Guiding principles for responsible tech
- Protect attention
Help users control their attention. Don’t rely on growth and retention strategies to hijack attention with unnecessary demands, distractions, and requests.
- Can we design to minimize the consumption of attention, both on and off screen?
- Can we consider where adding delays or friction could help keep attention and intention aligned? A simple pause, button-press, or interstitial dialog can snap the user out of harmful addictive loops.
- Is a screen really necessary? Screens are particularly susceptible to attention hijacking, voice or in-person interactions are far less so.
- Design for intentionality
Encourages people to reflect on their intentions. Then help them act upon them. Don’t prioritize your intentions as a designer over the intentions of your users.
- Can we designed defaults and incentives that help users reflect on and make choices aligned with their values?
- Is our product helping people to spend time and make choices in ways they want to? One way to measure this is with regret. Can we ask people about their regrets?
- Design for valuable experience
People are complete humans who require a balance of challenges and satisfaction. Don’t deliver hyper-stimulating experiences without off-ramps, breaks, or other tools to protect against addiction.
- Can we better enable users to spend meaningful time together outside of a product?
- What capacities or resources make people feel well? How can tech strengthen those capacities without taking over their lives?
- Can we design defaults and incentives that encourage people to engage in their favorite valuable experiences?
- Once we've created a valuable experience, how can we help refocus attention on what matters?
- Can we create accountability between us and our users? Can we solicit feedback about whether your product enables valuable experiences?
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Learned about these principles in a foundational course over at the Center for Humane Technology.