Interactions - March/April 2011

tive interfaces to connect the global, local, physical, and virtual and bring everyone together for collective activities, value creation, combined purchasing influence, etc. Design for deliberate and accidental non-users, for mediators, and those people who rely on mediation for their access. Include the world beyond those connected and design to make resources available without the need for specific equipment or skills.

Design for active membership of society. We are increasingly able to analyze and report on our social/physical environment and well-being. Use these insights to reach beyond judgments on others’ behavior. Social norms theory suggests that individuals’ actions can be moderated by contact with the actions of their social group, but this is a finite model for social transformation. Challenge persuasive tools that inspire shame, manage conformity, or discourage undesirable activity with those that work to fire up people’s sense of agency, love of inquiry, and desire to solve problems. Harness local wisdom as well as data on local conditions. Design to make people forceful and responsible.

Design for sharing. Use terms that
capture supportive relationships in
the household (“cohabitants”), locale
(“inhabitants,” “neighbors”) or wider
world (“citizens”). Affirm that we
are each a custodian, rather than
“consumer,” “audience,” or “user”
(suggesting dependence), “designer”
or “creator” (suggesting indepen-
dence). Look beyond community.
Interdependence forces consider-
ation of social justice and complex
resource-sharing issues. In any given
locale, support negotiation across
different groups and the inevitabil-
ity of shifts in the balance of power.
Interdependence involves seeking
temporary equilibrium and building
societies that transform and inno-
vate well. Design for learning and
growing together, for responding to
emergent trends and handling flux.

generates financial profit at a cost to every other measure. We can understand interaction design as a means of promoting interdependence digitally, through discovering unstated links and making new connections in people’s lives and minds. Designing for interdependence is yet more difficult than designing software. However, it has never been more important to look past our tools to the relations engendered by them, and there has never been so much information on impact to help us try.

End notEs

[ 1] The term “interdependence” is drawn from my cultural perspective and throws attention on negotiated relations, however, it has similar commitments to Ubuntu in Sub-Saharan African life. See Winschiers-Theophilus, H., Bidwell, N.J., Blake, E. Kapuire, G. and Rehm, M. Being participated: A community approach. Proc. of the 11th Biennial Participatory Design Conference, (Sydney, Australia, Nov. 29 - Dec. 3). ACM, New York, 2010, 1-10. [ 2] Light, A. Bridging Global divides with tracking and tracing technology. IEEE Pervasive 9, 2 (2010), 28-36. [ 3] Marks & Spencer is used here as an example of cutting-edge practice in retail management. It was not involved in our research. This article does not suggest that any company deliberately undermines small producers. [ 4] Fair Tracing did not produce a blueprint for a tool, but defined a socio-technical opportunity space and passed its findings to the Karnataka state government, India, which set up a working group. See Light, A. and Anderson, T. Research project as boundary object: Negotiating the conceptual design of a tool for international development. Proc. of the 2009 11th European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (Vienna, Austria Sept. 7-11) 2009. [ 5] Dourish, P. HCI and environmental sustainability: The politics of design and the design of politics, Proc. of the Eighth ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (Aarhus, Denmark, Aug. 18-20) ACM, New York, 2010, 1-10. [ 6] Botsman, R. and Rogers, R. What’s Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption, HarperBusiness, New York, 2010.

About thE Author
Ann Light is a reader in interac-
tion, media and communication at
Sheffield Hallam University, UK.
With Makerere University,
Uganda, she set up a mobile
phone innovation incubator and
uses ICT to run a cultural exchange charity
between Ghana and Europe.