I have been paying attention to the meme pages recently, and it is noticeable that the phrase “We live in a society’’ has blown up the internet in many aspects. The phrase itself is usually used to describe society’s inequality, either in a blaming way or just spitting out the facts. But besides its meaning, what had me thinking is our positions as designers in society and what actions can we take to change the sad reality.
Instead of jumping straight into the conclusion, I will need to look at what other people did to find myself some inspirations.
The first example is about disabled people.
According to an article written by Karina Hernandez on make it, people with disabilities are still hard to find jobs, which leads to inequality compare to people without disabilities. In Karina’s report, one of the interviewees said that she wants to “have a sense of purpose every day and help people”. It is not hard to tell that people with disabilities want to be included. Luckily, many people are out there and trying to build a better society for everyone, especially for the disabled. DAWN (Diverse Avatar Working Network) Café is set in Tokyo, aiming to help the disabled find jobs and prove they can work just like others. Most of the services in the café are done by disabled patients using robot avatars.
One of the workers claimed that he finally knows how it feels like to work, and it makes him happy, which is intriguing because I am inspired by the idea of using technologies (or any media) to link people together to create a society that includes all kind of people, in other words, a healthy community. Besides, users might be more emotional when they feel like they are included in the product, which is another thing that inspired me from the concept of the robot café.
In addition to the disabled, there are also inequalities happening in other parts of society. One of those is Donald Trump used his power and popularities to rig the election.
Tracy Ma gave a talk on Nicer Tuesdays. During the conversation, she showcased her project, which is an interactive web page that pops up Trump’s tweets when scrolling down the page. It looks like the tweets are trying to insult the readers with total lies (just like the reality). I like this idea because letting the audiences have actual interactions with the product will increase the level of immersion.
In conclusion, societies are always unequal. We can do as designers to expose these inequalities and use the technologies or other media to link people back together to let them feel included in society. Interactions are significant because providing a good level of immersion can lead to better results or understandings between people.
References:
Karina Hernandez, People with disabilities are still struggling to find employment — here are the obstacles they face
D&AD, Avatar Robot Cafe
Nicer Tuesdays, Nicer Tuesdays: Tracy Ma