Design as judgments

The activity of design revolves around the making of judgments (Stolterman 2008; Nelson & Stolterman 2003). To set a problem around a design, a designer needs to identify the judgments required in a specific design. The underlying aim of this process is to bring forth the priorities and agenda of the design. Research through design can reveal and explicate the underlying logic of an environment to the designers of the project or other stakeholders, such as the users. In section 1.3, I describe how the roles of designer and user are sometimes blurred by the nature of current digital environments. Thus users have the potential to be the generators of judgments as much as those who are considered designers.

Judgment is a pragmatic and practical task grounded in knowledge. It is decision making which cannot be described as entirely either rational (following a certain path of logic) or intuitive. Judgment taps into the accumulated experience of the decision maker including how she or he has understood consequences from past decisions and has balanced complexity. Learning how to judge does not then involve following prescribed steps but reflection on how different experiences and relationships interact. Designers can use tools such as the cultural probe (described in Chapter 3 of this thesis) to develop and aid judgment-making facilities. Making a judgment involves setting priorities, whether it is deciding who is regarded as the most important stakeholder within a project or what outcomes are required by a project. A design product is the collection of consequences of a series of judgments (Stolterman 2008; Nelson & Stolterman 2003) and is a balance of needs and power dynamics. Already, we can elaborate on some of the questions underlying design judgments raised during this thesis. Exploring these questions allows us to see how problematic the design for trust is. Whose side is the designer on? Is the designer hired by a company to deliver an agenda? In that case, the designer may be motivated to work in the interest of the person who has hired them. This alliance might equate to the designer understanding users for the purpose of a design agenda rather than amplifying

how a local group respond (Suchman 2002). And also, what is the design intended to do? Improve efficiency? Attempt innovation?

I argue that much of the work done in the area of trust and design has the agenda of encouraging trust in the interest of business. As mentioned in Chapter 1, many researchers since Fukuyama (1995) have asserted that trust can ‘grease the wheels’ of business, reducing transaction costs and facilitating further transactions. For instance, the work of Egger (2003), which is widely quoted in the research area, provides guidelines on how to give the appearance of trust. In Egger’s work, like many papers investigating trust, trust is assumed to be positive. Briggs (2010) provides another example, the Reina Trust Building Institute, which can be hired by organisations to promote trust. The Reina Institute uses scales as a means of measuring trust and a betrayal continuum that needs to be overcome by employees.

The scenario in which a designer is working in the interests of the user also needs to be problematised. Sometimes designers, governments and companies assume that they know what is best for a user (Roubroeks et al. 2009), a practice described by Thaler and Sunstein (2008) as ‘benevolent paternalism’. An example of a benevolent paternalistic design working in the interest of a user is a cafeteria design that places the healthier food in near reach of the consumer. But who gets to decide what is best for a user is problematic. When considering the design of trust, how can a designer know what is best for the user? Perhaps the cafeteria visitor is dying and would like a tasty last meal. I argue that an approach that allows the user to make the judgment about what she or he prefers enables the user to form trust relationships on his or her own terms. This approach is the basis of trust enablement.

How is technology understood? Is it the technology before it is used or is it how the technology is incorporated into peoples’ lives, as ‘local adaptations’, that is of interest? In the case of design and trust, as trust is a concept that revolves around how humans interact, it is how technology is used that is important and meaningful. How is the user viewed? Is it as a co-creator? As an impatient being pursuing quick results? Or as someone who is lacking decision-making capabilities and requires material to be ‘simple’ (Lockton 2009)? I argue that the

user is able to make decisions on their own terms, may not necessarily be seeking quick results, and instead may value an environment that gives them the message that their input is genuinely valued. Implicated in this question about the role of the user is the division between user and designer. As mentioned earlier in this thesis (section 1.3), in the current digital environment (which is characterised by features such as user-generated content), the division between user and designer is eroded and it is no longer clear where one role starts and finishes. The owner of a project can determine how user and designer are designated within the space of an environment. New technologies can allow a user to have a more fundamental role in the shape of an environment or more traditional forms of engagement may be selected.

Leading from the question of how the user is viewed is that of what is it that the designer wants users to do? Does the designer want the user to be constrained (to only pick from a limited amount of options), motivated (to buy things) or to be enabled (to be assisted)? Given the need to, as I have suggested, treat trust contingently, and just as importantly, as emergent, it follows that trust cannot be forced on an individual. Thus trust-enablement, when a user is able to make decisions on his/her own terms, is a solution that works with the idiosyncratic nature of trust.

Also of relevance to the setting of a design problem is how and why users are motivated to use a digital environment and the relevance of the environment to a users’ everyday lives; why, when and how might an individual use a site and return to it? What are the underlying incentive and reward structures? Researchers exploring this issue include researchers of open source communities. According to researchers, participants in an open-source community are motivated by the feedback that they receive from others in their community (Terry et al. 2010). The opportunities to develop skills, build reputations and receive an intellectual challenge are other incentives that encourage users to develop digital projects for little or no payment (Lerner & Tirole 1999). Baldwin and Clark (2006) add that the modular architecture of open-source developments, whereby projects are developed in small parts that are collated together to form a larger whole, also

helps participants feel a sense of ownership and motivated to continue involvement.

9.3 Setting the problem of trust-enablement: a shared context between users