Design Lab: Problem Framing

After consultations with Harah and Nur, I expanded on the key ideas in order to better explain relating themes, issues, processes and contexts.

In this digital era, a plethora of technological assistance and automation is on the rise. To achieve efficiency and productivity, people tend to outsource tasks to devices and depend on them to retrieve information rather than using memories, this weakens their ability to remember and compromises their brains’ capabilities.

Through mind-mapping, I connected the dots and identified the underlying mechanisms that are associated with this growing phenomenon of digital dementia.

This research topic stems from the concerns of,
- Mental decline of humanity
- With artificial intelligence advancing at an exponential rate and the inevitable deterioration of humans’ cognitive abilities, one day the capability gap may be too wide for us to stay in charge.

Unbeknownst to most of us, we gradually train ourselves to use our cognitive capacity less and less. As we increasingly hand our thinking over to technology, we lose the advantage we have honed over thousands of years that has placed us at the top of the evolutionary food chain above other animals. When technology does all the work and soon, no one is going to exist who can practice many skills. If our superior intelligence compared to other life on earth propelled us to the top of the hierarchy, our diminishing intelligence and the rapid advancements in artificial intelligence will relegate us quickly.- McCullen, 2018

Illustration by John Holcroft

Design has the power to eliminate and replace, shift behaviours and create new habits thus, as designers, we need to be mindful of what is taken away when a new product presents itself, it may enable us to have an easier life but we could be sabotaging ourselves in the process.

“Take Google Maps or Waze. On the one hand, they amplify human ability — you are able to reach your destination faster and more easily. But at the same time, you are shifting the authority to the algorithm and losing your ability to find your own way.”
- Yuval Noah Harari

Digital Zombie, Illustration by Saurabh Vashistha

Studies show we risk designing products that can potentially cause us to feel depressed, feel isolated, negatively impact our elections or accuse us of creating generations of narcissists.
- Madray, 2017

Dr Spela Mocnik, a sociologist at the Singapore University of Technology and Design's Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities (LKYCIC) also said that we should ensure technology works for society and not the other way round.

The outcomes of my research seek to impact human behaviours, education and ergonomics.