Designing Ethically: The Tagged.com Story

Designing Ethically

Communicating Conﬂict
Design For the Integrated Experience

1

A Story About Conﬂict

“Please Restore My: Reputation

Dignity

Privacy”

EuroIA 2007: Ethics Panel Joe Lamantia 2

2

Themes of this story
• conﬂict as aspect of social media
• how design responds to conﬂict
• ethical consequences of design
decisions


3

May 2007 - Tagged.com invite emails proliferate

Anonymous

Anonymous has added you as a friend on Tagged.

Is Anonymous your friend?

Please respond or Anonymous may think you said no :(


4

YASNS (Yet Another Social Networking Site)


5

From: Anonymous <anonymous@gmail.com>
Date: May 5, 2007 4:38 PM
Subject: Re: Anonymous has Tagged you! :)
To: Joe Lamantia<joe.lamantia@gmail.com >

Hi Joe -

Sorry about this email - it was not sent intentionally by me and you should
ignore it. *Deﬁnitely do not visit tagged.com*

-Anonymous


6

Date: May 5, 2007 4:38 PM
Subject: Re: Anonymous has Tagged you! :)
To: Joe Lamantia<joe.lamantia@gmail.com >

Ouch. I'm really sorry about that.

I got an invite from someone and then went through the registration process
which checks your contacts from GMail list as part of the registration funnel
and allows you to add users in your contacts.

Little did I know that below the fold, it included every email recipient from
my GMail, so when I clicked submit, it sent to every contact in my GMail
account including all my email lists.

How embarrassing for me. :( I should have read the copy on the page ﬁrst.
Sorry again.


7

Tagged.com Turns Proﬁtable - May Be Fastest Growing Social
Network
“Tagged is also very aggressive with signing up new users.
At registration users are strongly encouraged to invite their entire address
book as friends.
It’s a highly viral, albeit controversial, way to quickly add lots of new users.”

Michael Arrington (of TechCrunch)
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/05/09/tagged-turns-proﬁtable-may-be-fastest-growing-social-
network/


8

From: “Anonymousquot; <anonymous@gmail.com>
Date: September 13, 2007 10:34:28 AM EDT
To: quot;Joe Lamantiaquot; <joe@joelamantia.com>
Subject: Re: Tagged.com email address harvesting

Ugh. Don't make me relive that experience. The funny things is that
most of the facebook apps that I'm installing these days feature
the opt out method of inviting your friends, e.g. the ﬂixter quiz.

Anyway, here's the apology I wrote to all my contacts. If you
publish anything about this, I would appreciate if you not mention
me by name, for obvious reasons.
-Anonymous


9

Date: May 8, 2007 1:59 PM
Subject: PLEASE STOP SENDING EMAILS TO PEOPLE IN MY ADDRESS
BOOK!!!!!
To: customer service <support@tagged.com>
Hi - when I signed up for tagged.com you fooled me into giving you all
the email addresses in my gmail address book. Now all 783 contacts
appear to be getting emails even though I canceled my tagged.com
account.

PLEASE MAKE THIS STOP IMMEDIATELY!

-Anonymous


10

From: customer service <support@tagged.com>
Date: May 8, 2007 1:59 PM
Subject: Re: PLEASE STOP SENDING EMAILS TO PEOPLE IN MY
ADDRESS BOOK!!!!!
To: Anonymous <anonymous@gmail.com>

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Tagged.

We have removed your invitations. We apologize for the inconvenience we
have caused you and your friends. If you need help with anything else
please let us know.

Sincerely,

Alex
Customer Support


11

The experience of being Tagged
“What happened next was nightmarish. My inbox started ﬁlling up with auto-
responses, since tagged was basically emailing everyone and everything in
my inbox.
Emails were sent to prospective employers, jeopardizing my job prospects
with them. Emails were also sent to old girlfriends, some of who responded
quite angrily. Emails were sent to professional colleagues, some of whom will
be listening to the very presentation you are giving.
I must've sent over a 100 personal responses to people apologizing profusely
and explaining that the email was not sent intentionally.”
-Anonymous


12

YASNS (Yet Another Social Networking Scam)


13

More than an inconvenience -

Is this ethical…?


14

Depends on how you look at it!

To Users / Customers To the Business
• Considerable damage to social fabric • Rising number of users

• Individual • Rapid growth in registration
• Group • Leveraging network strategy
• Community
• Lower customer acquisition costs
• Privacy violation • Proﬁtability
• Emotional discomfort
>> Positive outcomes
• Unknown future costs

>> Negative experience


15

Clear conﬂict: users vs. business


16

How is design involved?


17

The user experience is the product!


18

User Experience:
All aspects of the system, solution, product or
design that users experience in some way.


19

Designer:
Person making design decisions that shape the
user experience - IA, ID, VD, UXA, etc..


20

How does this involve ethics?
1. Generally
2. Speciﬁcally


21

“Ethical dilemmas occur when
values are in conﬂict.”

Source: American Library Association Code of Ethics - adopted June 28, 1995


22

Main Entry: eth·ic
Etymology: Middle English ethik, from Middle French ethique, from Latin
ethice, from Greek EthikE, from Ethikos
1. the discipline dealing with what is good and bad and with moral duty
and obligation
2. a : a set of moral principles : a theory or system of moral values

b : the principles of conduct governing an individual or a group

c : a guiding philosophy

d : a consciousness of moral importance

Source: http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/ethics


23

“dealing with what is good and bad”


24

Designing an experience means
deciding what is “good” and “bad”
in many ways.


25

Design works to understand users
• how they think
• what they value
>> build empathy
>> create relationships


26

People do not agree all the time…

…Conﬂict is natural and inevitable


27

Many forms and expressions of conﬂict:
• Mental Model • Language

• Task Flow • Cultural Concept

• Priority • Ownership

• Precedents • Pace

• Information Needs • Context

• Terminology • Emotion

• Labeling • Identity

• Function • Conﬁdentiality

• Legality
• Interaction


28

Specific context from computer ethics field
quot;A typical problem in computer ethics arises because there is a policy vacuum
about how computer technology should be used. Computers provide us with
new capabilities and these in turn give us new choices for action.
Often, either no policies for conduct in these situations exist or existing
policies seem inadequate. A central task of computer ethics is to determine
what we should do in such cases, that is, formulate policies to guide our
actions....
One difficulty is that along with a policy vacuum there is often a conceptual
vacuum. Although a problem in computer ethics may seem clear initially, a
little reflection reveals a conceptual muddle.
What is needed in such cases is an analysis that provides a coherent
conceptual framework within which to formulate a policy for action.“

Moor, James H. (1985) quot;What Is Computer Ethics?quot; In Bynum, Terrell Ward, ed. (1985)
Computers and Ethics, Blackwell, 266-75. [Published as the October 1985 issue of
Metaphilosophy.]


29

quot;According to Moor, the computer revolution is occurring in two stages.
The first stage was that of quot;technological introductionquot; in which computer
technology was developed and refined. This already occurred in America
during the first forty years after the Second World War.
The second stage -- one that the industrialized world has only recently
entered -- is that of quot;technological permeationquot; in which technology gets
integrated into everyday human activities and into social institutions, changing
the very meaning of fundamental concepts, such as quot;moneyquot;, quot;educationquot;,
quot;workquot;, and quot;fair electionsquot;.

Computer Ethics
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-computer/


30

“Just as the major ethical theories of Bentham and Kant were developed in
response to the printing press revolution, so a new ethical theory is likely to
emerge from computer ethics in response to the computer revolution.”

Krystyna Gorniak-Kocikowska, quot;The Computer Revolution and the Problem of Global
Ethicsquot; 1996,


31

Many design decisions require
compromise


32

Design decisions have ethical
aspects…

…and ethical consequences.


33

In social media, network
mechanisms amplify the effects of
design decisions


34

Design decisions affect more
people, in more ways.


35

The design of integrated
experiences affects the physical
and tangible aspects of life.


36

Conﬂict presents ethical dilemmas
design does not yet address.


37

Conﬂicts present ethical dilemmas
for designers.


38

Design must understand conﬂict to
support informed ethical decisions.


39

Design cannot resolve ethical
dilemmas alone.


40

Design must educate stakeholders
• discovered conﬂicts
• values affected
• necessary compromises
• ethical implications of decisions


41

Conﬂict: The Missing Ingredient


42

Current design approaches do not
speciﬁcally address conﬂict.


43

Many design approaches:
• Elements of Experience

• Emotional Design

• Forces of User Experience

• Experience Design

• Design Maturity Model

• Making Meaning


44

Many design approaches:
• User Centered Design

• User Experience Honeycomb

• User Centric Design

• Contextual Design

• Activity Centered Design

• Participatory Design


45


46

Design is not prepared to discover,
communicate, educate all parties.


47

A Conﬂicted (Integrated) Future


48

Quechup is rotten: don't accept invites
While you were Burning / vacationing / spacing out ofﬂine this Labor Day
weekend, many folks online were hit with invitations from a social networking
service called Quechup that violates your address book, and abuses user
trust by spamming all your contacts.
Now that people are coming back from the Labor Day holiday, expect a bunch
of invites -- I've received a dozen just this morning. Delete 'em if you know
what's good for you
Posted by Xeni Jardin, September 4, 2007 6:30 AM
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/09/04/quechup-is-rotten-do.html


49

Are You Getting Quechup Spammed?
“One controversial issue among social networks is how hard they should push
for user acquisition. Most social networks these days let you to import your
email address book in some way (Twitter is the latest), but most make it clear
if they’re about to mail your contacts.
One site that’s catching people off guard is Quechup: we’ve got a volley of
complaints about them in the mailbox this weekend, and a quick Google
reveals that others were caught out too.
The issue lies with their “check for friends” form: during signup you’re asked to
enter your email address and password to see whether any of your friends are
already on the service. Enter the password, however, and it will proceed to
mail all your contacts without asking permission. This has led to many users
issuing apologies to their friends for “spamming” them inadvertently. Hopefully
the bad PR on this one will force them to change the system.”
September 2, 2007 — 03:05 AM PDT — by Pete Cashmore
http://mashable.com/2007/09/02/quechup/


50

Rancid Bacn
“It's getting easier and easier for services to raid your address book.
I got nearly a dozen notes from people I don't even know today, all asking me
to join their network at a service called Quechup. quot;Wow,quot; I thought, quot;this
service is really getting traction.quot;
Then I got a note from Scott, pointing out that the service had automatically
sent email to his entire address book without his participation. My guess is
that it's not quite that automatic, but there's deﬁnitely a danger here... a
danger to services that end up alienating people by sending email they didn't
expect, a danger to people who end up alienating their network, and a danger
to my (and your) inbox, which is already overﬂowing.”
Seth Godin
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/09/rancid-bacn.html


51

3 shifts in culture show growing
technology permeation


52

These shifts indicate a future of
integrated virtual and physical user
experiences


53

Integration = greater complexity,
connectedness, and awareness


54

Integration means increases in:
• potential for conﬂict
• effects of design decisions
• ethical dilemmas for design(ers)


55

1. Social shift


56

The Social Shift
• Network effects

• Group and community dynamics
• Social memory

• Social identity mechanisms

• Visible cultural differences

• Shifting organizational structures
• Distributed organizations

• Knowledge markets

• Tagging / folksonomies

• Power distance dichotomies

• Overlapping identities (personal / professional)


57

Unilateral is now multilateral


58

Designing Web Applications for Use
By Larry Constantine, Constantine & Lockwood, Ltd. - Dec 11, 2006
“A third problem with users is that there are so many of them. And they are all
different. They want different things and like different things and react
differently.
I have watched teams run in circles as they redesign for each new user who
gives them feedback on a paper prototype or each new group passing through
the usability lab.
The genuine diversity of real people can distract designers from the
commonality of their needs and interests.”

http://www.uie.com/articles/designing_web_applications_for_use/


59

Multilateral = conﬂicts


60

2. DIY (Do It Yourself) shift


61

Aspects of the DIY shift:
• “Small Pieces Loosely Joined”

• Design moves up the value / scope pyramid
• Designers create frameworks and systems, *not point solutions*

• Low barriers to entry
• Commoditized design and development

• Empowered amateurs

• Business designers

• Free or low-cost tools and data sources
• Open source

• APIs

• Web Services / SOA

• Public data sets

• Public infrastructure for mashups
• Yahoo Pipes

• Google Gadgets


62

DIY = Everyone is a designer


63

Negotiation is the new governance


64

3. Rise of the SPIME


65

SPIMEs bridge physical and virtual worlds
• “Mostly virtual, occasionally physical”
• Physical manifestation
• Temporal persistence
• Real in both worlds at the same time
• Geolocatable

• Semantically interconnected
• Tied to deep pools of collective metadata
• Findable

• Full lifecycle awareness
• Must be sustainable / green

>> a reiﬁed Platonic ideal…?


66

When Blobjects Rule the Earth
“Scenario: You buy a Spime with a credit
card. Your account info is embedded in the
transaction, including a special email
address set up for your Spimes.
After the purchase, a link is sent to you with
customer support, relevant product data,
history of ownership, geographies,
manufacturing origins, ingredients, recipes
for customization, and bluebook value.
The spime is able to update its data in your
database (via radio-frequency ID), to inform
you of required service calls, with appropriate
links to service centers.
This removes guesswork and streamlines
recycling.


67

“So …you would be able to swiftly understand:
• where it was
• when you got it
• how much it cost
• who made it
• what it was made of

• where those resources came from
• what a better model looked like
• what a cheaper model looked like
• who to thank for making it
• who to complain to about its inadequacies

• what previous kinds of Spime used to look like
• why this Spime is better than earlier ones

• what you could do to help that happen
• what people think the Spime of Tomorrow might look like
• the history of the Spime's ownership


68

• what it had been used for

• where and when it was used
• what other people who own this kind of Spime think about it
• how other people more or less like you have altered or fancied-up or modiﬁed their Spime
• what most people use Spimes for
• the entire range of unorthodox uses of Spimes by the world's most extreme Spime geek fandom

• and how much your Spime is worth on an auction site

And especially -- absolutely critically -- where to get rid of it safely.”

SIGGRAPH, Los Angeles, August 2004


69

Emerging SPIME ecology:
• RFID
• GIS / geo-location
• tagging
• white-label social networking
• smart objects
• ubiquitous connectivity
• PLM (Product Life Cycle Management)

New niche: Collective services
>> GetSatisfaction.com


70

Design = multi-dimensional


71

New dimensions = new conﬂicts


72

What Does This Mean For Design?


73

Does the integrated future mean
new kinds of conﬂict to resolve?


74

Integration = many new conﬂicts...


75

How Design Can Address Conﬂict?


76

Design must become aware of
conﬂict to support ethical decisions,
avoid ethical compromises


77

Professional codes of ethics help, but
only when all parties understand the
conﬂicts at hand.


78

Codes = top-down, costly, slow


79

Treat conﬂict as a natural element of context
• Conﬂict = “new layer” of context

• Works with existing design tools and methods

• No disruption to stakeholder models

• No new artifacts or deliverables


80

Adapt common design / discovery methods
Include conﬂict from the start:
1. discover
2. understand
3. communicate
4. design


81

Vision Themes
• ‘Talking points’ for design vision

• Allow stakeholders to communicate
shared vision

How To Address Conﬂict:
• Prioritize themes for importance to vision

• Treat conﬂicting themes as optional

• Require unanimous vote to include
themes


82

Stakeholder / Business Goals
• Deﬁned as part of vision phase

• Translate business needs into aspects and
capabilities of solution

• Track active disagreements in documentation

• Map relationships between conﬂicting items

• Use Delphi process to resolve


83

Map conﬂicts to business strategy and goals

Barriers to Product Adoption
Data & Employees
 Limited integration of data and features
Analytics  Lack of common user experience

Data & Analytics Markets
Quantitative Users

Barriers to Ratings and Research
Xyz Ratings & Expansion Adjacent Markets
Research  Ineffective Basic & Advanced Search
Equity Investors, Hedge Fund Managers

 Limited related research navigation
Traditional Markets
Issuers, Intermediaries & Fixed
Barriers to Emerging Market Income Investors

Global Development
 Numerous barriers to getting basic information
Expansion  Lack of integration between the main website and
Emerging Markets
New Issuers, Intermediaries, & Investors
local content

Non-Client Users
Barriers to Value Perception
Maintain
Co
Shareholders, Regulators, Recruits
 Inconsistent research content & Journalists

Integrity &  Sub-standard user experience
Reputation


84

Include and communicate conﬂict throughout the
design cycle. “Bake it in…”
User Roles +
Interviews &
User Needs Personas Scenarios
Findings
= Matrix
Search for Relevant Research
Learn about Client.com
Surveyor View Latest Research
Evaluate New Product

Understand Methodology
Track 1: Monitor Portfolio
Information Researching Complex Topic
Retrieval Respond to Customer Call
Evaluate/Rate New Issue

Monitor credit risk over time
Learn about Client.com
Understand the rating agency
Track 2: Identify and compare entities
Unified Service
Delivery Access ratings, research & opinion
Perform customer service
Perform credit risk analysis


85

Functional Requirements
• Synthesize findings of discovery
activities for business, user and system
perspectives

• Cross-reference conflicting
requirements by owner / sponsor
• ‘Narrow the funnel’: reduce # of allowed
conflicts at each review / revision
• Auction limited set of conflict slots

• Owners can bid’ on requirements with
fixed number of points


86

Goals and Needs Matrices
• Itemizes goals and needs by type of user

• Identify specific instances of conflict
between groups or goals
• Score conflicts on a heat scale to
highlight trouble spots
• Total the conflicts associate with each
goal and user type to prioritize resolution
efforts


87

Personas
• Describes types of user / customer /
person

• Flag personas associated with conﬂicts
• Enumerate any singular features /
functions
• Map persona landscape to show
relationships and conﬂicts with other
personas


88

Identify conﬂicts relevant to individual personas
Chen Xiang Surveyor: Emerging Market Development >
Corporate User
Investment Banker, Shanghai, China Subsidiary Seeker
“I’m looking for a ratings agency I can partner with.”

General Description Critical User Needs
 Learn about Client.com and their operations in China
Chen is a recent graduate and a new employee of the
Bank of China. In his role as an investment banker he  Select the agency he feels will be best for his clients
will be helping to structure debt offerings and sell them
in China’s emerging capital markets. He knows that a
Key Job Functions
respected and authoritative third party assessment of
the debt will increase its liquidity and improve its price  Assist corporations in raising funds in China’s emerging capital
in the marketplace. markets
 Provides strategic advisory services for mergers, acquisitions
As such he is working to assess the relative
and other types of corporate financial transactions
advantages and disadvantages of using the emerging
local ratings agencies versus the internationally
established agencies such as Client.com. He is looking Conflicts and Opportunities
to find the highest levels of transparency, so that he
 Highlight the breadth and depth of information offered in each
can be confident in whom he chooses to work with
country / region
moving forward.
 Support localization, allowing content, search parameters,
By gaining Chen as a client, Client.com would likely currency, reference indices, and formatting styles to be
gain the issuers he’ll eventually bring to market. targeted to user’s preferred region and language


89

Scenarios
• Scenarios should narrate aspects of
the user experience and vision

• Label scenarios that contain internal
conflicts
• Cross reference scenarios that conflict
with one another
• Identify which personas agree with /
conflict with each scenario


90

Share the experience of conﬂict via scenarios
A poor user experience lowers perceptions of services and offerings

! ! ! !
Detail page contains Related Research tab shows Research is split across a Goes to competitor’s site
assorted links and tabs; a seemingly random list number of ill-defined doc first, because competitor’s
content not on one page of assorted documents types, published at site is easier to use
different times


91


Example Scenario: View Latest Research

Ratings
Advisory

! ! ! !
different times

“I’ll go to (a competitor’s site) first, then I’ll go to (the company’s) if I have the time…”
— Director, Global Ratings Advisory


91


Example Scenario: View Latest Research

Ratings
Advisory

! ! ! !
different times

“I’ll go to (a competitor’s site) first, then I’ll go to (the company’s) if I have the time…”
— Director, Global Ratings Advisory

User Conflicts
 Research content is inconsistent
Business Conflicts
 Hampers deepening of relationships
 Related research functions are ineffective
with established clients
 Sites are difficult for users to understand
 Detracts from the company’s reputation as
and navigate
an authoritative source of high quality info


91

Concept Maps
• Define key conceptual objects and map
relationships

• Begin with simplified single view

• Create additional views to reflect
conflicting understandings
• Document conflicts via color and
annotation layers
• List contested objects / concepts

• Require resolution for signoff

• Use mapping tool that can track and
show dependencies in relationships


92

Site Maps
• Summarizes structure and flow through
information space / environment

• Compare / contrast conflicting high-level structures
• Build modularly, highlight areas of conflict
• Document conflicts in navigation model separately
• Flag conflicts in content structure and detailed IA
discussed in other artifacts - topic maps,
taxonomies, etc.
• Cross-reference to alternative functional
interactions and flows (use cases and process
flows)


93

Wire Frames
• Schematics capture function, layout,
interaction

• Identify screen components affected by
conﬂict
• Cross-reference to conﬂicting personas /
scenarios


94

Use Cases
• Document behavior of system and actors

• Write use cases for all understandings

• Cross-reference alternate / conﬂicting use
cases


95

proposing design needs to develop practical tools methods and viewpoint for
discovering, understanding and communicating conflicts between goals of
diverse groups in order to
1. enable compliance with any specific ethical imperatives
2. further the creation of ethically sound experiences
design must acknowledge conflicts in order to be equipped to respond to
growing range of ethical and moral contexts and questions
not advocating for a particular set of ethics / morals
Call to action regarding design methods / approaches


96

The Future of Design?


97


98


99


100


101

Questions?

Thank You!


102

Joe Lamantia:
Involved in the information architecture and user experience ﬁelds since 1996
In 2000, became an entrepreneur and started my own company
Creator of the leading freely available tool for card sort analysis
Creator of the Building Blocks design framework for portals and user experiences
Currently based in New York - but enjoying Spain a great deal…

On the Web:
www.joelamantia.com
www.Boxesandarrows.com
www.tagsonomy.com

Email to joe (at) joelamantia.com
Where to get a good bowl of noodles
Your favorite kind of hot sauce


103

Designing Ethically: The Tagged.com Story

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