(Gatewood, 2018)
Here is my proposal for the hackathon:
Why Hackathon/Designathon?
I'm looking at Citizen Designer theme to incorporate into my concept so a hackathon is a good strategy for crowd-creative ground-up innovation. Citizen designer is about inclusion and design ethics, how everyone gets together to influence social change and take direct action to improve our communities and societies.
Problem:
Excessive digital media dependency and distractive technology
Studies and research show:
1. Increased digital usage
2. Stagnation or downward trends in IQ scores in the past decade
3. Over-use and over-reliance on mobile devices and excessive screen-time can cause brain atrophy - loss of brain cells
Inference:
Increased digital usage lowers our cognitive abilities which may lead to earlier onset of dementia, resulting in a decline of intelligence of the human population.
Why is there a rising penetration of smart mobile devices (phones / tablets)?
1. Industrialisation and progress of civilisation drive the need for productivity and efficiency - accomplish something with least waste of time, effort, materials and money
2. Pursuit of happiness for self / others (work-life balance, achievement, self fulfilment, modernity, trends)
In a bid for efficiency, more people are adopting the use of smart mobile devices. This allows easy access to applications such as GPS for road finding or Netflix for dramas on the go.
It also created opportunities for companies to develop applications for mobile devices either to improve society with either good intentions or to make money. Designers, programmers and tech entrepreneurs are competing to monetize users’ finite attention. It has become a norm to hijack users’ minds and manipulate people into habitual use of their products. This can cause addiction, over-reliance and excessive usage.
When you use technology, you have goals. When you land on YouTube, it doesn't know any of those goals. It has one goal, which is to make you forget those goals that you have. (Harris, 2017, as cited in Lapowsky, 2018).
“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 (McCullen, 2018)
How can a Hackathon/Designathon help?
More and more software developers are recognising the importance of Humane Tech products.
Mark Zuckerberg described feeling a "responsibility to make sure our services aren’t just fun to use, but also good for people's well-being", announcing "a major change to how we build Facebook" so that time spent on the site is "time well spent."
Great technology should improve life, not distract from it. We’re creating tools and features that help people better understand their tech usage, focus on what matters most, disconnect when needed, and create healthy habits for the whole family. - Google
For this Humane Tech Designathon - Battle The Distractions
Challenge participants - students, professionals, designers and tech companies to create solutions to help prevent distractive technology, it could be re-designing and improving current applications / systems - either to streamline digital decluttering so users can do things efficiently and get off screen quickly or design an alternate process / effortful measures so tiring that users would give up using it after awhile or learn to use it mindfully.
Some ideas would be:
1. Grey out screen after 1 hour of usage on social media
2. Fonts become difficult to read / fade out
3. Gamify GPS application with a challenge option - a certain route can only be searched for 3 times by the same person - face recognition - this forces the user to remember the road. It could also be connected with friends to add some fun social competition.
4. Gamify Google search system with a challenge option - prompts you to think between choices and not giving you an answer immediately. For example, you search 'what is a bear', instead of telling you what is a bear or showing pictures of a bear, there will be another page with keywords to prompt you to think first or images that let u choose, bird, bear, tortoise, tree. guess which one is it. Answers will still be given but it forces you to think first - deeper thought processing. 5. Turn on the 'Sans Forgetica' Font to better remember notes / news on websites
6. Allow different levels of battery charging option - 50% so people are more mindful of their usage and only use it for selected applications.
Interesting case study:
'Thanos' Google Search that wipes out half of the search results - remove distractions.
Current design interventions:
AD Block - Prevent page elements, such as advertisements and distractions
Hardware Mute Switch - Only Apple and OnePlus Phones have this switch.
Apple - Night Shift option - automatically adjusts the colors of your display to the warmer end of the spectrum—making the display easier on your eyes.
News Feed Eradicator for Facebook - Removes the Facebook newsfeed and blurs the sidebars and notifications, allowing people to use some of the more utilitarian features of Facebook without getting sucked into the newsfeed.
- Inspire more designers to design with compassion for our vulnerabilities, well-being and needs instead of just designing addictive applications and utilising persuasive techniques to keep us glued to screens.
- Spread awareness and help people to take better control of their digital lives.
Life without depth is simply a blind experience. (Matzinger, 2019)
Qing Ping shared many insights with me and there were many themes and questions that popped up during our conversation,
- Meaningful impacts and conversations
- Community building - like a support group
- Do people need more awareness on the technological impacts on them? Is it because they don't find meaning in real life?
- What is meaning? How can we generate meaningful conversations?
- Emotional capacity
- How to be more human with each other?
He felt that Hackathons may not work because it's not solving the core problem - its superficial and its a band aid solution. Instead of telling people and giving them solutions of screen time, why not ask them if there is something else more meaningful in life.
He also feels that there is no meaning anymore in this generation because many people do not understand the real meaning/sense behind the many articles/headlines they see on Facebook and assumed that they do understand just by reading a few liner.
Thought Collective - http://thethoughtcollective.com.sg
The organisation in which he attended their course called Facilitating Powerful Conversations - http://thethoughtcollective.com.sg/2018-trainings. They usually work with guest coaches from the UK to run workshops with and thought there could be potential to do a joint workshop, but this will be a bigger ask as they are one of the leading organisations for this work in Singapore. He is in contact with Tong Yee who is the Director and he could try to propose a partnership idea if I am interested, but he would need a proposal to send over to him to get him interested.
More context about Tong Yee, here talks about creating Trust in Complex Diversity and opportunities to build common space http://www.agoodspace.org/blog/creating-trust-in-complex-diversity-tong-yee/
He did a blog post about my experience there. Is meaningful to him about how people can find themselves. But the execution is very crucial and always gets mixed in with cult culture.
https://medium.com/@lqingping/facilitating-powerful-conversations-a-reflection-c73b81c53f38
Armchair Discussions - https://m.facebook.com/emporico/
This is a group developed by his friend to explore "your armchair philosopher and go through intriguing and sometimes controversial topics". She explores different facilitation methods to cover a range of conversations from the purpose of education to gender equality and dynamics. The idea is that she has curated an engaged and experimental community that could be interested in further exploring the ideas of how to mobilise their passions and turn it into reality.
He can connect me with Ri whom is running these experiential art sessions
Tribeless - https://www.facebook.com/tribelessco/
He is currently a host with Tribeless, which is a movement to help people develop safe spaces for vulnerability and to be more human with one another. They are an enterprise that started from KL and have a strong Tribeless community that actively hosts these conversations to allow for communities to connect. It is essentially a series of 26 words that range from Love, Family, Trust, Courage, Belonging etc. They choose these words based on which ones resonates with them, they then get a series of cards that keep them within the rules for things such as seeking permission from others to ask a question or give your perspective, to show your love and support and to offer and observation on what this word meant to you.
Their framework for the conversations have enabled a bunch of strangers to sit together and have a conversation about why this word matters to you, what troubles they are facing, and how we can share advise and perspective together.
The School of Life
Another organisation that he really love and has given him a lot of context about meaning and thriving. The School of Life is a global organisation dedicated to developing emotional intelligence. We apply psychology, philosophy, and culture to everyday life. They have amazing videos on Youtube and products on their website
https://www.theschooloflife.com/
https://www.youtube.com/user/schooloflifechannel
Alain de Botton is the founder - in this article it is about his dedication to seeking answers to one of life’s chief questions: How do we live a good life?
https://dailystoic.com/alain-de-botton/
UX Community
Article on Khai Seng whom is the head of Foolproof, talking to the UX community. He can link me up to his friend Jonathan Yap whom is involved with them to collaborate on.
https://medium.com/@ewgenelow/ask-me-anything-ama-with-khai-seng-head-of-foolproof-ef21ec78bfa3
Books to Share
Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Productive & Creative Self by Manoush Zomorodi
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33574185-bored-and-brilliant
Her podcast, focuses on the impacts that technology has on everyday life. - https://www.npr.org/podcasts/452538677/note-to-self
21 Lessons for the 21st Centrury: Yuval Noah Harari on what the year 2050 has in store for humankind
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/yuval-noah-harari-extract-21-lessons-for-the-21st-century
A Conversation with Christine Lagarde and Yuval Noah Harari - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BcxC1K6Ors
"To change the world, we need to go back to a time when warriors would gather around a fire and tell stories." – Paulo Coelho
Since the beginning of time, our ancestors have gathered around the fire to share stories, process their lives, and build stronger relationships.
These fireside gatherings weren't just for fun; they were crucial to our survival as a species.
Today, however, we’ve lost the art of talking face-to-face. We spend more time on our phones than we do with each other. How might we bring this ancient practice back?
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