Periodic Reporting for period 1 - DCODE (Fundamentals of Design Competence for Our Digital Future)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2021-01-01 al 2022-12-31
The industrial revolution happened, and it’s over. We are living in the midst of a digital transformation of society. Yet, design practice is stuck in the past. We struggle to reconcile human values and algorithmic logic with social, economic, and political models that are inclusive and sustainable. Our next generation of leaders needs to go back to more fundamental ideas of design as an anticipatory process oriented towards preferable futures. Imagining and manifesting alternative futures cannot be an afterthought—it has to be a proactive effort.
For this, we are training a cohort of 15 ESRs from design, engineering, social sciences, and the humanities, and equipping them—against the backdrop of current developments in AI—with the knowledge and skills needed to prototype radically new design competencies. New foundations for design require the interdisciplinary integration of 5 key challenges:
1. Anthropological study and principled engineering of algorithms.
2. Design of trusted interactions across decentralized systems.
3. Sustainable approaches to value creation in data-driven models.
4. Democratic mechanisms for data governance and deliberation.
5. Future design practices upholding anticipatory approaches.
To foster this holistic understanding, we introduce a postdisciplinary mode of working called prototeams—teams of ESRs working in real-world contexts to prototype future professional design competencies and practices, including the integration of knowledge across disciplines it requires. We bring together a team of internationally leading researchers in the required subject areas and non-academic partners from different sectors that bring societal, economic, and political practice to the project and provide multiple forums for the dissemination of results and best practices.
For this, we are training a cohort of 15 ESRs from design, engineering, social sciences, and the humanities, and equipping them—against the backdrop of current developments in AI—with the knowledge and skills needed to prototype radically new design competencies. New foundations for design require the interdisciplinary integration of 5 key challenges:
1. Anthropological study and principled engineering of algorithms.
2. Design of trusted interactions across decentralized systems.
3. Sustainable approaches to value creation in data-driven models.
4. Democratic mechanisms for data governance and deliberation.
5. Future design practices upholding anticipatory approaches.
To foster this holistic understanding, we introduce a postdisciplinary mode of working called prototeams—teams of ESRs working in real-world contexts to prototype future professional design competencies and practices, including the integration of knowledge across disciplines it requires. We bring together a team of internationally leading researchers in the required subject areas and non-academic partners from different sectors that bring societal, economic, and political practice to the project and provide multiple forums for the dissemination of results and best practices.
DCODE launched on 01.01.2021. Due to the COVID pandemic, several activities were carried out online. Despite the challenges, all milestones and deliverables were successfully achieved. This preparatory work was carried out with a great commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusivity in the recruitment process as well as in the research priorities and the protocols for ethics and data management. For this, the Coordinator was nominated for the DEWIS Diversity Award 2022 and the TU Delft's International Women’s Day 2023.
In the 1st period, WP work has been dedicated primarily to (a) framing theoretical and methodological approaches and (b) identifying common themes and threads. This work has already produced a series of measurable results. The indication is that we have reached—with great visibility—all the main intended audiences. These include key academic communities and flagship conferences in design and human-computer interaction as well as high-impact scientific journals for which special issues are in preparation. We expect visibility to increase beyond academic communities in the next period. All results are available in Zenodo.
Summer & winter schools are providing the necessary training for the ESRs to become owners of the problem—promoting a reflexive practice that takes account of itself and the effect of the presence of the researcher-designer on what is being investigated and designed. Next to the schools, prototeams have complemented the disciplinary training by teaming up the ESRs with the Associated Partners. Within the prototeams, the ESRs went beyond what they are doing on their own, to see what can be learnt from what the others are doing, and how they can collaborate. Between March and June 2022, we deployed 3 prototeams. Their results were presented and discussed at the summer school in Delft. We also launched the DCODE Labs to promote creative collaboration between the consortium and undergraduate students. In the 1st period, one student presented at Mozilla Fest 2022 and was Best Graduate 2022 of the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering. The other one was nominated for the Delft Design for Diversity thesis award.
All this work was communicated to the public by way of the DCODE Annual Showcase 2022, a curated online gallery of all results, launched in conjunction with the Dutch Design Week 2022.
In the 1st period, WP work has been dedicated primarily to (a) framing theoretical and methodological approaches and (b) identifying common themes and threads. This work has already produced a series of measurable results. The indication is that we have reached—with great visibility—all the main intended audiences. These include key academic communities and flagship conferences in design and human-computer interaction as well as high-impact scientific journals for which special issues are in preparation. We expect visibility to increase beyond academic communities in the next period. All results are available in Zenodo.
Summer & winter schools are providing the necessary training for the ESRs to become owners of the problem—promoting a reflexive practice that takes account of itself and the effect of the presence of the researcher-designer on what is being investigated and designed. Next to the schools, prototeams have complemented the disciplinary training by teaming up the ESRs with the Associated Partners. Within the prototeams, the ESRs went beyond what they are doing on their own, to see what can be learnt from what the others are doing, and how they can collaborate. Between March and June 2022, we deployed 3 prototeams. Their results were presented and discussed at the summer school in Delft. We also launched the DCODE Labs to promote creative collaboration between the consortium and undergraduate students. In the 1st period, one student presented at Mozilla Fest 2022 and was Best Graduate 2022 of the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering. The other one was nominated for the Delft Design for Diversity thesis award.
All this work was communicated to the public by way of the DCODE Annual Showcase 2022, a curated online gallery of all results, launched in conjunction with the Dutch Design Week 2022.
ESRs are developing approaches, methods, and solutions in and across key sectors that address major societal challenges in Europe and beyond. The cross-fertilization of these ideas and emerging best practices is likely to pave the road to new ethical standards for digital design practice. Through different methods of inquiry, complementary theoretical frameworks, and different manifestations of practice, the ESRs are advancing the state of the art in relation to all DCODE key challenges:
1. A framework for inclusive digital futures that challenges the one-dimensional, interaction-based understanding of algorithms that pervades research in HCI and that shifts levels of abstraction across times and scales (from microethics to cultural niche constructions). Insights are being translated into practical engineering implications that have the potential to guide upcoming regulatory efforts (i.e. EU AI Act).
2. A framework for decentralized interactions between human and non-human performers that shifts the idea of a human-machine interface from a control surface to a relational site for the orchestration of multiple effects. These insights are generating approaches to designing interactions that move past user-centered principles of seamless experience to open up to conflicting interests, worldviews, and notions of futurity.
3. From regional and local farmers to indigenous cooperatives and data scientists, the value of data has been identified as highly contextual, cultural, and not inherently given. By bringing together views on sustainable, feminist, and indigenous values, we are shifting data-driven socio-economic imaginaries toward an idea of relational data that is more conducive to societal equity and care.
4. Critical tensions between the intended slowness of democratic processes (that makes them resilient and stable) and the inherent speed of technological development. The insights so far indicate that the design objective cannot be to speed up one or slow down the other but to explore how the accumulation and processing of data can be addressed in everyday practices of digital sovereignty.
5. The biggest challenge is in understanding that ethics is not a problem to be permanently fixed. Developing methods to identify potential ethical issues does not provide concrete routes to action. Rather than focusing on which values to embed in technology design, it is more productive to focus on value tensions as something core to the design process.
Next to these innovative steps and potential impacts, we have actively engaged in robust discussion in the public sphere through the organization of events for the general public (e.g. Design4AI, Delft, October 2022), and via participation in European initiatives (e.g. Free to Create, Umeå, February 2023), activist groups (e.g. Community Economics Research Network, Futuress) and broader international networks (e.g. Openness and AI). Further to engagement with the wider research community and civic society, we have also started to create impact by contributing to policy-making with white papers (e.g. on AI Commons with Open Future and, in preparation, on Digital Twins for the City of Amsterdam) and recommendations (e.g. on data governance for the Scottish Government's AI Strategy).
1. A framework for inclusive digital futures that challenges the one-dimensional, interaction-based understanding of algorithms that pervades research in HCI and that shifts levels of abstraction across times and scales (from microethics to cultural niche constructions). Insights are being translated into practical engineering implications that have the potential to guide upcoming regulatory efforts (i.e. EU AI Act).
2. A framework for decentralized interactions between human and non-human performers that shifts the idea of a human-machine interface from a control surface to a relational site for the orchestration of multiple effects. These insights are generating approaches to designing interactions that move past user-centered principles of seamless experience to open up to conflicting interests, worldviews, and notions of futurity.
3. From regional and local farmers to indigenous cooperatives and data scientists, the value of data has been identified as highly contextual, cultural, and not inherently given. By bringing together views on sustainable, feminist, and indigenous values, we are shifting data-driven socio-economic imaginaries toward an idea of relational data that is more conducive to societal equity and care.
4. Critical tensions between the intended slowness of democratic processes (that makes them resilient and stable) and the inherent speed of technological development. The insights so far indicate that the design objective cannot be to speed up one or slow down the other but to explore how the accumulation and processing of data can be addressed in everyday practices of digital sovereignty.
5. The biggest challenge is in understanding that ethics is not a problem to be permanently fixed. Developing methods to identify potential ethical issues does not provide concrete routes to action. Rather than focusing on which values to embed in technology design, it is more productive to focus on value tensions as something core to the design process.
Next to these innovative steps and potential impacts, we have actively engaged in robust discussion in the public sphere through the organization of events for the general public (e.g. Design4AI, Delft, October 2022), and via participation in European initiatives (e.g. Free to Create, Umeå, February 2023), activist groups (e.g. Community Economics Research Network, Futuress) and broader international networks (e.g. Openness and AI). Further to engagement with the wider research community and civic society, we have also started to create impact by contributing to policy-making with white papers (e.g. on AI Commons with Open Future and, in preparation, on Digital Twins for the City of Amsterdam) and recommendations (e.g. on data governance for the Scottish Government's AI Strategy).