Check Your Tech was created as a way to reframe the way universities and colleges teach the future of technology with an underlying focus on human rights. This was a capstone project made in my final (4th) year in the Bachelor of Creative Intelligence and Innovation at UTS with 3 other students.

This is what we created.

WHAT IS IT?

Check Your Tech was largely based on curating a pilot engagement workshop, where myself as a designer and three others from different disciplines (Angelo Gajo - Business in IT, Jerwin Parker - Business in Marketing and Eleanor Salazar - Communications in Social Inquiry) explored the issues emerging at the intersection of human rights and technology. Not only this but we used this as an opportunity to research and understand the importance of considering human rights when innovating new technologies. We conducted numerous primary and secondary data research and observations such as desk research, surveys, interviews, a pop-up campaign stall and a trial engagement workshop that was displayed at UTS for a capstone reveal market day.

The insights we received in our various research and consultation methods helped shape our perspective on the situation and guided the structure of our pilot workshop. The overall aim for the workshop, after improvement and refinement, is to inform and bring awareness around the potential impacts that the development of new technologies may have on our human rights.

Our hope is that by providing these workshop experiences early on in their practices, it will enable students to perform ethically and learn the importance of human rights before the projects they work on are continued. This can encourage change in the system that exists for users that are excluded by the mainstream design, development and final output of products and services. It would also facilitate change in the existing regulatory system where systems of accountability and ethical frameworks may be implemented to safeguard us from the potential harms of new technologies.

(This project was designed under the mentorship of Monique Potts at UTS for submission to the Australian Human Rights Commission as a response to their 2018 Issues Paper.)

BRANDING

It was important to consider the concept of what the workshop could be and give it a brand. By giving it a visual identity allowed viewers and other intended audiences to identify it and the main topics we were attempting to raise. The branding took form of a logo that confined the name “Check Your Tech” in a circle with binary numbers in the background indicating positive and negative technology in the form of green versus red. The reason for the name was so people that interacted with the workshop were inspired to check over a range of questions that we encouraged them to reflect on in regard to technology and that if they were to be the ones developing or creating such technology, they made sure to ‘check’ their process. This branding was then used to not only promote this way of thinking but to be spread across social media so that we could reach our intended audience and raise awareness of the brand. I designed a range of other assets to enhance this branding such as banners, posters, invitations, brochures, workshop slides as well as interactive questions for the campaign stall.

SOCIAL MEDIA

With our intended audience being students that are learning how to ideate, create and design the technologies of the future, the best way to reach them was through online popular platforms. Check Your Tech became present on both Facebook (@checkyourtech.uts) and Instagram (@checkyourtech) using its own email of checkyourtech.uts@gmail.com that we set up, where images, posts, and conversations could be shared. We wanted users to interact and engage with us on topics to do with the future of technology and its impact on accessibility, feasibility, human rights, legality and so on. From this, a chat-bot was set up inviting people to converse with us behind the brand.

CAMPAIGN STALLS

In order to get our name out and get people to come to the stall in which we were to gather insights, a lot of preparation work had to be done. I brainstormed all the possible things that were needed to undergo such as a stall and came up with a range of things like media awareness, branding, and a variety of assets. In order to make it effective, it needed to be interactive. I wrote up three questions that were discussed as a group on large A2 pages where people that walked past were able to write down their answer. The questions made the participants really think and consider their hopes and fears for technology. While waiting for the questions, a series of A2 posters lined up the wall that was later used as conversation starters in the workshop and both market day stall. I spent a lot of time in the upcoming days to the stall and workshop spreading awareness of our presence on both Facebook and Instagram, inviting and following students from across different faculties in UTS. The more interactive the engagements were, the lasting the impact and experience are for the user.

THE WORKSHOP

The workshop was structured in a way that mimicked activities that I had written for youth groups, splitting up highly interactive activities into sections such as ice breakers, triggers, body and summary. The aim of the overall workshop is to keep participants highly engaged while allowing them to learn through the experience on the way. The icebreaker activity was designed to ease the participants into a quick innovative way to ideate a new product and then question them about the validity of it, meandering into the body of the workshop were important elements of responsible innovation. This activity was run through on market day, giving people an insight into how the workshop was run.