This chapter features the transcript of a 2019 Product Hacker podcast interview with the author produced by ArcWeb Technologies, an American technology industry consultancy, about how to use dialogue and dialogue mapping to help design ethical and responsible technology and innovation.
Sparking Dialogue about Dialogue Mapping
Ethics has been a big topic in the business world for decades, but it seems like it’s only recently come to the fore in the digital world. Why are people suddenly taking notice?
For the past several years, ethical design has been rising as a key solution to a growing problem which is how to ensure that the digital technologies and interactive platforms which most of the world is now so dependent on for everyday life assistance, are humane and sustainable now and in the future. Some of the biggest areas of ethical concern from the public perspective are privacy, anonymity, consent, data sharing and storage, online safety, user etiquette in communicating and misinformation. And this year alone we’ve heard several cases involving all of these concerns circulating in the media—Cambridge Analytica, rapid developments in machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), such as the benefits and dangers of self-driving cars, these are pushing the subject of ethical behaviours in tech to the front of both social and political debates. And currently we’ve identified many more problems than we have solutions.
Where does the concept of ethical design fit into the larger disciplines of design and user experience?
Many of the big discussions in design right now seem to center around social media. Is there something specific about social media that makes it such a thorny area for design ethics?
In our earlier discussion you introduced the notion of dialogue mapping. Could you give us a quick rundown of what it is and how it might apply to ethical concerns in design?
One way of realizing ethical technology design is through a tool called dialogue mapping developed by Jeff Conklin in his book Dialogue Mapping: Building Shared Understanding of Wicked Problems.
Dialogue mapping is about using textual and visual information to capture and communicate the full range of human experiences, ideas, voices, journeys and positions around the development of a particular social issue or the development of a product or service. Dialogue mapping works towards actualizing the ideal notion of shared understanding—not necessarily shared agreement—but shared understanding which can give everyone involved a clearer more balanced view of a complex or “wicked” problem between all stakeholders involved say within a particular organization or company or when exploring broader social issues from the perspectives of a variety of people or individuals across different groups, contexts and locations.
In practice, dialogue mapping is facilitated by specialists in transdisciplinary information mediation and communication. So these are people who are trained to catalyse conversations and also capture what arises from the collaborative synergies or conflicts within those conversations—not just one-way expression of information but two-way or multi-directional communication. They also visualize or draw maps during the conversations, depicting and analysing dialogic data developed into a range of ideas and experiences offered by small or larger groups of people in participatory meetings either face to face in real time or in virtual distributed networks. While concept mapping is a commonly used technique for brainstorming sessions, dialogue mapping takes it a step further as way to openly acknowledge all of the diverse views around a conundrum or issue and to curate or preserve the more personal and diverse aspects of the journeys of developing a product or service. So through the participatory experience of dialogue mapping, everyone involved can ideally gain a broader and more informed insight into existing problems and therefore make informed decisions that take into account the whole picture comprised of different perspectives and backgrounds, rather just internal viewpoints within the company.
For example, I recently completed a project that looked at how people experience information in everyday life use of Twitter. This project presents a textual mapping of dialogues and themes, which emerged from conversational style interviews with various people living in Boston who regularly used Twitter. The research uncovered a variety of human experiences and voices—both positive and negative—within that specific social media space which can be used to create a shared understanding of what Twitter actually means to its users on a street level as opposed to its internal corporate process. As there have been many examples in the media, like the multiple meanings of Twitter verification or the blue tick icon—where there is often a confusing disconnect between the product designer intent (such as preventing identity theft) and how it is interpreted by the product’s user (such as public outrage over the company’s apparent endorsement of controversial public figures or hate speech). So a technique like dialogue mapping can be useful here to help clarify these ambiguities and also identify and anticipate where and also why there may be a disconnect between the tech company or designer and user’s interpretations. Dialogue mapping would enable meetings where everyone can see a fully informed picture of the reasoning for a decision-making process behind a particular element of the product. By mapping dialogues within social media experiences, particularly how ubiquitous forms of data and information are experienced while using or choosing not to use these products, we can work towards transparently reconciling those disconnects or gaps in knowledge between public users, other stakeholders and the companies. One way to map visuals for shared understanding of social innovation is to make a documentary that would capture the entire research process and the social-emotional experience of producing in transdisciplinary teams. This would allow the public to see how inclusive and applicable it can be. Through such a film, the entire public could get a glimpse and a behind the scenes look at what really goes on—not just a sit-down interview about how they did it and what the key findings are, but how they lived that experience alongside other contributors like companies, non-profits and members of the public. This would work towards breaking the fourth wall because each of these participants in the process could speak directly to camera and let us know how they feel about what’s going on through internal monologues and as we see the action. I feel this would be very valuable for advancing public understanding of transdisciplinary innovation projects.
Maybe you could walk us through how we might apply dialogue mapping to a hypothetical scenario. Let’s say we’re a product team that has discovered that the design of our opt-in process is coaxing people to give up more personal information than they might otherwise be comfortable with. How would we use dialogue mapping to explore this?
Ok so we’re discovering that this particular process is compromising people’s personal information and many users are angry about where their personal information is going and losing trust in the product and have perhaps stopped using our product altogether to boycott our company which we really don’t want to happen! If it came to that it would probably be best to rethink the design of the opt-in process so that users could have more transparency and control over privacy concerns and where their data ends up. To avoid this outcome, dialogue mapping ideally should be used before and during the design and implementation stages of a new function of element. Dialogue mapping could be used by a product team leader or outside consultant to enable a shared stakeholder conversation, perhaps with a selection of stakeholder representatives sitting in the same room recording answers on a whiteboard—around the issue kicked off by these questions for product designers and developers: “What is our opt in process asking users to do?” for the company: “Why do we need an opt-in process?” what are the business or environmental reasons and for the user community: “How does our opt-in experience make you feel?” What does it mean to you? Of course, the conversation would continue beyond that single meeting and the facilitator would monitor and capture any changes to these initial answers and integrate these into the dialogue map.
The range of answers from various stakeholders should reveal and make transparent these deeper insights we wouldn’t normally have access to if designers and the business were implementing designs without first consulting using this more participatory method. And then we could capture the range of perspectives and perhaps make a decision to include an opt-out function and further information for the users about privacy, using empathy from the personal understandings gained from the holistic picture of nuanced views and journeys around this function combined in a dialogue map.
I think one of the biggest challenges for ethical design is justifying it from a business standpoint—most designers and product developers probably want to be doing work that holds up ethically. Do you think there’s a business case for adopting new tools and techniques designed to help solve these ethical conundrums?
Yes, I think the business case involves advocating for a new business model called stakeholder-centred management. Harvard Business School published a book called “Conscious Capitalism: Unleashing of the Heroic Spirit of Business” by the Co-CEO of Whole Foods Market John Mackey and Raj Sisodia. Stakeholder-centred management centred on how companies related to the stakeholder, and how successful they became in terms of profitability and business ethics is around the balanced and transparent relationships between the stakeholders and the shareholders. SCM businesses are those that build trust with their customers, and this trust brings rewards in terms of not just profitability but also attracts those who are willing to invest in this way of working (both in terms of their time as well as their money). Their products and services are safe and to be relied upon. The key stakeholders are not just the consumer, the supplier, the investor and the staff but also the environment and the local community the business impacts upon.
So the justification is this: if tech companies don’t invest resources, time and effort into adopting new tools and techniques to respond to these ethical challenges in the long term, it could damage their brands and the trust current consumers of social media such as millennial or digital natives—place in their products. In terms of long-term cultural change, it is now recognized by digital ethicists working in social media contexts, that much of this problem stems from Silicon Valley’s internal staff cultures of “progress for progress’s sake” and “move fast and break things”. We need to develop ethical and sustainable frameworks for tech companies which generate shared understandings between all stakeholders, including those using and those affected by their products and services. There is a need for human roles such as dialogue mapping facilitators within tech companies to constantly monitor and respond to emerging popular meanings around their products from every stakeholder’s perspective. In this way, ethical tech design using dialogue mapping as a tool could over time prevent harmful consequences on people, organisations and tech-dependent societies.