I really like this question of what the normal world looks like. In a good story, you can shift the perspective of your audience and accustom them to an abnormal normal. Recently, I was watching an insanely absurd cartoon show called The Amazing Digital Circus, which had ended as a mini-series. My SO asked the important question of why the creator decided to leave the show at a semi anti-climatic ending. I think it is because the "normal" was so chaotic, that any sort of acceptance for their chaotic reality could be deemed the climax. This makes me wonder if the tension over time curve could be given another dimension to it regarding the context of the story.

Prior to this reading, I had not really abstracted justice itself to be applied throughout various design methods, which I think I had the impression of previously. However, I do entirely agree with this statement that justice can be applied to design entirely, so whether you are doing participatory design or VSD, you can consider justice. Overall, I really found this entire reading interesting. I had not previously heard of the matrix of domination, but I really do think it should be as popular as the idea of intersectionality. I think with the matrix of domination, you can gather a lot of nuance with a demographic's experience, as you really can't put a blanket statement over the just or injustices of someone's experience.

I think too, that depending on the demographic and, as Ko as mentioned previously, the concentration of the task can change so much regarding the validity. Information processing/communication can differ depending on various factors, like cognitive disabilities or cultural differences potentially. Furthermore, I think other more "minor" factors can destroy the validity. I participated in a usability study before where I had tested software, but the topic was pretty politically charged, and somewhat sensitive. I was a bit hesitant to really think aloud through my process. Additionally, I had woken up 2 minutes beforehand (this was an accident), so I really wasn't in the cognitive space to thorough vocalize my thoughts or even form them too well.

I really agree with this sentiment, especially coming from someone who appreciates "nice, aesthetic" designs but also cares about the accessibility of designs. There is a common misconception within accessible design that in order for features to be accessible, there needs to be no decorum or personality. I think it is kind of an ableist view at design too to assume that users with disabilities need a less pretty/unequal view of a design. Obviously, there are some limits (you never want some insanely loud and flashy graphic plastered every 10 seconds on your web or app), but they can be addressed by what makes design good in general.

I think I could infer where some of the signifiers may come from after learning about gestalt psychology in class. For a computer mouse, I can imagine it originates from buttons on typewriters, which originate from the pressing motion of the printing press. I find the origins of where our collective definition of a signififer to be really interesting in interface design. We also talked a little bit about gestalt psychology in different cultures in class, but I wonder how they may apply to interface designs and when designing for other cultures.

I really like this point and the framing that prototypes are supposed to be a sort of a research tool before going into building your final solution. I think beforehand, I had seen prototypes as a sort of rough draft, which can be true if it is a low-fidelity prototype, but it can mimic the actual product as well as I have learned. After reading this section, I really do not agree with the idea I had previously as it is more like an object which can help guide a thought experiment, which would be you as the user. In our heads and in writing our best ideas, I think we usually have an abstract idea of what we want in our built version. Though there are so many factors to consider, but even the process of building our prototypes can produce so much valuable information.

I definitely agree with this sentiment. I think there is some evidence to suggest that the average citizen in the U.S. reads at an 8th grade reading level. I also know that simple and concrete language, without the use of idioms or quirks, could be more machine translatable to speakers who are not yet comfortable on their own. If this is not done, I can imagine surveys to exclude a wide range of people, from immigrants, international students, low income Americans, separated groups in America (i.e., Amish), those with cognitive disabilities, and probably a lot more. These demographics may still be recognized for certain surveys, but can probably be misrepresented if simple and concrete is not used.

I definitely agree with this idea that quantitative or qualitative presentation of findings is highly dependent, but overall, I feel that qualitative data will be so much more valuable in informing new designs. I also know sometimes that quantitative data can be skewed based on many things. If the quantitative data is being derived from reviews, there may be false positive reviews or defamatory reviews. The presence of false reviews, especially if companies are paying others to produce them, could overshadow genuine critiques of the product or service, while giving it a "realistically high" score. It may also take away from real consumers' impression of the service if they see everyone else is giving high reviews.

I do really agree with this and think unifying the disciplines and recognizing there are indeterminate and wicked problems can really expand one's horizons. I think about the idea of a decision fatigue and think that could be a limiting factor to finding solutions to indeterminate problems. On the same hand, it does feel a bit contradictory that you need to set limits, definitive conditions through truly understanding the particulars of the problem, but it makes sense when considering we are often subject to decision fatigue.

I think this would be a good form of critique that I would like to use. From my experience instructing and tutoring, it seems to have been more uplifting for students when I would ask them probing questions that allow for them to discover the gaps within their solution on their own. In some of the problems that they were solving, they had to use some part of creativity and create their own solutions, so I think it would still be effective with designers. I think this works because you are not necessarily implying something is wrong, but instead, the other person receiving the critique is using those leading questions to figure out what is wrong using the same pathway as you (the critiquer) did.

I really like this approach of analogical reasoning since you might not know technical terminology or latest innovations to derive ideas from, but they all have some sort of essential motive to it. At the same time, isolating this approach may not be entirely beneficial since you wouldn't know what other inventions/current approaches there are unless you also "steal" from other ideas. Maybe one can combine these two approaches by stealing an idea, then using analogies to derive the essence of it, then go back and try to find other solutions related to the essence of the stolen idea. I can also see this approaching working well with questioning assumptions as maybe the essence is an assumption itself.

I wholly agree with this statement as it really takes as experiencing the problem is completely different than understanding factors necessary to solve the problem. If a demographic had truly understood and had an identical experience and had the resources to fix the problem, there would be no problem in the first place. Since there is so much intersectionality within demographics and communities as well, it really seems important to be able to try to isolate problems with boundary objects from the entangled web of causality. I think that is way easier and may result in better universal application than tackling the entire web at once.

Wow, I really like this statement. I personally think this sentence feels inclusive in that it is breaking down the abstracted structures of the "user research" method, making design seem like it is something we can all engage in through our community. I think there is more of an implied idea that designers who are doing research are more abstracted and "objective", or viewing from a top-down or birds-eye perspective, to their stakeholders when using the notion of "user research." In following the operating principles of design justice, I think we would be able to engage more meaningfully with the community.

I am not too sure if I agree with ability-based design over universal design as it might result in an unequal view in design depending on the user. I also wonder if the approach is entirely practical for individuals who have multiple support needs as it seems the approach would result in detecting a specific action and adapting to it. Furthermore, I think there may be problems with this approach when contexts/information is self-adapting to individuals with cognitive disabilities.

I definitely agree with this statement as lived-experiences and unique needs of a community will always be more in-depth and might present hidden challenges that a designer who has only done research - no matter how extensive - may miss. I think there is a misconception that inclusion is something they can change individually in their life by including more resources and research on a community, but I think it is more of a systemic issue. In general, the principle seems so simple and even beautiful to assume the design we make for the world should be done by communities of the world instead of just a select few who use abstracted information about the world, yet we still struggle with inclusitivity in design.

My views on automation in the role of social media sites have been greatly reinforced in the way it can be used for so much good, but also for so many negative things. I thought it would be more complicated, but even with a few parameters and conditions, a program can make complex decisions on social media.

I have taken ethics courses and plan to double major in philosophy with the ethics track now that I am able to bridge the connections between how ethical frameworks can be used in technology. I think the majority of the change on ethics is how they can be used to argue for many different considerations.

I think it would be interesting to imagine social media sites governed by primarily by users. In some cases, shareholders could be users themselves, but may not be representative of the majority. I believe the main concern would be the demographic of users. For individuals who were on 8chan, it would probably result in even fewer restrictions. For more popular social media platforms, there would most likely be more reasonable requests. I fear that trolling the site through manipulating the average user's perspective could be a concern.

I could imagine a socialist business model, where social media platforms are seen as "government services" for connecting one another. Since the government is connected to the site, there may be more repercussions for bad actors on the site. I believe many would fear censorship and the government spying on their personal lives, so social media would not be as personal as it is now. It is likely that government officials would be the Instagram Baddie equivalent.

Since reconciliation seems to be a two-way street, especially regarding restitution, I do not think there can be full reconciliation in some cases. This is because it depends on the individuals of the community to forgive; some of these thoughts may be greatly varied and pose substantial arguments. Some of these individuals may be completely unwavering for the lifetime of the violator.

Viewing each person as equal and deserving of good things in life, I believe that considering the reintegration of the norm violator is the most important factor when judging whether or not to publicly shame. I think with reintegration, the public shaming should instead refocus itself to public guilt, where the violator would want to fix their actions instead of hiding away or lashing out at the community or cancel culture as a whole.

If harassment is defined as a pattern of behavior that exploits the distinction between legally proscribed actions and hurtful behavior, then social media platforms make harassment possible when they allow cruel individuals making their behavior habitual. If users were immediately blocked and given no second chance on joining the social media platform, or at least more difficult to rejoin the platform, individuals would most likely not exhibit the pattern part of the behavior online.

I do not think crowd harassment could ever be justified since goal of people using crowd harassment could be achieved through other means. For example, someone may be dogpiling on someone because they did something wrong on social media. Instead of just harassing them repeatedly, it may be much more beneficial to society if the person were properly educated on the wrongness of their action. It would be much more genuine too if the person would learn to avoid these actions in the future because of an educated reason, instead of just avoiding publicly doing those controversial actions to avoid backlash.

I feel like another really interesting thing, at least to me, that crowds often work together on digitally and in real-life is alternate reality games. This is especially true for more of the ARGs that people do not know are ARGs at first. I think this example can encompass many different ways of communication that other crowdsourcing efforts do not. For example of the Cicada 3301 (suspected) ARG or recruiting device, the puzzles and clues for them spanned across many different communication mediums, like paper flyers, Linux CDs, and even music.

Minimizing the amount of disinformation being spread in the first place has multiple benefits, including ones which can encourage good crowdsourcing and eliminate the possibility for bad crowdsourcing. I think automated fact checkers and also the ability for people to report a post for disinformation can be helpful in this regard. On the other hand, social media platforms may also amplify posts which are detected as crowdsourcing for good; although, there would be ethical conversation regarding what can be considered good.

I have reported individuals and been accused of breaking Roblox's rules. I have mainly reported accounts that posted concerning things, like gore on sites that do not allow it. I have also been reported because my Roblox username is similar to an inappropriate word in Spanish. I did not face any repercussions for my Roblox username.

The impacts of content moderation rules will definitely be different if there were individuals coming from different perspectives. There would most likely be more nuance and considerations that people of outside groups may not have thought of.

Could there be cases where individuals genuinely believe themselves to have the disease, yet have not been able to afford proper diagnosis or treatment? There is a lot of discussion regarding self-diagnosis for ADHD and Autism as an alternative to an official diagnosis. These people may not necessarily be in belief they have the conditions for attention, but could it still be negative if they convince themselves of having something they do not?

I think most social media platforms should take more responsibility in caring for the mental health of their users. Economically, social medias can benefit more in the long-term if there are positive sentiments shown on the platforms. While it can be difficult to patrol things that are troubling for each individual at a wide scale, I think things could better be improved through better moderation. Comparably, social media companies can view their role akin to organizers of public spheres and even casual meetings like conventions, affording connection and conversation.

I wish metadata about the post was more apparent. In the case of reposting memes, it would be easier to detect a meme that does not originate from the user if the social media platform included that the photo posted was actually a screenshot. I also think that it is most ethical to attribute original content creator if one who is remixing is or has plans to profit off of the remixed content; though, this can be difficult to patrol.

This is such an interesting and unique perspective I have seen on memes. From the stance of a frequent internet user, I think it does make sense that this can be seen in an evolutionary sense, where the most "viral" ones stick around to be quoted for years to come, while consistently evolving. It seems the internet does afford faster evolution of memes and other pieces of culture, compared to biology, due to how many users are online and participating.

From the systemic point of view, the intent of the algorithm may have been written for good, but collectively resulted in a negative impact, so not one person could be for blame. I believe each intent and impact should be held to equal importance when designing recommendation algorithms. While it may not necessarily be harmful for some users if the designer intending on creating something harmful, but it actually resulting in good, it is still fundamentally unethical.

I find that, generally, the social media sites that make better recommendations for me and that gets me hooked onto browsing more are the ones I use most: Reddit and Instagram. Compared to Facebook, which I sometimes use to look through funny listings and more reasonable listings on Marketplace, the recommended content is absurd and sometimes lame.

This sentence reminded me also about advertisements of seemingly useless products, such as the banana slicer. Looking from the perspective of someone who may not be able to use a knife safely, a banana slicer would be wonderful. It is just that people need to market products designed for disabled people to the larger market in order for the product to even be known to disabled individuals.

I wonder why Reddit does not allow alt-text for their images. Is there a potential security issue with including them? Or does Reddit not trust users to write their own alt-text for post? Because it seems like they would be missing on a big market without. I have known abled-bodied individuals who enjoy scrolling through posts and articles with a screen-reader just so they can multi-task, so it can be beneficial for non-disabled people.

I believe it is relatively common for hacked Minecraft clients (the market is big for "enhancing" gameplay) to also include token loggers hidden away in their code, making login information accessible for the hacked client developers. I think one of the main things that helps gamers interested in installing a safe cracked client is auditors who have time to review everything. Another thing that would probably help is trusting open-source software, since other developers could provide input easily.

The economic incentive of collecting data and creating new, informed data is strong amongst social media companies. With this data, it could easily be sold to advertisers.

This section reminds me of the Ashley Madison, the site designed for married people to cheat on their significant others, data breach. Even the fact that the user decided to sign up can be used to infer much and most likely fueled a lot of divorces when the "list" was released.

The data that social media companies request and record through the user's interactions means it is even more sensitive and personal knowing, putting it together and seeing the whole picture the user has painted of themselves. I have known friends who have completely disregarded privacy on the internet because they argue they do not have anything to lose from sharing data; however, I argue that for how much can be inferred from even just demographic information, it is much more important that the data that these sites collect is protected. Malicious actors may attack these platforms, getting their hands powerful information that can be used to infer sensitive information.

I argue that nihilism itself is a contradicting set of statements. If there is no meaning to anything, then why would these trolls deliberately and plan so far in-depth to troll. They must have believed there would be meaning in destruction... or at least, the lack of meaning called an innate meaning for them to disrupt, which is still a meaning or value they placed on it. In a way, I believe this is just a community of Schrodinger's assholes.

I think that the best way to deal with trolling is to not give any direct attention or response to the troll or community of trollers, but instead an indirect response. This may be through reporting the trolls and working hard to de-platform these individuals through the platform's owners or even the platform itself through finding the domain's host. I think the latter is the most efficient way for more extreme trolls.

I am not sure a parasocial relationship can be truly authentic from the celebrity to the viewer, since the celebrity obviously does not know the follower; however, I think some personas which the celebrity presents to their following may seem authentic because it is or because they play the role well. I also think that in some situations, personas can be both authentic and inauthentic since the definition is based off of matching reality. There is a popular saying to "never meet your heroes" because they almost never match the mental model in your head, so before there may have been authentic connection, but after meeting, the connection may be seen as inauthentic.

I found this specific question really intriguing since the previous section mentioned a bit on how vulnerability can be a tool used to simulate an authentic connection. In this way, Trump's angry expression can be seen as a more "authentic" tweet that many users may have looked past had it not been the data analysis' work. A mixture of authenticity and in-authenticity from the account can probably fall under the guise of being seen as totally authentic, which probably contributed to the large number of supporters he has.

This question reminds me of a discussion I had with a friend regarding dating applications and why they mostly do not work. Part of it is very much related to the pieces of information we are unrestricted to share on dating platforms. This friend observes a pattern of guys writing things like, "where are the good women at?" as the sole piece of textual information being shared on the platform. Looking at that, there is not too much that tells me about the person's hobbies, interests, values, or anything else that would be important in dating. If I were the designer of a dating platform, I would implement lists of answers to describe more relevant information.

This example reminds me of a recent Facebook PSA the local police department posted regarding parents posting images of their children going back to school. There is a trend of having children hold up signs with sensitive data, like age, name, school, interests, which may be extremely dangerous if landed into the wrong hands. To the parent, it may seem like a way to immortalize the moments of back-to-school with other friends and family who could not be there in-person to support (the preferred course of action); however, they are overlooking the bit of truth that some people are predatory out there and that makes utility calculus a bit more complicated.

One example I can think of for social media applications allowing third-party applications is for accessibility and creativity. In the case of dissociative identity disorder, having a bot which is able to mimic and represent the current alter can be incredibly powerful, but social media platforms may not have interest to develop this functionality themselves. Overall, users may know more about what they want on a platform versus the actual platform themselves.

This is so interesting and I never knew this about Python and I wonder if there is a specific reason for why the language developers decided to only display the last variable when a list of them is written out consecutively. I can imagine this would make some aspects of debugging easier.

Wow, I did not realize the practical use of ethical frameworks in viewing these issues. When looking at the problem through each of these ethical lenses, I realize each of them are able to bring up an important area of concern for designers.

I love Kantian ethics due to their simplicity satisfying Occam's razor and the fact that arguments for them are deducted through reasoning and are often tied to monotheism. I do find myself agreeing to more modern-day Kantian theorists since his original theory only includes those capable of moral deliberation. Another great quote that sums up the beauty of this theory is: “Act so as to treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, at all times also as an end, and not only as a means,” and is a perfect response to utilitarianism.