The aim of the workshop will be to collectively explore the design of digital solutions within the contexts, understandings, and ground realities of the people they cater to.
The first ten minutes of the session will establish guiding principles for the development of transparent and accountable technology — the need to be inclusive, collaborative, and grounded in the realities of the people it seeks to serve.
The remaining time will involve group-based activities, wherein participants will build a smartphone-based application concept that addresses a COVID-related problem of their choosing. Activities will draw from human centred design to engage key aspects of ‘openness’ in technology design. This includes framing an effective challenge statement, gaining a nuanced understanding of the causes and effects that operate within that challenge, understanding the people being served, and building ideas that respond to each aspect of the challenge in an effective manner.
Through this workshop, we hope to create a conversation around bottom-up approaches to the development of technology, and the practices and principles that help to frame them. We hope the workshop will equip participants with the tools for contextual and user-led approaches to the design of technology-based experiences, especially within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the fundamental need of community action to address many aspects of current issues.
How will you deal with varying numbers of participants in your session?:Regardless of the eventual number, we will organise participants into groups of roughly 3 people to ensure active participation as well as a diversity of ideas and approaches, with close facilitation from our team. This will allow us to adapt our exercises to the eventual number of participants. In the event that we do not have enough facilitators to work with the participants, we will include more members of our respective organisations. We also intend for the workshop to live beyond the festival and therefore snowball participation over time.
We're hoping that many efforts and discussions will continue after Mozfest. Share any ideas you already have for how to continue the work from your session.:Coming out of the workshop, participants will be engaged to further develop the concepts they have framed with our support through online tools. Additionally, we will use online communication channels like Slack to delve further into specific talking points and ideas that emerge during the workshop.
We will document the method and learnings from the workshop and make it publicly available. Further, insights from the workshop will be used to refine our work on participatory tech design methodologies as well as inform our engagements with third party actors on the design and deployment of AI. We are also keen on building on learnings through our policy research on responsible tech.
Kabir is a design researcher with Quicksand, a design innovation consultancy in India. His work involves interacting with communities and understanding the dynamics that drive them towards a better life.
Aditya is a design researcher at Quicksand, a design and innovation consultancy based in India. His interests lie in speculative design, storytelling, writing fiction, and making artworks/films on powerpoint.
Research associate with the AI and Society Initiative at Tandem Research.
I'm interested in investigating the implications of data and emerging technologies, and its interaction with law and society.
Harsh Ghildiyal is a Research Associate at Tandem Research. His current work is focused on issues of data, artificial intelligence, privacy, and platform governance