What your designs say about you

What does your chair say about what you value? Designer Sebastian Deterding shows how our visions of morality and what the good life is are reflected in the design of objects around us.

We are today talking
about moral persuasion:

What is moral and immoral
in trying to change people's behaviors

by using technology and using design?

And I don't know what you expect,

but when I was thinking about that issue,

I early on realized what I'm not able
to give you are answers.

I'm not able to tell you
what is moral or immoral,

because we're living
in a pluralist society.

My values can be radically
different from your values,

which means that what I consider
moral or immoral based on that

might not necessarily be
what you consider moral or immoral.

But I also realized
there is one thing that I could give you,

and that is what this guy
behind me gave the world --

Socrates.

It is questions.

What I can do and what
I would like to do with you

is give you, like that initial question,

a set of questions
to figure out for yourselves,

layer by layer, like peeling an onion,

getting at the core of what you believe
is moral or immoral persuasion.

And I'd like to do that
with a couple of examples of technologies

where people have used game elements
to get people to do things.

So it's at first a very simple,
very obvious question

I would like to give you:

What are your intentions
if you are designing something?

And obviously, intentions
are not the only thing,

so here is another example
for one of these applications.

There are a couple of these kinds
of Eco dashboards right now --

dashboards built into cars --

which try to motivate you
to drive more fuel-efficiently.

This here is Nissan's MyLeaf,

where your driving behavior
is compared with the driving behavior

of other people,

so you can compete for who drives a route
the most fuel-efficiently.

And these things are
very effective, it turns out --

so effective that they motivate people
to engage in unsafe driving behaviors,

like not stopping at a red light,

because that way you have
to stop and restart the engine,

and that would use quite
some fuel, wouldn't it?

So despite this being
a very well-intended application,

obviously there was a side effect of that.

Here's another example
for one of these side effects.

Commendable: a site that allows parents
to give their kids little badges

for doing the things
that parents want their kids to do,

like tying their shoes.

And at first that sounds very nice,

very benign, well-intended.

But it turns out, if you look into
research on people's mindset,

caring about outcomes,

caring about public recognition,

caring about these kinds
of public tokens of recognition

is not necessarily very helpful

for your long-term
psychological well-being.

It's better if you care
about learning something.

It's better when you care about yourself

than how you appear
in front of other people.

So that kind of motivational tool
that is used actually, in and of itself,

has a long-term side effect,

in that every time we use a technology

that uses something
like public recognition or status,

we're actually positively endorsing this

as a good and normal thing
to care about --

that way, possibly having
a detrimental effect

on the long-term psychological
well-being of ourselves as a culture.

So that's a second, very obvious question:

What are the effects
of what you're doing --

the effects you're having
with the device, like less fuel,

as well as the effects
of the actual tools you're using

to get people to do things --

public recognition?

Now is that all -- intention, effect?

Well, there are some technologies
which obviously combine both.

Both good long-term and short-term effects

and a positive intention
like Fred Stutzman's "Freedom,"

where the whole point
of that application is --

well, we're usually so bombarded
with constant requests by other people,

with this device,

you can shut off the Internet
connectivity of your PC of choice

for a pre-set amount of time,

to actually get some work done.

And I think most of us will agree
that's something well-intended,

and also has good consequences.

In the words of Michel Foucault,

it is a "technology of the self."

It is a technology
that empowers the individual

to determine its own life course,

to shape itself.

But the problem is,
as Foucault points out,

that every technology of the self

has a technology of domination
as its flip side.

As you see in today's modern
liberal democracies,

the society, the state,
not only allows us to determine our self,

to shape our self,

it also demands it of us.

It demands that we optimize ourselves,

that we control ourselves,

that we self-manage continuously,

because that's the only way
in which such a liberal society works.

These technologies want us
to stay in the game

that society has devised for us.

They want us to fit in even better.

They want us to optimize
ourselves to fit in.

Now, I don't say that
is necessarily a bad thing;

I just think that this example
points us to a general realization,

and that is: no matter what technology
or design you look at,

even something we consider
as well-intended

and as good in its effects
as Stutzman's Freedom,

comes with certain values embedded in it.

And we can question these values.

We can question: Is it a good thing

that all of us continuously
self-optimize ourselves

to fit better into that society?

Or to give you another example:

What about a piece
of persuasive technology

that convinces Muslim women
to wear their headscarves?

Is that a good or a bad technology

in its intentions or in its effects?

Well, that basically depends on
the kind of values you bring to bear

to make these kinds of judgments.

So that's a third question:

What values do you use to judge?

And speaking of values:

I've noticed that in the discussion
about moral persuasion online

and when I'm talking with people,

more often than not,
there is a weird bias.

And that bias is that we're asking:

Is this or that "still" ethical?

Is it "still" permissible?

We're asking things like:

Is this Oxfam donation form,

where the regular monthly
donation is the preset default,

and people, maybe without intending it,

are encouraged or nudged
into giving a regular donation

instead of a one-time donation,

is that "still' permissible?

Is it "still" ethical?

We're fishing at the low end.

But in fact, that question,
"Is it 'still' ethical?"

is just one way of looking at ethics.

Because if you look at the beginning
of ethics in Western culture,

you see a very different idea
of what ethics also could be.

For Aristotle, ethics
was not about the question,

"Is that still good, or is it bad?"

Ethics was about the question
of how to live life well.

And he put that in the word "arête,"

which we, from [Ancient Greek],
translate as "virtue."

But really, it means "excellence."

It means living up to your own
full potential as a human being.

And that is an idea that, I think,

Paul Richard Buchanan
put nicely in a recent essay,

where he said,
"Products are vivid arguments

about how we should live our lives."

Our designs are not ethical or unethical

in that they're using ethical
or unethical means of persuading us.

They have a moral component

just in the kind of vision
and the aspiration of the good life

that they present to us.

And if you look into the designed
environment around us

with that kind of lens,

asking, "What is the vision
of the good life

that our products, our design,
present to us?",

then you often get the shivers,

because of how little
we expect of each other,

of how little we actually
seem to expect of our life,

and what the good life looks like.

So that's a fourth question
I'd like to leave you with:

What vision of the good life
do your designs convey?

And speaking of design,

you'll notice that I already
broadened the discussion,

because it's not just persuasive
technology that we're talking about here,

it's any piece of design
that we put out here in the world.

I don't know whether you know

the great communication researcher
Paul Watzlawick who, back in the '60s,

made the argument
that we cannot not communicate.

Even if we choose to be silent,
we chose to be silent,

and we're communicating something
by choosing to be silent.

And in the same way
that we cannot not communicate,

we cannot not persuade:

whatever we do or refrain from doing,

whatever we put out there
as a piece of design, into the world,

has a persuasive component.

It tries to affect people.

It puts a certain vision of the good life
out there in front of us,

which is what Peter-Paul Verbeek,

the Dutch philosopher of technology, says.

No matter whether we as designers
intend it or not,

we materialize morality.

We make certain things
harder and easier to do.

We organize the existence of people.

We put a certain vision

of what good or bad or normal or usual is

in front of people,

by everything we put
out there in the world.

Even something as innocuous
as a set of school chairs

is a persuasive technology,

because it presents and materializes
a certain vision of the good life --

a good life in which teaching
and learning and listening

is about one person teaching,
the others listening;

in which it is about
learning-is-done-while-sitting;

in which you learn for yourself;

in which you're not supposed
to change these rules,

because the chairs
are fixed to the ground.

And even something as innocuous
as a single-design chair,

like this one by Arne Jacobsen,

is a persuasive technology,

because, again, it communicates
an idea of the good life:

a good life -- a life that you,
as a designer, consent to by saying,

"In a good life, goods are produced
as sustainably or unsustainably

as this chair.

Workers are treated as well or as badly

as the workers were treated
that built that chair."

The good life is a life
where design is important

because somebody obviously took
the time and spent the money

for that kind of well-designed chair;

where tradition is important,

because this is a traditional classic
and someone cared about this;

and where there is something
as conspicuous consumption,

where it is OK and normal to spend
a humongous amount of money

on such a chair,

to signal to other people
what your social status is.

So these are the kinds of layers,
the kinds of questions

I wanted to lead you through today;

the question of: What are the intentions
that you bring to bear

when you're designing something?

What are the effects, intended
and unintended, that you're having?

What are the values
you're using to judge those?

What are the virtues, the aspirations

that you're actually expressing in that?

And how does that apply,

not just to persuasive technology,

but to everything you design?

Do we stop there?

I don't think so.

I think that all of these things
are eventually informed

by the core of all of this,

and this is nothing but life itself.

Why, when the question
of what the good life is

informs everything that we design,

should we stop at design
and not ask ourselves:

How does it apply to our own life?

"Why should the lamp
or the house be an art object,

but not our life?"

as Michel Foucault puts it.

Just to give you a practical
example of Buster Benson.

This is Buster setting up
a pull-up machine

at the office of his new
start-up, Habit Labs,

where they're trying to build
other applications like "Health Month"

for people.

And why is he building a thing like this?

Well, here is the set of axioms

that Habit Labs, Buster's start-up,
put up for themselves

on how they wanted to work
together as a team

when they're building
these applications --

a set of moral principles
they set themselves

for working together --

one of them being,

"We take care of our own health
and manage our own burnout."

Because ultimately,
how can you ask yourselves

and how can you find an answer
on what vision of the good life

you want to convey and create
with your designs

without asking the question:

What vision of the good life
do you yourself want to live?

And with that,

I thank you.

(Applause)