Social Responsibility and Theoretical Choice - Part 3

The Effect of Choosing Design Theories

The lesson to be learned from the Luddites is not that technology creation or adoption should be stopped, but that its influence on the surrounding society should be evaluated and managed in a humane fashion. The English workers needed a structure in place to defend their right to reasonable work for reasonable pay and manage retraining should it be needed. Unions have developed in many countries to support worker rights in this manner. Unions ensure that employers treat workers fairly and that exploitation is kept to reasonable levels, unlike what had happened in the English textiles trade.

Scandinavia is one such region which has a long tradition of participatory democracy which encouraged the development of strong trade unions. It is in this environment that participatory design (PD) arose. Consequently it has a heavy emphasis on defending worker rights, democratising design and aligning itself with the goals of unions. One of the difficulties with unions is that workers do not necessarily have an interest in allowing the introduction of more efficient technologies which require them to change job roles (e.g. the shearing frame in England). Thus, in a union-dominated environment, businesses may not reach potential efficiency levels. As a consequence of this, markets are not allowed to expand, companies may not be globally competitive, and workers continue to do mundane work which could be automated. Thus traditional PD explicitly embraces an ideological intent to give workers the power to direct and maintain technology development, potentially at the cost of holding back society from further growth and potential. Some forms of PD attempt to address this by including multiple types of stakeholders and seek compromise solutions (Floyd et al., 1989). However, how this should occur is still a matter of debate within the PD community.

There are many technologies which we now accept as commonplace, which automated jobs previously held by humans. Hughes et. al. go so far as to say that “much of the motivation for IT is to reorganise work and, as part of this, often seek to displace labour.” (Hughes, J. et al., 1994, p. 431) Examples of past automation projects include: traffic signals, ATMs, vending machines, automobile welding robots, washers and dryers, library and grocery self-checkout machines, telephone switchboards, clothing manufacture and countless other machines. Despite this trend towards increasing and successful automation, some PD researchers are intentionally avoiding automation possibilities, and instead focusing on augmentation of human workers (Messeter, Brandt, Halse, & Johansson, 2004, p. 28; Nilsson, Sokoler, Binder, & Wetcke, 2000). It should be noted that automation does not work in all situations. Notable examples include the London Underground control room (Heath, C. & Luff, 1992) and determining when to have a mobile phone ring (Brown & Randell, 2004). As these examples illustrate, some activities which humans currently do well are simply too complex to be automated using current technology. Augmentation is probably a better approach in these situations, for the time being. However, it should be remembered that automation projects such as autonomous aircraft and land vehicles were recently considered prohibitively complex, and are now a reality. It is probable that having these automated devices makes our lives easier, safer and more efficient. However, if a development process had been used which gave the power to create these new technologies to the workers who previously filled these roles - would the technologies have been created? Would an English textile worker ever have helped to create the predecessors of modern automated sewing machines and robots now seen in textile factories?

PD is not the only design theory which has social agenda. Action research is primarily a cyclical process of planning, doing, observation and reflection, but it often carries a component of social emancipation where members of affected communities research and solve their own problems with assistance from other researchers. This process often seeks to improve the position and quality of life of people in these communities. However, it also carries an implicit cultural bias. In the case of the Luddites, differing goals for the future of textiles would have been held by international businessmen, the government, factory owners and workers. A development process for textile machinery necessarily would have carried with it some of the political goals of those using it.

Research methods are often designed with a particular ideological intent, which then changes as new applications are found for the methods. For example ethnography was originally designed purely to document naturally occurring behaviour over long periods of time, in reasonably stable settings. It is now being used to inform design, and in some cases to watch highly mobile users over much shorter periods of time (see Section 3.5). For design, comprehensive documentation of cultures is less important than targeted understanding of specific relevant issues. This change in application has correspondingly changed the social impact of ethnography. Before it provided descriptions of different cultures to help remote audiences reflect on their own behaviour and understand others. Now, as Hughes et. al. mention, it helps to more effectively introduce new technologies into these cultures and reorganise their daily lives (Hughes, J. et al., 1994). To summarise: research methods carry ideological intent with them, this can change as methods are used in new situations, and most design methods (explicitly or implicitly) seek to introduce change. This is as true in the age of the Luddites as it is today.

Next Post: Social Implications of Technology Use on Backpacker Culture