From Usability to Exploitability: Digital Technology and Non-Participatory Design [Editorial]

5 s e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 8 ∕ IEEE TEchnology and SocIETy MagazInE n the p ioneer ing days of computer prog ramming, computers were remote and monolithic, the programmers were the users, and the interface was provided by operators, who transformed instructions on punched cards into the programs themselves. In effect, code was being written by mathematicians, electrical engineers, and physicists who were literally making it up as they went along: both the code itself, and the ways to design and engineer code, e.g., using flow charts. Then computers got smaller and more powerful, applications became either more widespread or greater in scope, or both. Software engineering got more professional. Design methodologies for large and complicated engineering projects were produced, e.g., the traditional waterfall model for software development. The difference between functional and non-functional requirements was recognized, i.e., that the software had a function to perform, but that there were also criteria against which the performance of that function could be evaluated. The nascent software houses stopped using aptitude tests to assess suitability for hiring programmers, and recognized that having a university degree in computing or computer science constituted a sufficient qualification for the job. As the applications became more widespread, though, the programmers became suppliers to the users, and the interface was provided by the same programmers, not always successfully [1], [2]. Usability and user-friendly became buzz-words, human-computer interaction became a subject in itself, and design methodologies were produced which were intended to ensure that software engineers delivered products that were fit-for-purpose, by involving end users actively in the design and development process, e.g., participatory design, or by ensuring that systems were targeted at their users rather than forcing users to adapt in order to accommodate the system, e.g., user-centred systems design. Functional requirements had to consider using the computer or device to support achievement of a function that the user had to perform, and non-functional requirements had to take into account criteria against which to measure that performance, i.e., usability was defined (partially) in terms of achieving quantifiable performance levels with acceptable satisfaction and “cost.” Eventually, of course, computers became sufficiently small, cheap, and powerful to enable ubiquitous computing, pervasive computing, and the Internet of Things. Thus was enabled the digital transformation, the transformation of commercial processes and organizational structures through the use of digital tools and technologies, although the same transformation is impacting all forms of infrastructure: access to news, information, and entertainment; access to education, water, energy, medical treatment, and transportation; access to systems of justice, governance, and political engagement; access to communities, communal resources, and control over the local environment. However, as early as the 1990s, it was recognized that it was non-obvious how to design digital systems that were supported by this infrastructure: relationships, experiences, priorities, norms, institutions, relational economies and economies of esteem, morals, and ethical decisions — the things that people actually care about. Designing for the maintenance or sustenance of these qualitative human values as supra-functional requirements was the basis of and motivation for value-sensitive design, a design From Usability to Exploitability Digital Technology and Non-Participatory Design