Designing a Designing a Feminist Alexa Feminist Alexa An experiment in feminist conversation design
Contents Introduction 4 Approaches to Diversity & Inclusion 6 Fellowship Overview 7 Workshop Design 8 Day one 10 Context Purpose Persona Creation Day two 12 Refjning Ideas Storyboarding Conversation Design Idea generation Day three 14 Prototyping Presenting Refmecting
Protoypes 16 Conversation Design Without Coding 20 Feedback 22 Conclusion 24
Introduction “…we had talk enough but no The UAL Creative Computing conversation; Institute fellowships represent a there was nothing substantial part of the Institute’s annual public programme which discussed.” exists to connect students, practitioners and researchers at - Samuel Johnson the University of the Arts London with an international community of creative computational professionals, artists and activists. This report aims to give an overview of what the programme involved and how the first UAL Creative Computing Institute’s fellowship engaged with the UAL community and the broader technology and arts industry. When facing the task of how to Creative Computing Institute was an The broad context for the project is design a workshop that would allow opportunity to ponder these difficult the gendering of personal intelligent participants to imagine and prototype questions through practice, and to assistants (PIAs) which are so often feminist conversational interfaces, challenge ourselves as designers of characterised as female. As Jaqueline one question kept nagging at the education and technology to come up Feldman says, Feminist Internet team: WTF is a with some answers. feminist conversation? What kind of “By creating interactions that exchange between a human and a encourage consumers to understand piece of technology would qualify as the objects that serve them as ‘feminist’? How could the feminist women, technologists abet the nature of the exchange be measured prejudice by which women are by the designers of the technology? considered objects.” 1 Could there ever be a feminist response to ‘Hey Alexa, what’s the As well as this female weather like today?’ Being awarded characterisation, the way PIAs are the inaugural fellowship at UAL’s new programmed to respond to abuse 1 Feldman, J. (2016) The Bot Politic , The New Yorker: bit.ly/AlexaReport01 4 Designing a Feminist Alexa Introduction
The fellowship programmed launched with a seminar where we set the issues in context, and heard from industry experts Alex Fefegha (Founder and Head Creative Technologist, Comuzi) Josie Young (Feminist AI Researcher) Elena Sinel (Founder, Acorn Aspirations & Teens in AI) Check out the seminar on YouTube: bit.ly/AlexaReport1 - and yes, people actually verbally Another context is the rise of voice driven by what they ‘say’ - which is, abuse these devices as though they technology, which is predicted to of course, shaped by the data they are real women 2 - is problematic. shift the landscape of search and have collected about us. As the voice Responses that are coy, or even e-commerce in the coming years. 3 ‘revolution’ unfolds, we see a fantastic flirtatious, or which simply ‘don’t Google and Amazon voice assistants opportunity to build conversational compute’ abusive remarks are are colonizing the world of electronic interfaces that have drivers beyond woefully inadequate. At Feminist devices like Google Home, Amazon commerce - drivers around positive Internet we expect better than this, Echo, smart speakers, smart displays, social change and wellbeing. In and believe that PIAs should educate phones, headphones TVs, cars, other words, we want to imagine as well as simply comply. We want laptops and wearables, conditioning technologies that can empower their to see PIAs that reflect interesting, people to use voice in a way that users rather than just help them nuanced understandings of gender, becomes more and more natural. So, search and shop. that respond adequately when they it is going to become more and more receive verbal harassment, and which common to talk to and be listened So, with the help of our learning support the advancement of internet to by the devices that surround partners, we gathered 40 UAL equalities. us, and have consumer behaviour students and several Alexas together for two intensive 3-day workshops, with a mission to imagine and prototype personal 2 Fessler, L. (2017) We tested bots like Siri 3 McCue, TJ. (2018) Okay Google: Voice intelligent assistants that would and Alexa to see who would stand up to Search Technology And The Rise Of Voice meet a meaningful human need, and sexual harassment , Quartz: Commerce , Forbes embody feminist values. Here’s how it bit.ly/AlexaReport02 bit.ly/AlexaReport03 happened... 5 Designing a Feminist Alexa Introduction
Approaches to Diversity and Inclusion “the inaugural CCI Staff Briefing College of Arts. It was a great opportunity for course leaders Fellowship has The main goal of the CCI and researchers at UAL to find out fellowships is to engage the UAL been awarded more about the programme and learning community in active how their students could engage to the Feminist project work and co-production in with Designing a Feminist Alexa the field of computational practice. Internet project in opportunity. In order to do so, it is crucial to recognition of their keep UAL staff informed about opportunities that students can innovative approach benefit from, and therefore, the to exploring the Institute is committed to create spaces where UAL staff can be development of involved too. inclusive emerging technologies.” In our efforts to spread the word about the programme, on the 8th - Ben Stopher, Dean, of October 2018, we held a Staff UAL CCI Briefing session at Camberwell In line with the UAL Creative application form was simple, jargon- intersectional nature of feminism, Computing Institute’s commitment free and friendly. We welcomed explaining that gender oppression to diversity in technology and digital students to approach us if they felt often intersects with other forms of inclusion, we took several steps to unsure they would fit in: oppression, such as capitalism, or ensure the programme celebrated colonialism. 4 Aspects of the workshop diversity and was inclusive. The that focused on Human Centred “We believe it’s very important workshop facilitators, learning Design placed emphasis on being to have a diverse group of people partners, speakers and panellists respectful of people from different taking part. Everybody’s welcome! If represented different ages, cultures and backgrounds, and the you’re thinking: “That sounds great, ethnicities, nationalities, genders, recognising the danger of falling into a but it’s not for me because x or y”, gender identities and values, which we ‘sympathetic’ rather then empathetic our email is open”. felt was important so that students role, when trying to solve social could recognise themselves in the By nature, the workshops explored problems. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi’s programme, and explore the topic issues of diversity, tackling gender Ted Talk, The Dangers of the Single from different perspectives. We bias both in the technology industry Story was invaluable in this regard. 5 required no prior technical experience, and in algorithms, and encouraged and made sure that the language students to look for ways to mitigate of the call for applications and the against this. We emphasised the 4 We gave Patricia Hill Collins’ ‘Matrix of 5 Ngozi Adichie, C. (2009) The Danger Domination’ as a reference here. See Collins, of a Single Story, TED: P. H. (1990), ‘Black Feminist Thought in the bit.ly/AlexaReport05 Matrix of Domination’ in Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment , pp.221–238. 6 Designing a Feminist Alexa Approaches to Diversity and Inclusion
Fellowship Overview • 53 applications • 1 public seminar Programme Applicant data • 2 three-day workshops • 42 participants → 12 fjrst generation • 2 key learning partners entrants to University • +200 UAL students and stafg → 12 EU students → 18 International students • +100 industry people → 12 Home (UK) students • 8 feminist Alexa prototypes • 1 public prototype launch event 7 Designing a Feminist Alexa Fellowship Overview
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