Project Objective

The project for the "Ethics in Tech Design" unit is a video that will provide an overview of your group's plan on how to redesign "bad" technology designs. The content should summarize your dialogues for the prompts released over the four weeks of the unit, and highlight the most important, interesting, or contrarian ideas that surfaced. This should be a fun and creative way for your group to re-imagine different technologies by diagnosing current problems, proposing viable solutions, and maybe even dreaming up some new features and services. 

The Video is due 02/18 at 12pm.

Dialogue Guidelines  

Review the Dialogue Trainee Manual for information on how your dialogue sessions should be conducted.

Appoint one of your group members as the Facilitator. The facilitator's role will be to lead each discussion, and to keep the group organized. This means maintaining the focus of the group, helping to move the conversation towards the end goal of the creation of the video, and scheduling meetings and making sure everyone attends. Only one person should serve as the facilitator for the entire unit. The facilitator for this project should be different from your facilitator for the last unit.

Meet with your group each week for at least one hour to hold a discussion on the assigned prompt. Prompts will be released at the beginning of each week. See the Thursday lecture information in the Course Calendar for the prompt and any additional instructions for that week's dialogue session.  

Each group member should be given an equal voice in the dialogues, and have equal input in the video. 

Keep the discussions friendly and avoid arguments (this isn't Twitter!), but don't shy away from ideas that might be considered controversial.  

Documenting Your Discussion on the Weekly Prompts 

Appoint one of your group members as the Scribe. Only one person should serve as the scribe for the entire unit. The scribe for this project should be different from your scribe for the last unit.

The scribe's role will be to keep notes for each session. The ideas the group wants to highlight in the video should be recorded, along with any context you want to provide for why those ideas are important (Did an idea trigger a long dialogue? Were there diverging opinions on it when it was raised? Was it an idea that was new to the entire group?). You don't need to turn in the notes, but they should be reflected in the final production of the video. 

Video Production

Record a 30 minute video. For this project, each group member doesn't need to speak on camera, but does need to contribute in some meaningful way. That could be by preparing graphics (feel free to make use of slides and animations), stock footage, assisting with filming, working on the script, etc. Make sure to have interesting visuals, but don't hesitate to have group members speaking directly to the camera as well. 

The video can be recorded incrementally and edited to put the pieces together, or it can be recorded all in one session. It's up to you. 

When you turn in your video, make sure to note in the introduction who was the facilitator and who was the scribe. 

The Scribe will add the video file to their shared Google drive folder for the course. Ahead of the deadline, the scribe should send Abby an email or slack message noting that your drive is the one that the TAs should check to retrieve the submission. 

Expectations of Group Effort

All members of the group should contribute their fair share to the dialogues and the video. The Facilitator and Scribe are expected to put in some extra work. These roles will rotate in each unit, meaning everyone in your group will serve as either the facilitator or scribe, thus the work will balance out over the course of the semester. 

A form will be circulated to each group member after the assignment is turned in so that they can assign what they thought was the effort each person put into the dialogues and video. These effort reports will be factored into the individual grades that will be assigned to the students in the group.   

Prof. KB will be grading the videos, and is very interested in what you have to say. Some of you will go on to work at big tech companies following graduation, and your ideas may shape the next phase of the state-of-the-art technologies. This project will help you think about what is possible and good for future tech.