Themes from Camp Digital

Due to train strikes, Camp Digital was a live stream affair for me, but the talks were fantastic which made up for the FOMO (a bit).

They’ll all be out on YouTube soon I think. Looking forward to checking out the ones I missed. Here are some themes from the day.

Beware of heroics

Katy Arnold gave a talk on design maturity and how to have impact. It made clear that although these frameworks are useful tools, we should not die on a hill over them.

Drawing on experiences from GDS and the Home Office, there were many ‘I feel seen’ moments, particularly around trying to swoop in and be a ‘UX hero’. There’s a chance of alienating people, reducing collaboration where services feel your throwing them under the bus. Katy gave a personal example, and I can 100% relate.

Inclusivity throughout everything

In a similar vein, at a panel on diversity and inclusive design, hosted by Deborah Dada, the idea that ‘tech is full of experts with all the knowledge’ came up as a barrier. There was an emphasis on how to get involved, work cross community, and be aware of personal bias.

Thinking about who gets to design things, and who gets to shape the future was part of Julian Thompson’s incredible talk on Afrofuturism. This included thoughts on racial inequalities, who gets to dream about and design the future, and digital colonisation.

I didn’t know what digital colonisation meant. Danielle Coleman describes it in the Michigan Journal of Race and Law as “a modern-day “Scramble for Africa” where largescale tech companies extract, analyse, and own user data for profit and market influence with nominal benefit to the data source.”

Bad services are not inevitable

Lou Downe’s talk was, as expected, a banger. If you’re not familiar go and read their book Good Services quick, before the sequel Bad Services comes out.

They talked about users being forced to design services themselves if we do not commit to designing them. That there are things users need from every service.

They explored the way that a lot of the ‘sharing economy’ ride share apps, accommodation booking apps (you know the ones) have resulted in harms and unintended consequences, but that as the tech company doesn’t ‘own the thing’ they’re not held responsible.

Things people said that will stick in my head

Likely paraphrasing terribly but:

“Be humble, pragmatic and adaptable”

“Service design can (sometimes) be harmful”

“Centre the needs of disabled people first and design out”

“If you just focus on compliance, you lose out”

“Who gets to dream about the future?”