response from the White House or the President. this was a huge move in giving people a direct voice. But because it didn’t require policy action, it was less effective in creating real change. But because what happens in vTaiwan creates binding results to tell how legislators write policy—people see that their input has direct impact on the laws that govern them. This creates trust which encourages people to participate more, which means they have incentive to be educated about policy and politics.

☛

What does love have to do with this?

User experience is about living in community.

We know making space for these conversations works.

Last year Science Magazine published a study showing that volunteer canvassers going door to door to talk to about the rights of transgender and non-binary folk could successfully change strangers’ minds after just a 10-minute conversation.

These conversations works. THey work a whole lot better than ads and thinkpieces and Facebook posts, and whatever else.

Make spaces for people to tell each others’ stories. That is what we need to be designing for. Because it is the storytellers who reshape society.

We want to concentrate on the 🚮🔥. But the ones at the top merely the leaders. While strong, they can do nothing without followers. It is always the ordinary people who carry out the inhumane acts.

So as I’m watching news about the ICE raids and the airport customs agents, and the Dakota Access private security, I’m thinking about both Stanford Prison and Milgram experiments. Ordinary people who—because authority tells them to—carry out horrifying acts because that is their job. But I also think about the World War 1 Christmas Truce where—despite fighting a war against each other, once opposing troops broke bread together, sang togther, and played together, they refused to fight. I think about the difference, and the difference is that they knew each others’ stories.

So as I think about the call-ins and global protests of the last month, with Congresspeople turning off their phones, or sneaking away from town hall meetings. I remember my time on the Hill, where the CRM that most of them used was built around a few specific things: recording your name and address, topic of the comment, and the rest was a process for responding by form letter.

And I get to wondering: what if our representatives weren’t just voted in to make legislation. What if their CRM wasn’t just about responding with form letters. What if they had tools to help take public input as core to how they shaped the legislation? What if each of them was a moderator to help us find consensus with each other with a system like vTaiwan?

What if we created new spaces for collaboration where people are not just yelling at each other, but understanding one another.

It falls to each of us to be those anxious, jealous guardians of our democracy.

Barack Obama

We can’t change the whole system overnight. But we need to know what we would put in its place…

…and we can take advantage of the present crisis to begin working to create new models with the teachers, principals, and parents all over the city who have given themselves permission to think differently from the powers-that-be.

Grace Lee Boggs, The Next American Revolution

Social change will not come to us like an avalanche down the mountain. Social change will come to us through seeds in well prepared soil—and it is we, like the earthworms, who prepare the soil.…

…We realize there are no guarantees as to what will come up. Yet we do know that without the seeds and the prepared soil nothing will grow at all.

Ursula Franklin—The Real World of Technology

Thank you

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