Unfold_001_TheEmergingTechnologiesIssue

UNFOLD a CoDesign Collaborative publication

EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES

UNFOLD a CoDesign Collaborative publication

STAFF

MISSION

Maria Villafranca Executive Director

Inspire social change through the transformative power of design.

Kat Gudiel Development Operations Contractor

COMMUNITY

Sarah Ho Graphic Designer Josephine Holmboe Director of Design Impact Liana Mestas Deputy Director Jocelyn Rice Portland Community Liaison

BOARD OF DIRECTORS Austen Angell Gregory Bombard Aidan Borer Catherine Clarke Tom Di Lillo Ashley Dunn Jessica Ekong Eric Corey Freed

Amy Heymans Josephine Holmboe Leila Mitchell Larry Rodgers Alan Scott Tracy Swyst George White, Chair

CONNECT Give • Contribute Expertise • Volunteer Learn more: codesigncollaborative.org Reach out: info@codesigncollaborative.org @codesigncollaborative @codesigncollab Copyright © 2024 • CoDesign Collaborative 2

We are a community motivated by using the design process to create personal, cultural, and global impact.

OUR WORK Community-centered events, exhibitions, and publications that connect the public to the power and social impact of design.

Educational programs about design and social change innovations in business, society, and culture.

Career development and mentoring for students and design professionals.

OUR GUIDING PRINCIPLES We are participatory and committed to communitycentered approaches.

We believe in the power of design to improve the world around us.

Dear Community Members and Readers, Design Museum Everywhere is now CoDesign Collaborative!

Since our inception fifteen years ago, our organization has grown and shifted in ways that called for a new name to better represent our work. Our programs will remain rooted in design as a tool for social good, but our new name reflects the collective nature of the journey we are on.

Alongside our organizational name change, Design Museum Magazine will now be known as Unfold. This title is a direct reference to the origami inspiration of our new logo, a nod to our love of printed matter, and a reflection of our commitment to using this platform to examine complex issues, stories, and ideas that ignite meaningful change through design.

Thank you for being a part of our community. Our work is now more participatory than ever, with new programs and opportunities designed to bring you into the conversation.

Check them out on our website and/or reach out (maria@codesigncollaborative.org) to get more involved.

With appreciation,

We value curiosity, collaboration, and co-creation.

We champion inclusive design.

We strive for our internal practices, educational programs, and creative projects to reflect the equitable and socially responsible world that we want to see.

Maria Villafranca Executive Director, CoDesign Collaborative

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FROM THE EDITOR. In 1982 my fifth-grade class held a fundraiser to buy a personal computer, the first one in our school district.

I used it to draw simple vector shapes with Logo, an educational programming language that had been developed in the 1960s. On my father’s Apple II I learned to write in BASIC (another language from the ‘60s) and played an early version of Oregon Trail. On his Macintosh computer (before they were called Macs), I learned to draw with MacPaint and a mouse.

While this may feel like a series of quaint anachronisms, personal computing capabilities were revelatory at the time. The emergence and availability of the machines, rapidly increasing (and increasingly affordable) storage and compute power, and the birth of the commercial internet shaped my life and career in powerful ways. These were the emerging technologies 4

Melissa drew this beleaguered Panda Kong in the mid-‘80s on a Macintosh computer using MacPaint, a raster-based graphics program that was originally released in 1984.

of my childhood, and they altered society so dramatically that we designate those born a mere 10 years after me as “digital natives.”

Today I find myself even more enamored with technology and all it has to offer us, in our homes and jobs and hobbies and also at scale, while keeping

my eyes open to the very real harms that it brings. We are participating in real time in another massive shift, this time brought by rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) coupled with wide-scale data collection and analysis and increasingly connected networks. The same technologies that are accelerating significant advances in healthcare, agriculture, and security are also speeding up surveillance and predatory capitalist practices, and opening us up to identity and monetary theft via regularly occurring data breaches. Our relationships with technology grow more complicated every day.

It has been an honor to learn from the multi-generational group of writers who contributed their own perspectives to this issue, addressing a wide range of technologies that we must explore and discuss with

nuance. Our roles as researchers and designers – industrial, architectural, digital, and every other flavor – are more important than ever.

Leaning into the ethics of our work is not optional.

When I find myself feeling overwhelmed by the scope and speed of technological innovation, I look for one thing I can do today to participate in shaping a world I want to live in and would be proud to pass on to the next generation.

I hope this issue gives you many ideas and opportunities to do the same.

Melissa Casburn Vice President of Design, Coforma

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CONTENTS.

The Emerging Technologies Issue • Fall 2024 • Issue 001

COMMUNITY

FEATURES

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From the Editor

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Contributors

81

Supporters

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Snapshots from Our Brainstorm AI’s Impact on Design and the Creative Landscape

By Charles Austen Angell

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Asserting Your Rights: How Spawning Helps You Opt Out of AI

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Q&A

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Designing for a Warming World / Revisited

By Lew Epstein

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By Melissa Casburn

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Growing up on a Digital Diet: Young learners embrace technology to imagine, design, and create solutions

By Sunand Bhattacharya

Have a great design impact story? editor@codesigncollaborative.org Interested in advertising opportunities? advertise@codesigncollaborative.org 6

Watching the Watchers: Mass Surveillance and the Evolution of S.T.O.P.

Design Together Activity: Storytelling Through Movement

By Ellice Patterson

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The $500K Jacket

By Amber Case

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Digital Accessibility: A Living Organism

By Evan Burnett

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Inclusive by Design: A Conversation with Derek Featherstone

By Maria Villafranca

By Justin R. Wolf

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How to Build a Responsible Tech Ecosystem

By Hannah Kennedy

UNFOLD, A CODESIGN COLLABORATIVE PUBLICATION, FALL 2024, ISSUE 001 (ISSN 2998-8365) IS PUBLISHED BIANNUALLY BY CODESIGN COLLABORATIVE, PO BOX #9188, 25 NEW CHARDON STREET LOBBY, BOSTON, MA 02114. POSTMASTER: SEND ADDRESS CHANGES TO CODESIGN COLLABORATIVE, PO BOX #9188, 25 NEW CHARDON STREET LOBBY, BOSTON, MA 02114.

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CONTRIBUTORS. Charles Austen Angell FIDSA WDO leads ModernEdge.com, a Portland design firm. Ex-Intel director, former IDSA Chair, and Design Foundation trustee. He designs product and UX/UI for tech, transport, healthcare, AI and serves as expert witness in patent cases. He is on CoDesign Collaborative’s Executive Board.

Sunand Bhattacharya, IDSA is Associate Vice Provost, Design & Innovation Strategy, Office of the Vice Provost for Research, Boston College.

His professional experience covers management of design-driven projects and education-related endeavors at various leadership levels.

Evan Burnett has been an accessibility advocate and professional for over a decade, continuously learning and adjusting his understanding of accessible design to ensure he’s serving the industry the right way.

Albert Fox Cahn is the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project’s founder and executive director.

He is also a Practitioner-in-Residence at N.Y.U Law School and a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, Yale Law School, Ashoka, and TED.

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Melissa Casburn is a seasoned leader with three decades in tech and 20 years in digital design. Skilled in design strategy & operations, systems thinking, and creating order in chaos, she serves as the VP of Design for Coforma, working to address human needs through thoughtfully designed products and services.

Amber Case is an internationally recognized design advocate and speaker, and the author of four books, including Calm Technology and A Kids Book About Technology. She spent two years as a fellow at MIT’s Center for Civic Media and Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.

Lew Epstein is the Founder/CEO of Lot21, a content platform and resource helping the design community decarbonize the world — by advancing climate action across the built environment with the design disciplines that shape it. Lot21 is a 501(c)(3) non-profit, non-partisan, open-source platform.

Derek Featherstone is VP, Accessibility & Inclusive Design at Salesforce, and is an internationally known author, speaker, and authority on accessibility. Derek helps build teams that drive proactive accessibility through inclusive design methods and processes that create long-term culture change.

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CONTRIBUTORS. Hannah Kennedy is Senior PR Coordinator at ZGF Architects. She has significant experience in communications and marketing, and was the Communications & Content Associate at CoDesign Collaborative. She is passionate about showcasing the work of innovative designers whose work is engaged in social change.

David Ryan Polgar founded All Tech Is Human in 2018. He is also an international speaker and regular commentator on increasing ethical considerations regarding emerging technology, improving social media platforms, and the need for collaborative, multi-stakeholder, and multidisciplinary approaches in tech.

Sandra Khalil drives partnerships at All Tech Is Human, with a focus on amplification of impactful initiatives in the responsible technology ecosystem.

She also helps manage the organization’s trust and safety programming.

Maria Villafranca is the Executive Director of CoDesign Collaborative. She has spent her career working in the intersection of design, innovation, and social change at a range of institutions that support creative producers from small community-based organizations to large national arts funders.

Jordan Meyer is the cofounder and CEO of Spawning AI. Spawning was founded by a mix of artists and technologists who are concerned with the implications that generative AI will have for creativity and culture.

Ellice Patterson founded Abilities Dance Boston in 2017 as a space for diverse artists to train and perform.

Through their work, they use art as a tool to promote intersectional disability rights. They have performed at the MFA, Peabody Essex Museum, Gibney Dance in NYC, and more.

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Sarah Welsh runs the Responsible Tech Mentorship Program at All Tech Is Human, and is also spearheading the organization’s Responsible Tech Curriculum. She has a PhD in Rhetoric from UT Austin, and has worked in writing, marketing, and project management for over a decade.

Justin R. Wolf is a freelance journalist and contributing editor for Green Building Advisor. His first book, Healing Ground, Living Values: Stanley Center for Peace and Security, was published in 2024 by Ecotone.

He lives and works in Biddeford, Maine. Learn more at www.justinrwolf.com.

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SNAPSHOTS FROM OUR BRAINSTORM In February 2024, we held a virtual community brainstorm with 30 participants to gather salient points for our exploration of emerging technologies. Participants were members of the CoDesign Collaborative community as well as creative professionals working in technology and social impact. Attendees were invited to submit their thoughts, with or without attribution, on a virtual whiteboard. Below are excerpts from that whiteboard, which provide a snapshot of the community conversation that inspired the issue you’re reading today.

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What does emerging technology mean to us?

“Emerging tech is an artificial definition! What we consider emerging is as much about what we imagine as anything to do with the potential of that technology. For example, electrification would not fit many people’s definition of ‘emerging tech,’ but new ways of using it are still appearing after more than 150 years of exploration and usage.”

“Not yet invisible (meaning that isn’t yet part of everyday life).”

“Potential! Emtech has the potential to even the playing field and close the gap between the haves and the havenots.”

“Technologies are emergent when their development or their application is still largely unrealized, but their lifespan and potential impact over one or more socio-economic domains are assumed to be considerable.”

“Emerging technologies are the ones that we choose to invest in, in part because we believe in their potential impact.”

“Immediate associations are with things like AI/ML, but let’s expand beyond that.”

What do our readers say, think, do, or feel about emerging technologies?

“The future has already arrived, it’s just not evenly distributed.”

“I need to keep up to remain relevant in my design practice.”

“In schools, it’s fairly divided.

Some are excited about the equity AI can bring, but others are concerned about students cheating on their work.”

“How can emerging tech benefit all classes of society, not just those with power and influence?”

“As tech helps us know more about our health, what exactly do we do with that information?”

“What will AI NOT be able to do?”

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AI’S IMPACT ON AI’ DESIGN AND THE CREATIVE LANDSCAPE

BY CHARLES AUSTEN ANGELL

The field of artificial intelligence (AI) has undergone a remarkable transformation since its inception in the 1950s, evolving from a niche academic pursuit into a technological powerhouse that is reshaping industries as well as design and creative professions. As an industrial designer who has worked with global brands such as Nike, Intel, Samsung, and Harley Davidson, as well as start-ups and not-for-profits, I’ve experienced firsthand how AI is revolutionizing our approach to design and creativity.

For designers and creative professionals, our roles will evolve to also become interpreters, editors and mediators between human needs and AI capabilities.

We’ll need to guide AI tools towards solutions that are not just technically optimal, but also emotionally resonant, culturally relevant, and ethically sound. By embracing AI as a powerful tool in our design arsenal while

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maintaining our humancentered approach, we can create products and experiences that truly enhance people’s lives in meaningful ways.

Some Historical Context AI’s roots can be traced back to 1956 when the term “artificial intelligence” was first coined. The early years were characterized by rule-based systems that attempted to codify human knowledge into logical rules that machines could follow. In the design world, we began to see the impact in the 1980s and 1990s with the rise of computer-aided design (CAD) software. Many of us also recall the significant impact of new graphic programs from Adobe paired with the newly introduced Apple Macintosh.

These early systems, while not truly “intelligent,” laid the groundwork for the integration of computational tools in the design process. During this period, the industry shifted to relying on digital technologies.

I distinctly remember the profound impact of CAD, not 15

only on the design process but also on how designers and, indirectly, the public began to perceive the possibilities of design.

The 1980s and 1990s also saw the rise of machine learning, a paradigm shift that allowed computers to learn from data rather than relying solely on pre-programmed rules.

This approach proved more flexible and scalable, leading to advances in areas such as natural language processing and computer vision.

In design we saw the emergence of more sophisticated tools that could analyze and optimize designs based on specified parameters. In the world of graphic design, Adobe added the Content-Aware Fill tool in 2010. While not “true” AI by today’s standards, this feature used advanced pattern-matching algorithms to intelligently fill in removed areas of an image. Similarly, in 2005 Adobe Illustrator introduced Live Trace pattern recognition algorithms to automatically convert raster (pixel-based) images into vector graphics. In product design, 16

accessible and affordable Finite Element Analysis tools impacted development efforts on a global scale with accurate representation of complex material behaviors, especially for nonlinear and composite materials. Other similar advances made it possible to test advanced design, interface, and aesthetic concepts at a fraction of the time and cost previously required.

The Deep Learning Revolution The true game changer for AI came in the 2010s with the advent of deep learning. This subset of machine learning, inspired by the structure and function of the human brain, utilizes artificial neural networks to process and learn from vast amounts of data. The increased volume of available data, coupled with advancements in computing power and GPU technology, allowed deep learning models to achieve unprecedented performance in tasks such as image recognition, speech recognition, and natural language processing.

For the design industry, this opened up new possibilities:

1. Generative design: AI algorithms can now generate thousands of design iterations based on specified constraints and objectives, allowing designers to explore a much broader solution space.

2. Style transfer: Neural networks can apply the visual style of one image to another, opening up new possibilities for creative exploration and rapid prototyping.

3. Image recognition and processing: AI’s improved ability to analyze and understand visual data has enhanced everything from product photography to user interface design.

As a consequence, the design industry as a whole, which had often struggled to advance innovative and unique concepts, products, and devices, was able to truly find synergy with engineering, production, and computer programmers to reduce the risk threshold for introducing new ideas, products, and interfaces. This fundamentally changed the relationship of design with marketing and production to become more collaborative and

less adversarial, meaning far more innovation was able to reach the public.

The Next Five Years Today, AI is being deployed at scale across various industries, automating and augmenting a wide range of tasks. In the design field, AI is being integrated in various ways: 1. Concept generation: AI tools can generate initial design concepts based on input parameters, serving as a source of inspiration and a starting point for designers.

2. Design optimization: AI algorithms can analyze and optimize designs for factors such as structural integrity, aerodynamics, or material efficiency.

3. User Experience (UX) design: AI-powered analytics tools provide deeper insights into user behavior, enabling more data-driven design decisions.

4. Personalization: AI enables the creation of customized products and experiences tailored to individual user preferences and needs.

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5. Prototyping and testing: Virtual and augmented reality, powered by AI, allow for more immersive and efficient prototyping and testing processes.

Based on current trends and ongoing research, we can anticipate significant advancements over the next five years, such as generative design capabilities that not only meet functional requirements but also incorporate aesthetic and emotional considerations.

AI design assistants will become more sophisticated,

FOR THE GENERAL PUBLIC, THE IMPACT OF AI WILL BE PROFOUND. INTERACTIONS WITH AI-POWERED VIRTUAL ASSISTANTS AND CHATBOTS WILL BECOME COMMONPLACE, HANDLING EVERYTHING FROM CUSTOMER SERVICE INQUIRIES TO PERSONAL SCHEDULING AND INFORMATION RETRIEVAL.

offering suggestions, automating routine tasks, and engaging in creative dialogue with human designers.

AI will play a crucial role in material innovation, discovering and developing new materials with specific properties that could revolutionize product design possibilities. (It remains to be seen if AI will start wearing black turtlenecks.)

For the general public, the impact of AI will be profound. Interactions with AI-powered virtual assistants and chatbots will become commonplace, 18

handling everything from customer service inquiries to personal scheduling and information retrieval. I expect an accelerating increase in AI-generated content, blurring the lines between human- and machine-created text, images, and videos. AI will enable hyperpersonalization in education, entertainment, and healthcare, tailoring experiences to individual preferences and needs. Autonomous vehicles will become more prevalent, potentially transforming urban mobility and logistics. AI will also play a central role in optimizing energy use, traffic flow, and resource allocation in smart homes and cities and the transportation and shipping industries. We expect we will see some seismic shifts in public transportation, akin to the effect we saw on the taxi industry from Uber and Lyft.

These innovations require thoughtful designs that are informed and evaluated by ongoing research.

Challenges and Considerations While the potential benefits of AI are immense, the design

industry must address several challenges.

Maintaining a humancentered approach and balancing automation with creativity will be crucial. Data privacy and ethics concerns will require ongoing attention, particularly in the use of AI for personalization and decision-making. (See my recent article on AI Ethics in World Design Magazine or on Substack.) The rapid pace of AI development means researchers and designers will need to continuously update their skills and adapt to new tools.

For society at large, job displacement due to AI automation will continue to disrupt many current roles, particularly those involving routine cognitive tasks. This will necessitate large-scale reskilling and adaptation of the workforce. Ensuring the security of AI systems against malicious attacks will be paramount as they become more integral to critical infrastructure and decision-making processes.

The “black box” nature of many deep learning models poses challenges for transparency 19

and accountability, particularly in high-stakes applications.

Additionally, the computational requirements of large AI models raise concerns about their environmental impact, necessitating more efficient algorithms and hardware. We will have to decide how to address these challenges, or we may have to accept outcomes that are not human-centered.

Preparing for the AI-Driven Future To thrive in an AI-augmented world, individuals should focus on developing skills that complement AI capabilities. For example: emotional intelligence, the ability to understand and manage emotions, will remain a uniquely human strength. Creativity in ideation and problem-solving will be invaluable, as will critical thinking - the capacity to evaluate information, question assumptions, and make reasoned judgments. Given the rapid pace of technological change, adaptability and the ability to learn new skills quickly will be essential. Understanding the basics of how AI works, its capabilities, and limitations will 20

be important for effectively leveraging AI tools and making informed decisions about their use.

Systems thinking will be essential for understanding complex AI-integrated environments. Data literacy will enable effective work with AI tools and interpretation of their outputs. Developing skills in human-AI collaboration, including prompt engineering and interpreting AI outputs, will be vital. As AI handles more technical aspects, the ability to craft compelling narratives and communicate design intent will become even more valuable. Strengthening skills in ethical decision-making and responsible design practices will also be increasingly important as AI raises new ethical considerations.

and improvements in quality of life. By understanding the trajectory of AI development and proactively preparing for the changes ahead, individuals and organizations can position themselves to thrive in the AI-driven future.

As we navigate this technological revolution, it will be crucial to maintain a balanced perspective, embracing AI’s potential while also addressing its ethical implications and societal impacts. Through thoughtful

development, deployment, and regulation of AI technologies, we can work towards a future where AI enhances human capabilities and contributes to the betterment of society as a whole.

The key to success will be maintaining a balance between leveraging technological advancements and preserving the core principles of good design and human creativity.

The next five years promise to be a transformative period as AI becomes increasingly integrated into our daily lives, work environments, and creative processes. While this transition will bring challenges, it also offers tremendous opportunities for innovation, productivity gains, 21

ASSERTING YOUR RIGHTS How Spawning Helps You Opt Out of AI

BY MELISSA CASBURN

“How do I know whether an AI model has been trained on my online content?”

As the conversation about AI widens and the tools themselves get smarter, many of us are asking this question out of both curiosity and concern. To help you answer it, a tech start-up called Spawning developed Have I Been Trained?*, an online tool that lets you search for your online content in popular AI datasets. I talked with Jordan Meyer, Spawning’s co-founder and CEO, to learn more about their work: “One of our co-founders is a musician, and she released a model of her voice. I can write music and send it to her model, it comes back in her voice, and if she likes it, we can co-sell it. So I get the benefit of her audience – which is much larger than mine – and she gets the benefit of passive income.”

This was the original vision: create an ecosystem wherein creators of all types actively participate in an AI economy built on a dataset they had chosen to opt * Not to be confused with Have I Been Pwned?, an online tool that has helped more than 13M people learn that their email was in a data breach.

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into. But it hasn’t happened… yet. Because what Spawning’s founders saw around them were a lot of other datasets being trained on the entire Internet, whether creators opted in or not. You can’t train an AI model without a dataset, and those datasets were extremely large and freely available. An opt-in model would naturally result in a smaller dataset. How could Spawning compete?

In Spawning’s terms, people who create and publish online content are “rights holders”.

This moniker applies to you if you’re writing blogs, streaming your own music, maintaining an online art portfolio, or creating myriad other forms of content. Searching my own name yielded strange remnants of two different conference presentations I gave more than 15 years ago, memorialized as images on SlideShare. While I can’t say this gives me much pause, I’ve definitely been hesitant to put some of my art online because given the current state of AI, it doesn’t feel like I will actually hold the rights to that material once it gets sucked into a dataset.

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Spawning asserts that we should, in fact, have control over our content. Another tool they’ve created is the Do Not Train Registry, complete with extensions for the three most popular browsers, that rights holders can use to proactively identify content that should not be uploaded to AI datasets. But here’s the catch: the people who are building datasets to train their AI models have to agree to respect the opt-in. And right now, many of them do not.

If you’re using AI tools today, Meyer suggests that you “ask those companies what dataset they use and whether they respect all machine-readable opt-outs. Don’t be surprised if the answer is, ‘We don’t share that info’ or ‘No.’ I think calling attention to that is a first step in making more people aware of the issue.”

Thankfully, the folks at Stability AI (the makers of Stable Diffusion, a popular image generator) and Hugging Face (an online community that hosts models and datasets) also see the need for and the value in an opt-in model and have partnered with Spawning

to ensure that rights holders’ wishes are honored in their own tools. The Do Not Train Registry signals the data-use preferences for over 1.5 billion individual works; none of those works are used by Stability AI or Hugging Face.

This is progress, and Spawning is at its center.

Find out whether your content is in an AI dataset: haveibeentrained.com Assert your rights to your online content using Spawning’s tools: spawning.substack.com/ p/the-spawning-guide-torights-reservations

Learn about all of Spawning’s tools for rights holders as well as developers: spawning.ai

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GROWING UP ON A DIGITAL DIET Young learners embrace technology to imagine, design, and create solutions

BY SUNAND BHATTACHARYA

The advent of emerging technologies and their increasingly rapid pace of introduction is having a profound impact on the way young people ­— and by extension, their caregivers and educators — live and function on this planet. The adoption rate of new technologies is accelerating: it took radio 38 years, television 13 years, and the internet just 4 years to reach an audience of 50 million.

Many of these fast-growing technological innovations require us to evolve nimbly to be functionally productive.

While many adults face a steep learning curve when embracing new technologies, today’s young people seamlessly adapt to the rapid pace at which technical solutions are being introduced.

Young people represent the next generation of creative problemsolvers, and now, more than ever, they are growing up on an unprecedented digital diet.

I am a learning architect and have spent over thirty years leading initiatives, both in and outside of academia, that connect education and design thinking. In my experience, the rapid pace of new tech innovations, when coupled with design thinking, is reshaping how we approach education and creative problemsolving. This transformation is driven by three key forces: the evolving landscape of learning (what I term as “The Future of Learning Things”), the innovative approaches to production and creation (“The Future of Making Things”), and the increased emphasis on collaboration across disciplines and borders (“Radical Collaboration”). These forces are not isolated; they intersect and influence each other, creating a dynamic environment where young learners must navigate and integrate these elements to succeed in a complex world.

All images: Agastya International Foundation.

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Young People and Access to Technology

degrees thanks to a variety of technological innovations.

Members of Gen Z and Gen Alpha, born entirely in the internet age and raised on a digital diet, have expectations and aspirations that differ significantly from their predecessors. Their technology-driven sense of innovation, their methods of learning, connecting, and maintaining relationships, as well as their mindset for working, collaborating, problem-solving, and communicating, are requiring us to re-examine our education methods to exceed this generation’s expectations rather than just meeting them.

According to a 2021 study by Ernst and Young, generations born into a digital world have only known instant and unfettered access to friends, news, and entertainment through a single device: the mobile phone. They have developed an ability to learn at a rate that was inconceivable to past generations. Their learning universe is constantly growing in complexity, and this phenomenon is spreading across the globe in various

Many multinational tech companies, including Adobe, Google, and Blender, are accelerating progress by offering their cloud-based platforms for free to students and educators. In 2014, Autodesk Inc., a global leader in design and technology, was the first to provide free access to all of its professional design software for academia worldwide. These industrydriven efforts have enabled a growing number of young people to collaborate and share their work remotely and at a global scale.

technologies are no longer limited only to wealthy and developed economies.

Founded in April 1999, Agastya International Foundation is a charitable education trust that runs one of the world’s largest mobile hands-on science education programs for economically disadvantaged children and teachers. Through all its programs, Agastya has reached over 20 million children and 300,000 teachers in 22 states across India. Its 172-acre Campus Creativity Lab contains more than 20 individual labs, and hosts more than 600 children daily for enriching, hands-on learning

experiences that extend beyond textbooks.

Following the COVID-19 crisis Agastya, harnessing mobile learning technologies, launched blended learning programs (termed as “Phygital,” to refer to the combination of physical and digital learning) that integrate online learning with in-person learning at scale.

Agastya’s immersive curricular pedagogies combining science, technology, and design thinking have been instrumental in seeding the notion of creative problem-solving in young learners in rural India. By using emerging technologies and making practical, hands-on

Given improved communication technologies, young learners strongly desire to seek out connections that are both intellectually and socially stimulating and offer opportunities to interact with like-minded people from around the world who are involved in solving major global challenges.

Case Study: The Agastya International Foundation Innovations using emerging 29

AGASTYA’S APPROACH NOT ONLY DEMONSTRATES THE FAR-REACHING POTENTIAL OF TECH-INDUCED CREATIVITY AMONG YOUNG LEARNERS BUT ALSO UNDERSCORES THE TRANSFORMATIVE POSSIBILITIES OF THESE INNOVATIONS IN EDUCATION

science education accessible to rural government schools, Agastya is transforming the thinking of underserved and under-resourced children and teachers. Agastya’s current vision seeks to work with 100 million children and one million teachers in the next ten years through its innovative programs.

Agastya’s approach not only demonstrates the far-reaching potential of tech-induced creativity among young learners but also underscores the transformative possibilities of these innovations in education.

By providing underserved children and teachers with access to cutting-edge tools and a problem-solving mindset, Agastya is laying the 30

groundwork for meaningful change. Their programs serve as a powerful reminder of the importance of expanding access to educational resources and opportunities, ensuring that the benefits of technology and design thinking reach as many young people as possible. As these young learners continue to explore and innovate, they hold the potential to shape the future of their communities and beyond, demonstrating that impactful change is possible regardless of one’s background or circumstances.

Academic and K-12 Innovations in a Digital World Higher education and K-12 institutions around the world are under increasing

pressure to adapt in response to industry, society, and environmental changes. They are tasked with preparing the next generation for technologydriven jobs that may not even exist yet. In the US, a growing number of prestigious education institutions have been receiving high-profile research grants to help catalyze and democratize tech-based literacy for domestic and global next-generation learners.

These labs offer examples of professors integrating learning with science and technology for global impact: The Development Technologies (DevTech) Research Group at Boston College, directed

by Professor Marina Umaschi Bers, promotes young children’s learning about computational thinking, coding, making, and robotics in a playful, developmentally appropriate way. It is recognized as a pioneering interdisciplinary research lab with high impact.

It accomplishes this through 1. theoretical contributions, 2. design of new technologies, teaching materials, and strategies for professional development and community

engagement, 3. empirical research to inform sustainable and scalable evidence-based programs for young children and the adults in their lives, and 4. outreach to scale the impact nationally and internationally.

DevTech has developed two early childhood technologies that are widely available and have a strong social impact: The ScratchJr programming language is a free app used by over 45 million young children across the world and has been translated into over 49 languages; the KIBO robotic system with tangible blocks and no screens, which is being commercialized by KinderLab Robotics, was a company Bers co-founded in 2013 through the National Science Foundation’s Small Business Innovation Research funding program, and is currently used in 65 countries.

Professor Mike Barnett’s Innovations in Urban Science Education Lab (I-USE) at Boston College focuses on increasing student engagement in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education through after-school programs and innovative 31

curriculum grounded in social justice. His lab strives to design programs that provide youth opportunities in science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics that promote critical thinking skills, problem-solving, and effective communication skills. The focus of its work is to support young people who are of color, lowincome, at risk, and otherwise under-represented in science to have the confidence and skills to succeed not just in science but in whatever endeavors they undertake.

With support from the National Science Foundation, Professor Barnett and his team developed the Urban Hydrofarmers Project to engage students in math and science through hydroponic farming and green energy technology using a tabletop smart greenhouse built in the I-USE Lab. Because the teens sell what they grow at farmers’ markets, the students also practice green entrepreneurship. Professor Barnett is implementing this project and his research findings in other parts of the world, including India, Ghana, and China.

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Moving Forward: The Future of Learning and Collaboration The seismic shifts in the way one embraces and harnesses emerging technologies have significant implications for both businesses and the educational sector. Artificial Intelligence (AI), for example, has already transformed education and learning. Yet, the application of digital solutions will continue to vary by community and socioeconomic level, teacher willingness and preparedness, education level, cultural practices, and economics.

While the short- and long-term costs of using these digital technologies appear to be decreasing, a conscious effort may still be required to close access gaps that could temporarily widen with the introduction of each new technology.

As young learners grow up on a “digital diet,” they become adept at navigating and leveraging technology to solve problems creatively. However, it is essential to balance this diet with a human-centric approach that emphasizes the role of human intuition, empathy, and

ethical considerations in the design and use of technology.

The future of education and design will increasingly depend on our ability to adapt to rapid technological changes while fostering creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration among young learners.

By embracing a “phygital” approach and leveraging emerging technologies, we can equip the next generation with the skills and mindset necessary to tackle global challenges and drive social impact. In this evolving digital landscape, designers and educators

must guide the ethical and empathetic application of technology, ensuring that it serves to enhance our capabilities and enrich our lives rather than replace the unique qualities that define us.

The commitment to nurturing young minds through creative problem solving and handson learning will be key to building a more sustainable and interconnected world. As we move forward, it is the synergy between human creativity and technological innovation that will pave the way for a brighter and more inclusive future.

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Q&A.

Which current or emerging technology excites you the most and why?

What problem do you most want technology to fix?

“

“

Computational design stands out as the most exciting to me. The reason for this enthusiasm lies in its ability to transform the way we approach design through rapid iteration and enhanced collaboration. Computational design allows us to push the boundaries of what is possible by enabling the creation of complex and innovative forms that would be impossible to achieve manually.”

Megan Brooks, Leader, Design Technology at DIALOG, San Francisco, CA

“Using Synthetic Biology, we could GROW healthy materials. Imagine engineering biological living materials that absorb carbon, heal themselves, and avoid the toxins normally found in our materials.

This will usher in a new era of remarkable, renewable, circular buildings and products.”

Eric Corey Freed, Director of Sustainability, CannonDesign, Portland, OR

“Passive Energy, and Solar Panels: since they have the potential to save on electricity and heating homes.”

Michele Washington, Designer/Researcher/Strategist/Writer, Chicago, IL

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From the perspective of climate and circularity… the pervasive issue of waste and resource inefficiency. Technology should drastically reduce waste generation through advanced recycling and upcycling processes, smart waste management systems, and extending product lifecycles. It should also develop sustainable materials and manufacturing processes that are environmentally friendly and biodegradable.

Resource efficiency must be optimized with AI-driven management, precision agriculture, and circular supply chains. ”

“Societal systemic complex problems.”

José dos Santos, Head of Design Americas, Signify, Boston, MA

“There is an opportunity to create new capabilities, platforms and experiences in the healthcare sector.

The healthcare system needs to take more advantage of emerging technology by building quick diagnosis apps.”

Oghenetejiri Agbodoroba, Master of Design Student, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA

Ziyuan ‘Zoey’ Zhu Senior Creative Technologist, IDEO, San Francisco, CA

35

DESIGNING FOR A WARMING WORLD / REVISITED

BY LEW EPSTEIN

“Designing for a Warming World” was an apt title for the Fall 2021 issue of Design Museum Magazine. Within its covers, experienced practitioners probed aspects of sustainability to help us understand our roles, responsibilities, and opportunities in an everwarming world. But who knew in 2021 that climate change would rapidly accelerate within a few brief years and the world would set new records for warming temperatures, extensive damages, and far wider-scale loss?

Knowing this now, however, our response to climate change still has not kept pace with its velocity. That’s why designing for a warming world remains the work we need to do.

Fortunately, a growing portfolio of established and emerging solutions can help us restore our climate.

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Where Forestry & Technology Meet Trees are an ancient resource that remains relevant today.

They are like the Earth’s lungs, and act as natural air conditioners for urban neighborhoods. More than this, trees are found in most countries along waterways and at all elevations; they are regenerative and a generous source of food, shelter, and biodiversity. We’ve come to rely on wood for our home goods, hand tools, furniture, and construction materials, including cross-laminated timber (CLT) used for mass timber structures. For all these reasons, trees are essential to life on Earth.

When it comes to climate change, trees play a crucial role as a carbon sink. They can effectively absorb excess carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere through photosynthesis, wherein trees take in CO2, store it within

37

often inequitably distributed, and tools that can guide users toward generating greater tree equity are needed.

Leading this effort is American Forests, a non-profit that champions sustainable forestry management practices. Its free digital tool, Tree Equity Score, provides a social-equityfocused narrative, goals, and guide for fostering assessment, understanding, commitment, and action for Tree Equity in urban settings.

Above: Rangers with the Uganda Wildlife Authority use the Forest Watcher app to identify illegal deforestation in Kibale National Park, which has one of the highest concentration of primates in Africa. Photo by Jane Goodall Institute.

their biomass (roots, trunk, and branches), and release oxygen as a byproduct.

Trees can help restore our climate affordably in most parts of the world. And thanks to new digital tools that utilize high-resolution satellite imagery, visual data can help us to monitor changing conditions across urban and rural areas in real time.

For example, Global Forest 38

Watch provides free data and spatial imaging technology, empowering people to manage and protect forest landscapes.

With ease, anyone can see when and where trees are disappearing, ushering in a new era of transparency for the world’s forests.

Other digital forestry tools help us see and compare tree cover conditions in urban communities. The coverage is

Both organizations invite us to participate in their treeplanting projects where we live and where businesses are based or expanding. Effective forest carbon practices assisted by data-driven tools can enable a more equitable approach to regenerating forests and designing resilient cities.

Chemistry & Technology Creating New Categories While modern forestry practices offer effective methods for carbon dioxide removal (CDR), there simply isn’t enough land to plant enough trees to remove all of the excess CO2 that is

trapped in our atmosphere and warming our planet.

Scientists worldwide agree that we need a diverse set of CDR approaches to address the alarming rise in CO2 levels.

In addition to the natural solutions available today, technological solutions in varying stages of development and deployment keep growing.

Among them is Direct Air Capture (DAC), which refers to technologies designed for removing excess CO2 from the atmosphere and safely storing it deep underground, where it becomes mineralized. It is being explored by myriad start-ups and has been gaining considerable attention, greater private and public funding, and both proponents and skeptics along the way.

DAC development is rapidly evolving new carbon filtering technologies that increase both energy efficiency and removal capacity. Although costly today – think solar panels two decades ago – we can anticipate DAC scaling up more rapidly in the decades ahead. From new R&D funding and government policy support 39

to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) affirming DAC’s vital role in reaching net-zero emission goals by 2050, DAC is expected to become an integral part of the built environment.

Carbon Waste & Value & Jobs Many of the world’s products are made of materials with high embodied greenhouse gas emissions. These cause varying degrees of damage to the natural environment.

Carbontech refers to the wide variety of commercial products made with CO2 emissions

captured from power plants, biomass, or DAC methods. This rapidly growing field produces an ever-expanding set of goods and services, including global commodities such as fuel, plastics, and building materials, valuable niche applications such as cosmetics and food supplements, and emerging technologies such as carbon nanotubes. According to Carbon180.org, carbontech is driving a new market worth over $1 trillion USD. Some carbontech products, such as carbonated beverages,

How direct air capture works

1

2

3

CO2

Concentrated CO2 is stored or transformed into other goods Large fans draw in air from the atmosphere

Image: © CB Insights 40

Filters containing engineered chemicals concentrate CO2 from the air

The filter material is heated to release the captured CO2 Filtered, CO2-free air is released into the atmosphere

Image: © StudioFYNN

soaps, and perfumes quickly re-release CO2 back into the air. Other products, such as concrete, bricks, nanotubes, and lab-grown diamonds, are longer lasting, locking away CO2 for 100 years or more.

Both types are valuable because they aid the transition away from the world’s dependence on fossil fuels. Carbontech is attracting significant investment and generating jobs across consumer, commercial, and industrial market sectors, which seeds

new growth opportunities for the design community.

The scientists at Made of Air, as one example, are developing compounds to substitute traditional high-emission materials to address the climate emergency; research conducted by their Carbon Lab is at the intersection of material science and carbon sequestration.

Smaller & Cheaper & Open-Source Gaining scale is often associated with ‘getting bigger’, e.g., a 41

DESIGNING FOR A WARMING WORLD WILL BE OUR VOCATION THROUGHOUT THIS CENTURY, IN RESPONSE TO THE RELENTLESS FORCES OF CLIMATE CHANGE AT WORK. FORTUNATELY, THE DESIGN COMMUNITY HAS BECOME A POWERFUL COUNTERFORCE WITH EQUITABLE OUTCOMES IN ITS SIGHTS AND TECHNOLOGY AS ITS PARTNER.

bigger DAC plant with greater capacity. But it can also mean creating something smaller in greater numbers. Open Air Collective sponsors The Carbon Removal Challenge, an annual competition for university students worldwide to develop DAC devices using inexpensive off-the-shelf components. Some concepts are room-sized devices, not unlike a typical consumer appliance for heating or cooling an apartment. Some are rooftop devices with more capacity, while others focus on utilizing the captured carbon in value-added products. All are functional; none are refined.

All are inventive, low-cost, and 42

built upon an open-source model that encourages others to iterate toward better versions.

Waterloo Atmosphere-land Interactions Research (WatAir) has developed a carbon dioxide removal device that captures CO2 from ambient air.

Carbonated water is a process byproduct that can be used to grow microalgae, which can be sustainably and safely produced for use in cosmetics and highprotein food supplements.

Initiatives like these offer another glimpse of the new carbontech quietly percolating in the background, striving to solve a universal problem,

engineered with a combination of new and time-tested methods, envisioned in different scales and form factors, and built for different environments by innovators eager to prove the viability of these new ideas.

Designing For A Warming World / Now Designing for a warming world will be our vocation throughout this century, in response to the relentless forces of climate change at work. Fortunately, the design community has become a powerful counterforce with equitable outcomes in its sights and technology as its partner. Carbon technology

is cultivating new business categories and job opportunities that continually widen the design community’s prospects.

Spending just a few minutes a week reading, listening to, or watching credible sources of climate information can help us see our place within this context and articulate our choices more clearly. Greater awareness can give way to greater advocacy and uncover more ways to participate. That alone—multiplied by all of us— is among the most powerful and consequential choices we can collectively make now.

How to Participate Read more about the resources referenced in this article, and explore additional ways for design professionals to advance climate action on the Lot21 website (lot21.org).

Lot21 is a content platform and resource to help the design community decarbonize the world.

Dive Deeper

Visit Lot21

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THE $500K JACKET

BY AMBER CASE

When I was a kid, I loved looking at Vogue magazine spreads. As a budding photographer, I imagined shooting in remote, off-grid locations, importing the models and props by helicopter, and then making a fantastic photo that someone might gaze over while in the waiting room at a hair or nail salon. I dreamed of creating images that would captivate and inspire, much like the ones I admired in those glossy pages.

But as I grew older, I started to think of the actual costs behind the glamor - the price paid in an interconnected ecosystem.

I wanted to make a Vogue shoot that showed the real cost of the clothing along with photos of tribal land and the local apparel. What would it mean to incorporate the actual cost to the environment? Would a Zara coat really cost $50? What if we took into account the cancercausing chemicals used to treat the leather in India? The runoff into the water supply for the local community? The

44

remediation cost of restoring the environment for a nonrenewable PVC-based resource?

I started adding up the costs and externalities: How much does it cost to raise a cow?

What is the environmental impact of the shipment of the jacket? What is the dying and tanning process like? How much does it degrade the environment around it? How much does it cost to provide cancer treatment to families whose health is affected by local drinking water tainted by chemicals? If you were to add up all of these effects, as well as the cost of remediation — that is, how much it might cost to restore the ecosystem and human health to pre-leather jacket levels — the actual cost (for a single leather jacket) might be $500K. It’s a staggering thought, one that made me question the true cost of fashion.

By shining a light on these hidden costs and externalities, we can start to have a more honest conversation about what 45

true sustainability looks like.

And this is where the tech industry can play a meaningful role, by developing tools and platforms for supply chain transparency, life cycle analysis, and impact measurement. From material science innovations to data-driven design, there’s enormous potential for crosspollination between the tech and fashion worlds in pursuit of a more sustainable future.

The staggering cost of a single leather jacket is a microcosm of the larger challenges we face as a society grappling with the limits of our planetary boundaries. It’s a reminder that the price we pay at the register is often just a fraction of the true cost – and that we need new ways of accounting for these impacts if we hope to build a more resilient and regenerative economy.

As a thought experiment, I made the chart on pages 48-49 using estimated costs to demonstrate a possible structure for assessing hidden costs.

A fast fashion leather jacket might cost up to $500K in environmental degradation, 46

plus an additional amount of cost for cancer remediation and the physical and emotional disruption for communities and families in which safety regulation is lax. The true price of a leather jacket is not just the tag on the sleeve, but the countless hidden costs that are often overlooked.

How much should a leather jacket actually cost? How can we use materials that cost the environment less? What other materials are emerging, and how do those stack up against the environmental, social, and transportation costs of new leather? These are the questions that kept me up at night, as I pondered the future of fashion and its impact on our planet.

But there are other options!

The chart also showcases a range of alternative materials that could potentially revolutionize the fashion industry. These innovative materials offer a glimpse into a more sustainable future: Cork leather, derived from the bark of cork oak trees, has been used in fashion since the late 1990s. The production process involves harvesting

the bark, which regenerates every 9-12 years, making it a sustainable material. The bark is then ground, compressed, and treated with minimal chemicals to create a leather-like fabric. Cork leather is lightweight, water-resistant, and durable, making it suitable for various fashion applications. It has gained popularity in recent years as an eco-friendly alternative to traditional leather.

Mushroom leather, also known as mycelium leather, is an innovative material that has emerged in the past decade. It is created by growing mycelium, the

FROM MATERIAL SCIENCE INNOVATIONS TO DATA-DRIVEN DESIGN, THERE’S ENORMOUS POTENTIAL FOR CROSS-POLLINATION BETWEEN THE TECH AND FASHION WORLDS IN PURSUIT OF A MORE SUSTAINABLE FUTURE.

vegetative part of a fungus, on organic substrates such as sawdust or agricultural waste. The mycelium is then harvested, processed, and compressed to form a leather-like material. The production process takes around 2-3 weeks and requires minimal water and energy compared to traditional leather. Mushroom leather has a unique texture and is biodegradable, making it an attractive option for sustainable fashion.

Pineapple leather, also known as Piñatex, was developed in the late 1990s by Dr. Carmen Hijosa. It is made from the waste leaves of pineapple plants, 47

Estimated Medical Treatment Cost (USD)

Estimated Water Usage (Gallons)

Land Use

Estimated Land Remediation Cost (USD)

High (chromium and other harmful chemicals influence worker water sources)

$10,000$500,000

2,00010,000

High (requires cattle farming)

$50,000$500,000

Very high. When properly cared for, it can last decades and develop a desirable patina over time.

$80-$200

High (contains phthalates and other toxins)

$10,000$100,000

1,0005,000

Low (synthetic material)

$50,000$500,000

Moderate to high, depending on the quality. Generally resistant to scratches and stains, but can crack and peel over time, especially in high-use areas.

$30-$80

$100-$300

Moderate (some potentially harmful chemicals)

$1,000$10,000

1,0005,000

Low (synthetic material)

$10,000$100,000

Moderate. Tends to wear out faster than genuine leather. Resistant to stains and easier to clean, but can become less attractive over time as it does not develop a patina.

Cork Leather

$80-$150

$300-$800

Low (natural, non-toxic materials)

N/A

50-200

Low (harvested from cork oak bark)

N/A

Moderate to high. Durable but can show wear over time. Waterresistant and lightweight, but not as strong as conventional leather for high-wear items.

Mushroom Leather

$80-$150

$300-$800

Low (natural, non-toxic materials)

N/A

50-200

Low (can be grown in small spaces)

N/A

Moderate. Emerging material with varying durability depending on processing methods. Generally flexible and strong but still being researched for long-term durability.

Pineapple Leather

$60-$120

$250-$600

Low (natural, non-toxic materials)

N/A

500-1,500

Low (uses pineapple leaf waste)

N/A

Moderate. Sustainable and relatively durable, but can show wear faster than conventional leather. Suitable for accessories and light-use items; not as robust for high-wear items.

Fruit Leather

$50-$100

$200-$500

Low (natural, non-toxic materials)

N/A

50-100

Low (uses fruit waste or by products)

N/A

Varies based on specific type and treatment.

Cactus Leather

$70-$130

$300-$700

Low

N/A

50-100

Low (uses mature leaves of prickly pear cactus)

N/A

Moderate. Durable and has a texture similar to traditional leather.

Partially biodegradable.

Average Cost of Fast Fashion Jacket (USD)

Average Cost of High-End Jacket (USD)

Conventional Leather

$100-$300

$500$2,000

PVC Leather

$20-$50

Polyester

Material

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Carcinogenic Impact on workers

The prices provided are rough estimates and can fluctuate based on factors such as market demand, production costs, and brand positioning. The actual cost of a jacket may fall outside these ranges, depending on the specific product and retailer.

Longevity to everyday wear

49

50

which are often discarded in pineapple agriculture. The leaves are processed to extract the fibers, which are then felted and treated with a bio-based resin to create a leather-like material.

Pineapple leather is durable, flexible, and has a unique textured appearance. It has gained recognition as a crueltyfree and environmentally friendly alternative to traditional leather.

Cactus leather, also known as Desserto, is made from the mature leaves of the prickly pear cactus. The leaves are harvested, cleaned, mashed, and then dried in the sun to create a leather-like material.

Cactus leather is partially biodegradable, durable, and has a texture similar to traditional leather. It was developed in Mexico and has been used by various fashion brands since 2019.

Fruit leather, a relatively new concept in the fashion industry, is created from fruit waste such as apple peels or grape skins. The production process involves blending the fruit waste into a puree, which is then spread onto a flat surface and dried to form a leatherlike sheet. Fruit leather can be dyed using natural pigments and treated with eco-friendly coatings to improve durability.

While still in the early stages of development, fruit leather shows promise as a sustainable and biodegradable alternative to traditional leather. Research and experimentation with fruit leather have been ongoing since the mid-2010s.

Prices for fruit leather, mushroom leather, and pineapple leather jackets may be higher than conventional leather or synthetic alternatives due to the relatively new and innovative nature of these materials, as well as the smaller scale of production, but with investment and market uptake (and regulations for human health) these alternative materials may be at a viable price point in the future, or even far more affordable than the cost of true leather, assuming the leather industry becomes more expensive due to the rising costs of environmental and human care associated with it.

It shouldn’t mean that we don’t buy leather, but if we do, we should spend more to support communities that make it.

The price point could be higher, and the people more visible and cared for. Fast fashion that cares less for the environment could use plant-based materials, exposing workers to less chemicals, and real leather products could have far more care put into them. Change requires a collective effort from consumers, brands, and policymakers alike. It’s difficult to change the entire system, but by showing more about people’s lives and presenting alternatives at every price point, we can work towards unlocking people from these supply chains. By exploring and investing in alternative materials, we can begin to break free from the cycle of environmental destruction and human exploitation.

The $500K leather jacket might seem like an extreme example, but it’s one way of presenting a more accurate representation of the current state of fashion.

And it doesn’t have to be our future. By embracing alternative

materials and challenging the status quo, we can reshape the fashion industry into one that prioritizes both style and sustainability.

Change is already happening.

Innovative brands are experimenting with cork, mushroom, pineapple, and fruit leathers, creating stylish and eco-friendly options for conscientious consumers.

As more people demand transparency and sustainability from the fashion industry, we can accelerate this progress and make a real difference.

I didn’t realize that my childhood desire to photograph fashion and glamor would lead me to wanting more deeply to understand the externalities of where that fashion comes from. Now, as an advocate and technologist looking to change the picture entirely, I find it exciting to look behind the scenes and consider what’s really possible, and how systems could change for the better.

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WATCHING THE WATCHERS Mass Surveillance and the Evolution of S.T.O.P.

BY JUSTIN R. WOLF

Albert Fox Cahn is a cautious man. He is also an outspoken one. These qualities might make him something of a walking contradiction, considering the arena in which he operates, but don’t mistake forthrightness for carelessness.

Cahn’s non-profit, the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.), which he founded in 2019, was established on a simple premise: to abolish local governments’ systems of mass surveillance.

The problems it aims to solve, however, are anything but simple.

“If it was a question of protecting the public versus protecting our rights, I would find that to be an intractable quagmire,” he says.

“But a lot of surveillance tech that’s being marketed to and bought by cities like New York and increasingly smaller cities across the country is invasive, it’s discriminatory, it’s hostile to our constitutional rights, and it’s also really bad at protecting public safety.”

Left: Ban The Scan rally at NYC City Hall on May 3, 2023 with Albert Fox Cahn speaking and various S.T.O.P. team members, elected officials, and folks from other civil society organizations.

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S.T.O.P.’s role is that of public advocate, educator, researcher, and litigator. The organization’s work focuses on those instances of twofold failure, where technology is both ripe for abuse and has demonstrated little to no value for public welfare. As an example, Cahn cites ShotSpotter, a surveillance system that uses high-powered microphones to triangulate and locate gunshots in real time with machine learning and trained “acoustic experts.” In March of 2021, Adam Toledo, a 13-year-old Mexican American boy, was shot and killed by Chicago police. Officers were led to Toledo via ShotSpotter.

(Toledo was unarmed and there was no evidence of any crime committed.) Five months after the shooting, the Chicago Office of the Inspector General released a comprehensive report based on an analysis of 50,176 ShotSpotter notifications recorded over a 17-month period that concluded ShotSpotter’s deployed tech was overwhelmingly ineffective at identifying gun-related crimes and that its presence emboldened police to pursue suspects based on flawed or 54

false data, thus raising the likelihood of an altercation or worse.

ShotSpotter was sold to law enforcement as a fail-safe. But in its 30+ year history, it has arguably caused more harm than good. “These microphones are primarily installed on lowincome housing in communities of color,” Cahn says. “And it’s sold as a way to automatically detect gunshots at the price of essentially having a wiretap in these communities, with microphones sensitive enough to pick up conversations in people’s homes.” He adds, “You have this deluge of reports to police about gunshots that never happened and suspects who don’t exist. No one was protected, and people clearly got hurt.”

Cahn came of age as an activist in post-9/11 New York. “I grew up protesting the NYPD and building computers,” he says.

In that capacity, he witnessed the police deploy what he describes as “a new generation of surveillance that monitored those of us who were simply gathering to raise up our voices against the invasion of Iraq

THE ORGANIZATION’S WORK FOCUSES ON THOSE INSTANCES OF TWOFOLD FAILURE, WHERE TECHNOLOGY IS BOTH RIPE FOR ABUSE AND HAS DEMONSTRATED LITTLE TO NO VALUE FOR PUBLIC WELFARE.

or against the deportation of Muslim New Yorkers.” A career in law followed, principally in the public interest arena. Seeing the widespread deployment of technologies that had barely achieved proof of concept and being placed in the hands of those who have social (and often legal) licenses to act with impunity prompted Cahn to launch his organization five years ago. Transparency and accountability were the desired benchmarks; simple adherence to the 4th Amendment was the baseline. It didn’t take long for S.T.O.P.’s presence to be felt.

The organization’s flagship bill, the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology (POST) Act, was signed into law in July 2020. It requires the NYPD – which has an

operating budget in excess of $5.8 billion, the largest for a single city’s police department in the world – to publish impact and use policies for the surveillance technologies it deploys. In other words, it obliged the NYPD to disclose its full arsenal of surveillance gear and report how it has been used. In accordance with the Act, the Department claims it will “work to find a fair balance between the benefits provided through the use of technology, individual privacy protections, and the comments and requests submitted by the public.” This is a far cry from achieving full transparency, as Cahn well knows, and the NYPD’s full compliance with the POST Act thus far has been inconsistent.

New spy tech comes onto the 55

market all the time, and much of it is technically efficient but developed without clear usage guidelines. But at least the spirit of the law mirrors a level of conscientiousness that other municipalities around the globe have enacted. Cahn cites automated license plate readers (ALPRs) that were installed in Stockholm’s central business district for the explicit purpose of tolling and managing the city’s congestion tax. According to the Swedish Transport Authority,

THIS HAS BECOME THE DEFAULT ASSUMPTION OF AMERICAN POLICING, THAT WHERE DATA IS COLLECTED FOR GOVERNMENTAL PURPOSES, IT IS ALSO AVAILABLE TO THE POLICE.

license plate information is captured, cropped, and stored for a finite period and is not generally accessible by third parties, including the police, which Cahn says “would be a violation of privacy guardrails that were there to ensure this didn’t turn into a panopticon.”

Many in law enforcement have lauded stationary and mobile ALPR tech as a boon for “intelligence-led policing.” (Last year, ALPRs aided in the arrest of a Los Angeles man suspected of committing multiple homicides.) Despite the clear advantages, abuse of this highly invasive technology is inevitable without clear policies and civilian oversight. Before Governor 56

Kathy Hochul abruptly paused New York City’s plan to roll out congestion pricing last June, for which license plate readers would be an integral tool, Cahn worried about the ensuing “free-for-all” of data sharing and whether the City’s plan to create a “Congestion-Free Zone” in the southern half of Manhattan would simply provide cover for law enforcement agencies to spy more. In a 2020 report on congestion privacy, coauthored by S.T.O.P. and NYU School of Law’s Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy, “Without proper protections, congestion pricing will provide the City with a database on the day-to-day movements of individuals.”

“It happens every day. It happens nearly every hour,” Cahn says. “And this has become the default assumption of American policing, that where data is collected for governmental purposes, it is also available to the police.”

No matter the technology or the era in question, it never takes long for bad actors (or well-meaning ones who

might otherwise shun due diligence) to exploit a loophole or two in order to collect data.

Wiretapping has existed for as long as we’ve used wires to transmit information. Today, many of us (aka consumers) have been conditioned to accept a new reality in which behavioral data is packaged and sold to anyone with their wallet out.

We think nothing of clicking the “Accept All Cookies” tab.

Perhaps we should.

“In our digital lives, we no longer have a 4th Amendment,” says Lia Holland, the Campaigns and Communications Director for Fight for the Future (FFTF), a non-profit advocacy group that fights for net neutrality and freedom of expression, among other causes. Our civil rights are intertwined with the online world, Holland says, and people have a right to know how their data is being used and often abused. She also stresses how much of a bipartisan issue this has become, with many citizens across the political spectrum expressing concern over how their belief systems and legal actions might be improperly surveilled. “We want to make 57

the internet safer for everyone!”

Fight for the Future’s “Do Not Dox” campaign, which implores the Federal Trade Commission to legally curtail data brokers from selling people’s personal information, has the vocal support of S.T.O.P. and other organizations. Some U.S. states have passed anti-doxing legislation that empowers victims to sue their assailants, but no federal law in this vein yet exists. FFTF is also a staunch supporter of antitrust legislation that can effectively prevent social media companies from growing into glorified data brokers.

In tandem with an organization like S.T.O.P., which seeks to highlight the discriminatory impacts of surveillance on BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities, FFTF also promotes the positives that online engagement can bring, particularly for marginalized youth from those very communities who feel unseen.

There is an equilibrium to be had. There is a way – to borrow the NYPD’s turn of phrase – to find a fair balance between the social benefits of 58

surveillance systems, digital or otherwise, and the public’s need to feel both physically safe and autonomous in their decision-making. When asked if the problem had grown too big for us to control, Holland remarked, “The U.S. has a big enough stick to enforce the law of the land. We just lack the political will to get it done.”

Organizations like FFTF and S.T.O.P. believe it’s in citizens’ best interest to protest, engage, and advocate for people’s right to privacy, not retreat from the public arena. It’s a tough nut to crack.

When Cahn and I spoke over Zoom, I noticed several copies of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four on the bookcase behind him. It’s a “growing collection,” he says, that happens to include a 1949 first edition; his goal is to own editions printed in various languages from all over the world.

It’s not paranoia to proclaim that, as it concerns Orwell at least, life does imitate art. We do live in a capitalist surveillance state. And if the

Above: Albert Fox Cahn

last 20 years or so have been a battle for our individual privacy, it’s fair to say the likes of Facebook and Google are the victors. But relatively speaking, the internet is a very young technology with many kinks still to work out.

And more traditional A/V surveillance technologies, while reaching new heights of sophistication, are only as powerful as those bestowed with the responsibility to wield them. The watchers will remain vigilant; those watching them must remain so as well. This is why S.T.O.P. and like-minded organizations exist.

Throughout my conversation with Cahn, I found myself

pondering different forms of pop culture – movies, literature, graphic novels – that have dealt with the dilemma of surveillance and personal privacy. Hitchcock’s Rear Window and Coppola’s The Conversation are two personal favorites, but other examples came to mind as well: the spy novels of Graham Greene and John le Carré, or even – this one’s a bit on the nose – the song “Every Breath You Take”

by The Police.

I then posed the question to Cahn about his own pop culture leanings. “I’m a sucker for sci-fi!” he says. “I don’t think I would be doing this work without, you know, all those years of The Twilight Zone and Black Mirror and episodes of Star Trek that really use the flexibility of science fiction to be able to hold up that mirror.

If you want to look at the systemic nature of surveillance, ditch the spy thrillers and pick up the science fiction.”

“The heresy of heresies was common sense,” Orwell wrote in Nineteen Eighty-Four. In that tradition, a little heresy could serve us all well.

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HOW TO BUILD A RESPONSIBLE TECH ECOSYSTEM

BY HANNAH KENNEDY

Above: All Tech Is Human Founder & President David Ryan Polgar and All Tech Is Human Head of Partnerships & Trust and Safety Vertical Sandra Khalil address All Tech Is Human’s community at All Tech Is Human’s Responsible Tech Mixer in San Francisco.

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What is a responsible tech ecosystem? David Ryan Polgar founded the nonprofit All Tech Is Human in 2018 in response to the growing Responsible Tech Movement – a collective effort to promote the ethical development, deployment, and use of technology – and what he perceived as a need to co-create a tech future that aligns with the well-being of a holistic society. Polgar shares, “Responsible tech is more collective in nature; it’s about consensus building.”

He created All Tech Is Human with the goal of building an environment for collaborative knowledge sharing that welcomes diverse perspectives to form an interdisciplinary network that takes an engaged approach to shaping the future of technology.

“The idea behind [All Tech Is Human] is that technology is not derived from the heavens, it’s coming from what we as a

society collectively try to determine: what are the norms of behavior, what are the guardrails, what’s the tech future that we want to see,” says Polgar.

He set out to create a space to inspire people to be active participants in how technology is created. He shares, “So many people who wanted to be part of this process, they’re effectively thinking that technology is impacting their trajectory, it impacts who they communicate with, who they date, how they get a job or don’t see a job. People feel that they are being influenced without influencing that process.”

He continues, “All Tech Is Human is designed to work with the community building, the education, and the career sides to inject more people and to give them access to affect

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the system by bringing people together across civil society, government, industry, and academia.”

All Tech Is Human’s programming focuses on six key focus areas: Public Interest Technology, Responsible AI, Tech Policy, Trust and Safety, Youth Tech and Wellbeing, and Cyber and Democracy.

Their team’s goal is to facilitate knowledge sharing and collaboration in the development of technology through their programming, events, Slack channel, and mentorship program because they recognize that there are limited pathways for individuals to participate in these ways.

They have hosted panels and mixers on AI governance, online safety, and empowering people through data privacy.

Their website also serves as a hub for those interested in learning, with recordings from past events, reports on various responsible tech focus areas, and professional development resources. They strive to diversify the responsible tech movement by showcasing

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new and diverse voices in their programming.

The Importance of Participation All Tech Is Human asserts that the end users of technology should be considered valued stakeholders in the decision-making and design processes. Sandra Khalil, All Tech is Human’s Head of Partnerships, shares, “As end users of technology, they should absolutely have a say in how it’s governed because ultimately that affects their lives, and I think that’s just a basic extension of democracy, in our increasingly intertwined nature with tech.” Polgar adds, “We’re basically creating a system in which most people can influence, in some small capacity, where the future of tech is going. That’s important because people want to make sure that it’s better aligned with the public interest, it’s more considerate of civil liberties, and acknowledges intended and unintended consequences as well.”

How Can Designers Participate in a Responsible Tech Ecosystem?

Designers should play an influential role in the responsible tech ecosystem.

Polgar suggests that designers recognize “the importance of their creative thinking and their interconnectedness.

That is highly sought after, especially when we’re looking at emerging technologies.” Polgar notes that many designers are skilled in identifying problems, and he asks, “How can you solve a problem if you can’t see a problem? Therefore, you can’t just rely on problem solvers. You also have to have disciplines that are problem finders.” Khalil adds, “Designers have played a really important role in thinking through All Tech Is Human’s outputs from conception to the end product.

They think about the design of it, the accessibility, and the way someone can interpret and understand the information that we’re putting out.” All Tech Is Human empowers designers and non-designers alike to participate in the production

HOW CAN YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM IF YOU CAN’T SEE A PROBLEM? THEREFORE, YOU CAN’T JUST RELY ON PROBLEM SOLVERS. YOU ALSO HAVE TO HAVE DISCIPLINES THAT ARE PROBLEM FINDERS.

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of technology by identifying how their inherent skills play an influential role in the movement.

Looking to the Future: Building a Responsible Tech Pipeline All Tech Is Human has also developed a mentorship program that facilitates connections and career development opportunities between mentors and students. The program began in 2021 and has hosted 1,000 participants. Sarah Welsh, All Tech Is Human’s Mentorship Program Manager shares, “We’re doing a lot of work on campuses with our university network

THIS YEAR THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE WHO PARTICIPATED IN THE MENTORSHIP PROGRAM HAVE BEEN WOMEN.

to start showing alternative pathways into tech that still maintain our values and our dedication to social impact. I think the younger generation is definitely more attuned to being mission-driven in their work, and so we’re finding that having that intervention a little bit earlier can help illuminate alternative pathways into the tech industry.” Welsh observes an increase in participant diversity: “This year the majority of people who participated in the mentorship program have been women, which is really cool to see. That’s definitely growing, diversifying the pipeline there. As we continue to provide mentorship to wider 64

Above: All Tech Is Human’s staff takes a photo in front of a marquee at All Tech Is Human’s Responsible Tech D.C., on February 28, 2024, at Union Stage in Washington, D.C.

groups of people, the program has helped to ensure that there are different kinds of people who are helping to create a future of technology that works for everybody.”

Get Involved With All Tech Is Human

reports, and individuals can join their community Slack to learn about events, job opportunities, and more. All Tech Is Human aims to provide a wide variety of entry points to encourage active participation in a Responsible Tech ecosystem.

All Tech Is Human strives to help individuals learn more and connect with the Responsible Tech Movement. Their website (alltechishuman.org) offers educational resources and

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DESIGN TOGETHER ACTIVITY

STORYTELLING THROUGH MOVEMENT Design Together is a series of free learning activities available on our website, which require either no materials or ones that are easily accessible at home. In this Design Together, Founder and Director of Abilities Dance Boston, Ellice Patterson, guides you through gentle stretches that encourage you to use your body to tell a story.

Objectives: • Connect with your body and practice mindfulness in a creative dance practice.

• Tell a story by using movement.

Materials: Your body.

Inspiration Abilities Dance Boston tells stories through movements.

These stories can range from children’s picture 66

book-inspired movements to serious tragedies. In this Design Together, Ellice will take you through a storybuilding exercise that helps her create choreography and tell stories with her professional company dancers. Here is a mantra to encourage your creative process: “I am pushing through all that strains me. I am forging ahead in my own direction. I am building my own strength.”

Instructions Find a song that really gets you moving. It can be as silly or as serious as you’re feeling.

Write out 3-5 sentences of the story you want to tell and then choose some movements. Blend the movements together, and you’re a choreographer!

Please adapt all of these movements to whatever works for you. Ellice uses a mobility aid but encourages you to experiment with how you can adapt if you use different mobility aids or, if you are a non-disabled person, how you can translate the activity through movement. Have fun and be creative!

Let us know how your story goes! Tag @codesigncollaborative and @abilitiesdanceboston with pictures of your movements.

2. Take your hand and gently stretch your head from side to side. Then roll your head slowly twice in both directions.

3. Curl your hands as if you’re wrapping them around an ice cream cone finger by finger. Energize through your fingertips and build warmth in your hands.

4. Take a stretch, bending forward as far as it feels comfortable, and hold for five seconds. If standing, straighten your legs, and for an extra stretch bend knees five times while bent over.

Rise and take a stretch, bending backward as far as comfortable, and hold for five seconds.

Stretching Activity 1. Start by making a fist and placing it against your chest.

Then take four deep and slow breaths, in and out. Use this time to push out all of the negative internal and external thoughts and just focus on being in your body.

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DIGITAL ACCESSIBILITY A Living Organism

BY EVAN BURNETT

Each of us has people in our lives or around us with disabilities that impact their interactions within the digital world. Have you ever been in a loud environment while watching a video, so you turned on closed captions?

Maybe you or a loved one underwent a surgical procedure that resulted in temporary low vision but still needed to view online content. How about a color-blind colleague who wants to view a colorful infographic? These are examples of situational, temporary, and permanent disabilities that can apply to people navigating digital spaces.

Digital accessibility is a key component of an inclusive future. Treating digital accessibility as a secondary consideration does a disservice not only to the individuals who consume our creations but also the people behind the creations. Here are some statistics from the WebAIM Million, a report on the

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accessibility of the top one million webpages on the internet: • Over 80% of pages have content with low color contrast which negatively affects users with visual impairments.

• Over 50% of pages with images are missing alternative text, a foundational element within digital accessibility.

• Users with disabilities expect to encounter errors on 1 in every 21 home page elements.

Whether we have a disability or not, we all interact with the world in unique ways. This article is a call to action to adjust our thinking and creative workflows to consider as many unique perspectives as possible.

Shifting Left The best way for creatives to produce inclusive designs is to “shift left” in our creative process, meaning to consider 69

accessibility from ideation onward. Before our digital designs and websites come to life, we must consider how a variety of individuals within a spectrum of abilities will interact with them.

This includes decisions related to content formatting and presentation that ensure greater access for users. For instance, will our selected color palette be accessible for folks with visual impairments? Resources such as WhoCanUse give us an idea of how people with visual impairments will view specific color combinations.

Is the font too small, or does it have tight text spacing that could be challenging to read?

Typography features such as ligatures, which combine two characters such as “fi” into one character, can cause issues for cognitively or visually impaired viewers who aren’t able to decipher them. Thinking through possible roadblocks can spark new ideas that strengthen our designs in a meaningful way.

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Alternatives One of the foundational elements of designing for accessibility is the concept of alternatives. We may have a primary method of conveying information; how can we provide secondary or alternative access if the primary method is inaccessible to users?

This can come in multiple forms, though the simplest way would be through a textbased alternative.

convert that description to braille for deafblind individuals.

If audio devices are not available, she could develop an audio description that loops in certain time intervals so visually impaired users can listen.

We can also utilize these descriptions in other scenarios

in paragraph form is likely required to fully convey the intended meaning. Designing for as many users and scenarios as possible gives us options we might not have originally considered.

Let’s say a digital artist creates a landscape of the sunset for visual viewers - how can she increase access for folks with little to no vision? She can write a text-based description of the portrait that can be accessed through audio devices and

Accessible Data within our digital designs. Let’s say we have an image within an infographic that conveys important information that a non-visual user would need to know. Adding a caption below the image that summarizes the image provides an additional method of access. For more visually complex content such as data charts and graphs, a more detailed description

Another way for designers to create inclusive experiences, especially for data-driven content, is through the use of accessible data visualization techniques. Data visualization is the graphical representation of information and data, such as a colorful pie chart with slices representing different parts of a data set. While we can be very creative in how we convey data, this can unintentionally create inaccessible experiences for 71

many individuals. Here are a few questions to answer before finalizing a pie chart, for example: • Do the colors have enough visual contrast to distinguish each slice?

• Are there alternative text labels describing each slice?

ALL CREATIONS ARE UNIQUE, SO TREATING ACCESSIBILITY LIKE A CHECKLIST IS LIKELY TO LEAVE USABILITY GAPS THAT DIMINISH THE USER EXPERIENCE.

• Is there a black outline or white space between each slice to increase visual distinction?

• Are varying patterns used along with color to help further distinguish each slice?

Accessible data visualization techniques can help people with visual impairments, including colorblindness, low vision, and other disabilities, better visualize the information and its meaning.

The Standards As the digital landscape continues to grow, many webbased resources can aid in the creation of accessible digital content. Many designers have heard of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, or

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WCAG. These guidelines, according to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), provide a wide range of recommendations for making web content accessible. These recommendations are split into four categories: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust. Each category contains success criteria that will help designers and developers conform. The highest level of conformance is 2.2 AAA (w3.org/WAI/standardsguidelines/), which includes all of the success criteria within the guidelines to address as many accessibility issues as possible.

While WCAG is a great baseline for accessibility, these standards should be used as the foundation to support more expansive accessible frameworks and designs.

All creations are unique, so treating accessibility like a checklist is likely to leave usability gaps that diminish the user experience. Combining other techniques with WCAG will lead to designs that are accessible and usable for a wider array of individuals.

Here are ways designers can utilize WCAG and its criteria to help develop habits that can be applied to their creative workflow: 1. Making content perceivable can include text alternatives, proper access to multimedia, adaptable information, and ensuring content is distinguishable by clearly separating the foreground from the background.

2. Making content operable can include making it keyboardaccessible, providing enough time to complete forms, limiting flashing elements, making it easy to navigate, and allowing multiple methods of user input, whether that be a finger on a touch screen or a mouse pointer.

3. Making content understandable can include making content readable, incorporating predictable user interactions, and including user input assistance.

4. Making content robust can include making content compatible with a variety of assistive technologies and user agents.

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Implementation and Tooling

Popular tools include:

Knowing how to implement this knowledge using techniques and tooling brings it all together. When assessing designs for accessibility gaps, using tools such as automated checkers can catch many common accessibility issues that can be fixed quickly.

There are plenty of automated checkers in the accessibility ecosystem; here are a few options that are well known:

• Colour Contrast Analyzer (tpgi.com/color-contrastchecker)

• Stark Accessibility Checker (getstark.co) • WAVE Evaluation Tool (wave.webaim.org) • Axe DevTools (deque.com/axe/devtools) In addition to automated checkers, designers can choose from a variety of tools that test for color contrast to ensure designs are not only compliant per the WCAG, but also accessible for individuals with varying visual impairments.

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• WebAIM Contrast Checker (webaim.org/resources/ contrastchecker) • Who Can Use (whocanuse.com) Artificial intelligence has become the focal point of technological advancement, and the accessibility industry is moving towards implementing it to better serve all users. With that said, the current abilities of AI are not dependable enough to solely rely on it when designing for accessibility. For instance, there are plenty of AI tools that can create transcripts for video and audio content, but the transcripts tend to have grammatical and spelling errors that need to be corrected by a human. There are tools that can create images from text content, but those images may not be accessible for all visual users due to color choice and other factors. Ensuring

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE HAS BECOME THE FOCAL POINT OF TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENT, AND THE ACCESSIBILITY INDUSTRY IS MOVING TOWARDS IMPLEMENTING IT TO BETTER SERVE ALL USERS. WITH THAT SAID, THE CURRENT ABILITIES OF AI ARE NOT DEPENDABLE ENOUGH TO SOLELY RELY ON IT WHEN DESIGNING FOR ACCESSIBILITY.

proper measures are taken to assess accessibility is key to performing inclusive design.

Conclusion Accessibility is the foundation upon which inclusive design thrives, enhancing both user experiences and the creative process itself. By considering accessibility at the outset of digital design, we pave the way for more inclusive and impactful creations. Alternatives play a crucial role in ensuring individuals of all abilities have multiple pathways to access and engage with content, whether through

text-based descriptions, audio interpretations, or other modalities. Using accessible data visualizations along with the WCAG can create expansive and more equitable experiences. By embedding these principles into our workflows, we elevate the overall accessibility and quality of our designs in service of a digital landscape that strives to be truly inclusive and equitable for all.

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INCLUSIVE

BY DESIGN The articles in this issue explore the many intersections of emerging technologies, social change, and the ethical imperatives that must guide innovation.

A critical area where these themes converge is digital accessibility. I had the opportunity to sit down with Derek Featherstone, who has dedicated his career to pushing for digital experiences that not only meet technical standards but also genuinely serve disabled users. In our conversation, we discuss the evolution of digital accessibility, the importance of centering disabled

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perspectives throughout the design process, and the role of emerging technologies in building a more inclusive digital future.

Q. Tell us about your early work advocating for inclusive design in tech.

When I first started out in the web field, like many others, I viewed accessibility as just a technical standard to meet. But it became clear to me early on that we could create things that met the technical standards but didn’t actually meet the needs of people with disabilities.

A Conversation with Derek Featherstone

BY MARIA VILLAFRANCA

What does it mean to create an interface or experience that is easy and joyful for a person with a disability to use? For example, one of the requirements we have as designers is we need to create things that work with a keyboard. You can create something that works with a keyboard, but it takes 50 keystrokes to actually accomplish a task. What if we made it more usercentered and say that the actual outcome we’re after is that someone with a screen reader can complete this task in 10 or 15 keystrokes?

That thought process starts

to speak to the use of the actual technology and not just meeting the standard.

Q: You were involved with the Web Standards Project (WaSP), which successfully advocated for browsers to implement the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). What was the initial reception of those efforts?

I wasn’t part of the Web Standards Project from the beginning [in 1998], but joined in 2005. The initial reception was really quite good because we had a very specific mandate and goal.

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At the time, different browsers didn’t treat code in the same way so we had to write one set of code for Internet Explorer and another set for Netscape Navigator. The work was successful because the common goal was unifying. This wasn’t just a technical problem; it was a business problem. It wasn’t about “Hey, let’s do this because it’ll make us more efficient.” It was about connecting to end users’ goals and company goals.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines have value — they help deliver accessible technology to people with disabilities and solve a number of business goals. The connection to the business need is important for the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines to exist, not just in their current form, but in whatever future form they take. But unless we connect them to business needs or human impact, they exist in a vacuum and get treated like a bunch of rules handed down from somewhere on high. They become something we have to comply with rather than something that actually helps 78

us meet our objectives. People aren’t as motivated to act.

Q: What are some of the most common digital accessibility issues that persist today?

Keyboard accessibility is still a big one. We create really innovative interfaces, but we don’t always think through how they work with a keyboard. It’s also not just the keyboard. It’s about being flexible in the types of input we allow, whether it’s a traditional computer with a keyboard and mouse, or a trackpad, or whatever it is. Home smart devices, for example, all only work – or the first versions of them anyway – only work with voice input. How does that work for someone who has a form of disability related to their speech or who maybe can’t speak at all? Flexibility in input and adaptability for output is everything from an accessibility perspective. There’s a lot of different sensory things to consider, but ultimately, that flexibility of input and output is the single biggest problem we have, and it’s always been that way.

Things are beginning to change. Amazon Echo Show, for example, has a screen where you could have captions for the audio that’s been read out, so you have more flexibility of the output. There are different examples, but ultimately, if the input and output are flexible, a person with a disability can adapt the way they interact with it to their needs. That’s really what inclusion is all about.

Q. Is there tech or are there innovations that are working toward those solutions that you’re excited about?

The solutions have been there for years. Twenty years ago, you could go into a Windows machine and say, “I need more contrast,” and get the interface transformed to your needs.

What I’m excited about is some of the innovations that are coming out with AI. There’s a certain point where AI could become assistive technology for people with disabilities.

In other words, this piece of information that I need might be in row 32, column 6 of a table that is displayed within a set of tabs inside some other

Above: Derek Featherstone

structure within a page. With AI and the advent of co-pilots and assistants and agents, it becomes much simpler to potentially say, “Go find me this piece of data,” and it goes off and finds it. It brings the data that’s important to you rather than you needing to spend however many keystrokes going to find it. That’s super promising. At the same time, I’m also a realist and a bit of a skeptic in that I don’t know how well our systems right now can answer that kind of question, and to what level of accuracy.

Q. How else do you see AI contributing to the future of inclusive design? There has been some discussion, for 79

example, around AI being used to generate alt text, and the ethical implications of relying on AI-generated alt text compared to human generated alt text.

My head immediately goes to two things that we need to do for AI: training and fine-tuning to make sure we’re getting good results from large language models and the generative AI side of things. What I want to push for is how people with disabilities are involved in providing feedback during that training and fine-tuning process. Because we can go and create all kinds of generated alt text for something, but we need feedback from people to say, “You’re going overboard.

This is actually too much.” Or, “This is not enough detail.” Or, “I’ve reviewed these results and this is actually not giving me what I need.” The context of the webpage is also connected to the level of description. We probably need a system where someone with a visual disability can zoom in and out in terms of what level of detail they want for the type of task they’re on. We don’t get that there 80

without including people with disabilities in the process.

I also think about complex visualizations. When a city publishes their use of pesticides in the city, there’s a narrative that’s behind that the city probably wants to tell. We want citizens to be able to tell whether that narrative is actually supported by the data. The democratization of information is important. How do we make sure that, ethically, we are not building bias into these AI models?

Q. How can developers, designers, and creative professionals center disability justice in emerging technologies?

Include people with disabilities in the work early, often, and in meaningful ways.

SUPPORTERS. COUNCIL Rania Adwan Judith Anderson Kyla Astley Joe Baldwin Corinne Barthelemy Debra Brodsky Tracy Brower Alfred Byun Megan Campbell Jess Charlap Ginger Dhaliwal José dos Santos Lew Epstein Jessica Finch Renae Geraci Adam Gesuero Sara Hartmann Jessica Klay Emily Klein Kris Lonergan Tony Martignetti Jess McGuire Sascha Mombartz Michael Mooney Kate Murphy Erin Narloch Hilary Olson

Anne Petersen Shalini Prasad Ravi Rao Jennifer Rittner Kendra Roberts Karen Robichaud Susan Ryder Jamie Scheu Jonelle Simunich Melissa Steach Janet Stephenson Julie Taraska Dan Vlahos Angela Yeh

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