Rosenverse

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

What Role(s) Can Research Play in Responsible Design?
Gold
Thursday, March 11, 2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Share the love for this talk
What Role(s) Can Research Play in Responsible Design?
Speakers: Mandy Drew
Link:

Summary

Netflix's documentary "The Social Dilemma" shined a harsh spotlight on how design patterns and advertising targeting developed to encourage engagement and tailor content to users' preferences have dangerous, far-reaching consequences. We will discuss: What role can researchers play in mitigating negative social and personal impacts during the design process? If we discover evidence that a design solution to a business goal negatively impacts customers' lives, how might we help our design and product partners consider a different solution? What is the responsibility of researchers to determine how products we've already launched affect our customers' lives?

Key Insights

  • Technologies like machine learning and algorithms were designed to aid decision-making but can propagate bias and unfairness when lack of human oversight occurs.

  • Misinformation spreads significantly farther and faster than factual news, exacerbated by social media algorithms.

  • Design patterns like infinite scroll exploit psychological triggers and dopamine feedback loops, increasing user addiction.

  • Personal data mining and targeted advertising both help consumers with deals and raise privacy and manipulation concerns.

  • Research shows racial biases in healthcare algorithms that rely on flawed proxies like healthcare spending instead of biological indicators.

  • Remote and diverse participant recruitment improves research quality by better reflecting real-world user diversity and behavior.

  • Qualitative and quantitative data triangulation provides richer context for product impact and user experience understanding.

  • Digital nudges, such as disabling auto-play videos or hiding notifications, can effectively reduce social media addiction and improve enjoyment.

  • Business success metrics focused on engagement time often incentivize addictive and harmful product designs.

  • Incorporating diverse perspectives and lived experience into UX research reduces bias and promotes more ethical technology design.

Notable Quotes

"The people we’ve lost are not intelligent, gullible, or willfully ignorant; they believe true things partly because new tech makes misinformation easier to find, consume, and believe."

"Algorithms help us narrow choices and find patterns faster than human reasoning which is slower, emotional, and subjective."

"An algorithm sentenced a teen more harshly because it predicted he’d reoffend more over his lifetime compared to a 36-year-old, illustrating unsettling fairness issues."

"False information spread significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than truth—by an order of magnitude."

"Infinite scroll is behavioral cocaine sprinkled all over our interfaces."

"The hook model mirrors addiction cycles by triggering dopamine responses that keep users scrolling and engaged."

"Recruiting research participants who represent the diversity of real users helps uncover authentic product interactions and needs."

"We must rethink success metrics away from engagement time to measures that prioritize users’ health, safety, and happiness."

"Digital nudges like requiring users to act to view notifications can help reduce addictive use of social platforms."

"We should build research teams of people who don’t look, think, or live like us to challenge internal biases in product design."

Ask the Rosenbot
Lija Hogan
Three Years Out: Perspectives on the Near-Term Future of User Research (Videoconference)
2024 • Advancing Research Community
Bria Alexander
Opening Remarks
2023 • DesignOps Summit 2023
Gold
Kate Koch
Flex Your Super Powers: When a Design Ops Team Scales to Power CX
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
George Zhang
UX Research Excellence Framework
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Amy Jiménez Márquez
The Atypical UX Manager Path (Videoconference)
2020 • Enterprise Community
Michele Wong
Helping Them Help Us
2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Gold
Sofia Quintero
The Product Philosophy Behind EnjoyHQ
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Saara Kamppari-Miller
"Prototype" vs "Prototype"--Breaking Down and Rebuilding Our Understanding of What We Do
2019 • DesignOps Summit 2019
Gold
Tess Dixon
C'mon Get Happy
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Nicole Bergstrom
AccessibilityOps: Moving beyond “nice to have”
2024 • DesignOps Community
Nova Wehman-Brown
We've Never Done This Before
2019 • Enterprise Experience 2019
Gold
Uday Gajendar
The Rise of Meta-Design: A Starter Playbook (Videoconference)
2022 • Enterprise Community
Frank Duran
Partnership Playbook: Lessons Learned in Effective Partnership
2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Gold
Matt Bernius
Learnings from Applying Trauma-Informed Principles to the Research Process
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Etienne Fang
The Power of Care: From Human-Centered Research to Humanity-Centered Leadership
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Discussion
2017 • Enterprise Experience 2017
Gold

More Videos

"Doctors hate using EHRs because it turns them into clerks, interacting more with machines than patients."

Standardizing Product Merits for Leaders, Designers, and Everyone

June 15, 2018

Simon Wardley

"The Red Queen effect means if others adapt, you must adapt or lose."

Simon Wardley

Maps and Topographical Intelligence (Videoconference)

January 31, 2019

Sandra Camacho

"There’s a gap between intentions and impact; humility is needed to close it."

Sandra Camacho

Creating More Bias-Proof Designs

January 22, 2025

Darian Davis

"When fellow co-workers label an individual as difficult, it’s hard not to treat that person as a problem."

Darian Davis

Lessons from a Toxic Work Relationship

January 8, 2024

Fisayo Osilaja

"Having conversations with stakeholders before sharing AI-generated recommendations validates their legitimacy and relevance."

Fisayo Osilaja

[Demo] The AI edge: From researcher to strategist

June 4, 2024

Uday Gajendar

"There is a common thread in craft: dignity, purpose, utility, and beauty."

Uday Gajendar

The Wicked Craft of Enterprise UX

May 13, 2015

Davis Neable

"We formed a small core task force empowered to make decisions to avoid delays from formal reviews."

Davis Neable Guy Segal

How to Drive a Design Project When you Don’t Have a Design Team

June 10, 2021

Eniola Oluwole

"Once cash prizes were gone, people stopped feeling ownership of the design system."

Eniola Oluwole

Lessons From the DesignOps Journey of the World's Largest Travel Site

October 24, 2019

Aurobinda Pradhan

"Most of us in design are very process-oriented, but traditional devops tools are task and issue-centric, making collaboration hard."

Aurobinda Pradhan Shashank Deshpande

Introduction to Collaborative DesignOps using Cubyts

September 9, 2022