Activity 1: where do you feel at home with the digital?

Defining digital residency opposed to feeling like a visitor

Feeling deeply resident in a technology space

I have written this web page using Warwick University's Sitebuilder system. It's a system I am very familiar with. I know all of the types of page that can be made with it, and how to navigate its menus and interfaces to make pages. I know how it can organise pages, make them available to specific people of groups of people. I also know some of the more esoteric aspects, like how to use coding to change how pages look or to add interactivity. I'm not alone in this. And although the system itself doesn't include a social aspect for page creators, I know where I can contact them online and discuss things. The feeling of using this system is akin to being in a well-equipped, familiar, office space. I feel at home in it. Furthermore, over time I have contributed to decisions about how it is designed (I was part of the original design team many years ago). I really do feel resident in this space, almost as much as I am in my own physical home. I can immerse myself in creating web pages, and not even notice the hours go by (especially when I get into the more sophisticated aspects of coding interactions). This is an example of what Dave White and Alison Le Cornu called "digital residency".

Just visiting

We can feel more or less resident in a space, physical or digital. For example, I feel fully resident in most of my own house. However, when I go into my children's rooms, I'm a bit more of a visitor. I furnished the rooms, paid for most of the contents, but still I feel a bit of an outsider. I helped them to build their own computers, but looking at the games they play on them, I always feel like a visitor, relying on them to show me around.

Similarly, not everyone who uses Sitebuilder feels like a resident. Quite a lot of people dip into it occasionally, remembering (painfully) how to do a few types of task. It feels a bit alien to them. They get in, do what they need, and leave. And they certainly haven't developed a long term relationship with it. Which is a problem, as it was designed as a system that would allow anyone in the University to create web pages. This exclusivity might be because of how the system is designed. It might result from how it is supported and how its use is communicated. There could also be social factors at play - especially when it comes to the more esoteric system knowledge involving coding. The knowledge and the people who have it is well hidden. Sitebuilder also has a permissions system, which can be used to exclude some people from the opportunity to discover what it does. In these cases, people may feel as if they are only visitors to the system, not so at home.

Virtual and augmented technology spaces

The Sitebuilder example, where we actively go into and work within a system on a computer (whether it is an installed application or a web site), is what we can call a "virtual space". Historically, a different kind of human-technology relationship was more common, and has in recent years returned to significance - where a technology augments and extends our experience and capabilities in physical spaces. For example, smart phones and watches. Although we can dwell in them for long periods of time (for example, doom scrolling in X), we can use them to augment a physical space - for example, playing music, giving us reminders, allowing us to bring people into the space using remote connectivity. As opposed to virtual spaces, we can call these augmented spaces. We sometimes use technologies to help us feel more resident in a physical space. For example, I might show photos from my phone to other people in the space. Or we might use them to take ourselves out of the space into one that we are more comfortable with, for example by ignoring what is going on around us, headphones on playing music, and scrolling through an app. Similar principles apply, we can feel more or less at home in these spaces. And we can critically evaluate and challenge the ways in which people feel included or excluded by the design and use of the tech.

A Design Thinking method

In Design Thinking, we aim to discover a and describe significant situations in which people experience and act. This is necessarily a participatory activity - helping people to reflect on their own situations. Together, we analyse and critically evaluate those situations, and where necessary, creatively respond through [re]designing together. This method is also known as design anthropology.

Importantly, we don't start off focussing on systems, technologies, gadgets etc. We start from human experience. Humans experience the world from the perspective of situations that they find themselves in, more or less deliberately. Sometimes we have a lot of control over the features of a situation. Other times we have little control. We can also empathise with other people in similar or different situations. In Design Thinking we share our experiences of our own situations, and we seek to empathise and understand those of other people.

Design Thinking inevitably engages with questions of power and ethics. Who should design and determine the form of situations? How do we do this when people are collaborating in situations? What values should we apply when designing?

Situations in the modern world are heavily dependent on technologies and systems, the design and implementation of which is controlled by people who are very distant from the situations on which they have an impact. We benefit from using those systems. But at the same time we give up some control. We might also disempower other people in the situation. For example, consider a peer group that unthinkingly uses WhatsApp for communications. The "network effect" pressurises all members of the group into using Meta technologies, and giving some of their personal data to Meta. That might not be in the best interests of the members. Some of them may not really want to do use Meta. But continue accessing the situation of the peer group, they have little choice. They either change their beliefs, or are excluded. Consider the ethics of that. There is a branch of ethics we need to apply here, called technology ethics. Unfortunately, we live in a world dominated by powerful organisations and people who control the technologies that we use, but do not necessarily share our values or care about us as people. This raises some seriously difficult ethical issues when we critically evaluate and creatively respond to thinking about our situations. However, there are things we can do to make things progressively better. That starts with understanding how things are, what is possible, and how we can collectively [re]design: Design Thinking.

Identify your digital situations

This is a variation of an activity designed by White and Le Cornu.

Step 1

List significant situations in which you are focussed heavily on an entirely digital, virtual, reality, as with the case of me Sitebuilder. Put each on a separate post-it note.

List on post-it notes the digitally augmented spaces (including your personal space), and the digital features of those spaces.

List cases where you are just a visitor to a space.

Step 2

Divide up a large sheet of paper, placed in portrait orientation, into four quarters. On the left end of the horizontal line write "visitor", and on the right end write "resident". On the top of the vertical line write "satisfied". And on the bottom "unsatisfied".

Step 3

Consider each of the systems, platforms, spaces, listed in Step 1. Place them on the sheet, each one in a position between visitor and resident, indicating the extent to which you feel at home or not.

Step 4

Now review each post-it note. How satisfied are you with its status as resident or visitor? Do you want to feel more at home? If so, move it down on towards the dissatisfied end of the axis. Or if you are happy with how it is, move it up to the satisfied end (keeping it on its position between visitor and resident).

Critically evaluating experiences of systems

People can feel and behave as if they are resident in a virtual or augmented space. Or they they can feel as if they are visitors.

When people feel this way, as visitors, there are questions we should ask:

1. Is that OK? Do they need to engage so deeply with the system? Or do they just need to get in, do what they need, and leave? What do they lose or gain from this very minimal engagement? Are there possibilities that they are missing out on? How are power relationships being created and reinforced?
2. Do people want to be more resident, or have a digital space in which they can get many of these things done in a more familiar and homely way?
3. If the visitor mode is appropriate, does the system efficiently support getting necessary things done as quickly or simply as possible?
4. Is the system designed to expect too much out of people? Did the designers expect them to become at home in it, when in fact they just want to get things done?

When people feel they are resident in a space, we should also ask questions:

1. What helps them to feel resident? What features of the space? Are there social aspects that help?
2. How is do their previous experiences and capabilities predispose them to feeling resident?
3. How might they feel more resident?
4. How might they help others to feel more resident?
5. What more could be done to allow them to get more out of the space?
6. What should we avoid changing, as we might unintentionally damage the sense of residency?