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Who made this, and why?
Who profits from its use or its propagation? (easy answers like “its free, so no one profits” don’t count)
Who does it speak to; who is its audience? Are these the only people who should be part of its process?
- How does it represent its own use and its users? What cultural, class, race, gender, and other assumptions does it make, or represent itself with?
What does it explicitly value? (e.g. greater efficiency, productivity? Or connectedness, change?) Are those values appropriate to bringing about systemic change?
What labour and social relations does it assume or create? (User/owner, worker/manager, host/guest, content consumer/author, etc.)
What forms of user does it construct, and what values and assumptions are implicit in this construction? (e.g ability and bodies, names and identities, roles and capacities, individual or working with/assisted, etc.)
- What forms of privilege circulate? Access to technology, financial independence, family structures, hierarchies, knowledge or education requirements
How are emotions assumed and valued, and to what social or political ends? What options for negativity are available? Resistances, frictions, obstacles or objections to the natural “user flow”?
How is consent voiced? Can it be revoked, reconsidered, or provided in non-binary ways?
How is trust conceived? Through transparency of actions and their impacts, or through branding?
What forms of ownership are expressed? Centralized? Cooperative? State-supported?
What models of governance and decision-making inhere? Who decides the roadmap, priorities, features, financial responsibilities?
What words and metaphors are used?
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Interdependence - a “user” isn’t always an individual, but often working with others to make decisions and share work or responsibility
Identities in flux - personal identities, consent, and trust change and are contingent. When we gather personal information, we should support foundational change without stigma
Creativity - use is often inseparable from creation, mismatch and mistfit often generate uniquely valuable self-awareness and knowledge
Community and non-binary roles - people often simultaneously play different roles, assume different identities at different times and places in their livelife; they make decisions, spend money, and work with others