Tag: co-creation

Categories
Outreach

Watched Best Practices for Applying DEI Principles to Marketing Communications and Engagement

Watched Best Practices for Applying DEI Principles to Marketing Communications and Engagement from pnsma.org

Multicultural marketing and community engagement are evolving. Today’s most successful multicultural outreach strategies are increasingly those that apply core diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) values to reach diverse audiences effectively, respectfully, and meaningfully. In this session, we will explore how DEI and multicultural marketing and community engagement can work together to create more equitable campaigns and programs and share proven best practices for applying DEI principles within the context of marketing communications and engagement.

Speakers:

  • Jennifer González (Senior Vice President of Multicultural Communications, C+C)
  • Alejandro Paredes (Co-Director of Communications and Engagement Services, Cascadia Consulting Group)

Turning DEI into Action: A Simple Framework

presented by Jennifer González

Organizational DEI = internal

Multicultural marketing = external — “sells products or services to audiences of multiple ethnicities or cultural backgrounds in authentic ways that honor cultural differences”

How does DEI fit into multicultural marketing?

DEI in multicultural marketing: “applying core DEI principles to marketing & outreach strategies to ensure we reach diverse audiences effectively and respectfully”

  • diversity — unbiased representation of diverse community members
  • equity = fair access — investing in resources that ensure fair access to people who need more support than others
  • inclusion = belonging — voices and desires of all community members are heard, valued, and acted on
Continue reading “Watched Best Practices for Applying DEI Principles to Marketing Communications and Engagement”
Categories
Activism Art and Design

Politicized Design: escaping oppressive systems with participatory movements

Watched Politicizing Design from the Grassroots by Bibiana Oliveira SerpaBibiana Oliveira Serpa from Futuress

Drawing from popular activist movements in Latin America, this talk explores the possibilities for the politicization of design.

In her PhD thesis that she recently defended for the Design program of the State University of Rio de Janeiro (ESDI/UERJ) in Brazil, Bibiana delved into her experiences as an active member of different civil society grassroots movements to reveal some of the political, ethical, and practical issues that permeate the transformative action of these collectives.

Through Militant Research Methodology and inspired by her action in the fields of popular education and feminism, she traced paths for a possible politicization of the Design field. In this conversation, Bibiana shares some of the lessons she learned from this journey, articulating four axes she considers crucial for the politicization of Design: ontology, epistemology, practice, and content.

Presented by Bibiana Serpa, a PhD visual designer from Brazil

Design & Opressão (Design and Oppression Network)

Articulação de Mulheres Brasileiras

What is militant research?

  • aims to educate people politically
  • participatory — cannot only research
  • acts in the “context of discovery” not “context of justification” — not seeking to support an existing theory, but to learn
  • always collective

Process of politicization

social movements are self-educating and self-transforming –> politicization

politicization = political learning — “a relational and experiential process”

Continue reading “Politicized Design: escaping oppressive systems with participatory movements”
Categories
Science

Rethinking the way we publish science

Liked The dance of the naked emperors by Adam Mastroianni (Experimental History)

To recap, I argued in my last post that:

1. We’ve published science lots of different ways for a long time, and universal pre-publication peer review is both pretty new and historically strange.

2. That system doesn’t seem to accomplish the goals that it claims to or that we wish it would.

3. It’s worthwhile to try other things.

That’s also why I’m not worried about an onslaught of terrible papers—we’ve already got an onslaught of terrible papers.

Sick burn 😂

But seriously, it is not good for society or science when access to scientific research is limited to academics. This only reinforces the perceived division between academics and the public, and exacerbates anti-intellectualism. And, it is hardly helpful for scientists to be silo’d away from the public either — any insular group will miss out on the perspectives and wisdom of other groups of people with different backgrounds and experience. Shifting the expectation that papers should be readable by laypeople would encourage plainer language and force writers to clarify their explanations.

If science weren’t hidden behind expensive paywalls, people outside academia could draw on the latest research for decisions, and participate in conversations about science. Codesign is on the rise in community engagement and graphic design; improving access could enable communities to give input to projects and future research. Instead of researchers coming up with projects on their own, they could listen to the needs of the community to fill in gaps (for example, the gap in medical research for women).

Also learned a new concept, weak-link problem, from his referenced article The Rise and Fall of Peer Review:

Why did peer review seem so reasonable in the first place?

I think we had the wrong model of how science works. We treated science like it’s a weak-link problem where progress depends on the quality of our worst work. If you believe in weak-link science, you think it’s very important to stamp out untrue ideas—ideally, prevent them from being published in the first place. You don’t mind if you whack a few good ideas in the process, because it’s so important to bury the bad stuff.

But science is a strong-link problem: progress depends on the quality of our best work.

See also: Imagining a better way — for everything

Categories
Outreach

Notes from the SPARKS Conference 2022: Day 2

Misinformation as an Obstacle to Science Communication

by Brian Southwell at RTI International

What is scientific misinformation? from Southwell et al for The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science:

  • publicly misleading info that is misleading or deceptive relative to best available evidence at the time and
  • counters statements by actors who adhere to scientific principles without adding accurate evidence for consideration

What’s the problem with misinformation?

  • we are biased towards acceptance — we listen and then filter / think about it, which sometimes doesn’t happen sufficiently because we’re tired etc.
  • there are reasons we share misinformation — we signal belonging with others by sharing info related to our identities
  • our regulatory approach (in democracies) focuses on after-the-fact detection and response — does not censor info, prevent misinformation from being shared
  • correction is hard
  • emotions make us vulnerable — anger makes us more likely to accept misinformation
Continue reading “Notes from the SPARKS Conference 2022: Day 2”
Categories
Future Building House

Designing a future based on the biases of the past

Liked Why the ‘Kitchen of the Future’ Always Fails Us by Rose Eveleth (Eater)

In a world full of incredible technology, why can we still not imagine anything more interesting than a woman making dinner alone?

Writing off all these hypothetical kitchens as nonsense ignores how powerful the effect of their messaging can be.

Gender role stereotypes are so obnoxious — even though in my household I am the one who cooks. We went to an open house in the fancy part of our neighborhood once just to see what it looked like inside. The realtor chatted with us, and as we’re walking out the door, he points at my husband and tells him, “She wants a new kitchen, and you’re gonna pay for it!”

😶

[Engineers and designers] operate on the premise that people don’t know what they need until it’s built for them. This is a useful principle in some ways, but when it comes to reconsidering how people interact with spaces and appliances they use every day with fluency, it results in an approach to innovation that only calls for talking, never listening.

The result is an array of potential futures that are strangely both unaware of the culture from which they spring, and at the same time constrained by it.

A “we know better” perspective? Here’s another opportunity for co-design.

Solving for problems with technology is exciting / venture capital-izable, while the more common “boring” problems that make a kitchen easier to use probably involve: improved storage, simpler / easier cleaning, and lower maintenance.

What would my dream kitchen have that I don’t have now?

  • A counter depth fridge with freezer on the bottom, not the side –> stop food from getting lost in the back of our fridge
  • An induction stovetop (currently have electric coil 😢) –> easy to clean stovetop that I won’t burn myself on
  • A hood range that actually vents outside –> healthier indoor air quality while I’m cooking
  • More counter space, especially next to the stovetop –> more room for mise en place / less stressful cooking
  • An easy-to-clean, low-maintenance countertop (currently have tile 😭) –> cleaner countertops that don’t always look grimy like tile grout
  • An easier-to-use pantry (ours has wire shelves that stuff falls through, and the shelves are too deep to see everything) –> less annoyance, easier access
  • Storage that’s easier for a short person like me to reach and use (I can’t reach half of the cabinet where we keep cups) –> less annoyance from lugging my stepstool around
  • Appliance storage so I don’t have to heft my heavy stand mixer up from floor level –> would use my appliances more often
  • Somewhere to store cat food (right now it’s in overflow storage under the stairs) –> save myself a trip down the hall

I could currently buy any of these things, if I had the money. No new inventions required.

New kitchen inventions I would like:

  • A blender that’s not a pain in the ass to wash.
  • Dishwashable non-stick pans.
  • Knives that hold their edge like carbon steel but don’t rust or react with red veggies.
  • Storage for tupperware — an apparently impossible problem 🤣

We’ve now lived in our house ten years without remodeling the 1988 kitchen 😂 Sure, a new kitchen would probably work a little better and be prettier. Yeah, I have a Pinterest inspo board, but I can admire pretty things without buying them. And how many hours of my and my husband’s lives do I really want to trade for a fancier kitchen?

See also: The Politics of Kitchen Design

Categories
Technology Writing

Bias is baked into the current state of AI fiction writing

Bookmarked Wordcraft Writers Workshop (g.co)

The Wordcraft Writers Workshop is a collaboration between Google’s PAIR and Magenta teams, and 13 professional writers. Together we explore the limits of co-writing with AI.

Interesting assessment of co-writing with an AI — it’s limited by its inability to perceive / remember context, a very generic, stereotyped and mainstream understanding of genre and stories, and mediocre prose without voice.

Allison Parrish described this as AI being inherently conservative. Because the training data is captured at a particular moment in time, and trained on language scraped from the internet, these models have a static representation of the world and no innate capacity to progress past the data’s biases, blind spots, and shortcomings.

The computer trying to insert a man into a lesbian love story 😬 We see time and again technology incorporating and reflecting real world biases. It feels like they think preventing bias is an afterthought, something that can be fixed after the fact. These tools will likely become quite important in the future.  Can someone integrate people of color and queer people into their design process upfront?

I am intrigued by co-design, and feel like this project could benefit from it: learning upfront from writers what their biggest struggles are and where they wish they could have assistance. This feels a bit like, “we made a thing that makes words, let’s have some actual writers try it out and see what they do with it 🤷‍♀️”

One thing that writers often need is bit part characters. With existing biases, will the AI suggest all straight white men to fill these roles? When they create characters of color will they be caricatures?

Again, the training set proves itself essential to the tool — and behind many of its failings.

I read Robin Sloan’s short story, which was a clever little work that capitalized on the program’s strengths while critiquing reliance on shortcuts (and maybe poking a bit of fun at GRRM).

Categories
Personal Growth Self Care Society

Finding joy by rejecting a scarcity mindset

Liked WHY MISERY LOVES COMPANY (AND HOW TO AVOID BECOMING BITTER) (aestheticsofjoy.com)

When we view our lives through the lens of abundance, we live in a state of flow. Success is not taken from others, but created with others.

Like the idea of “an abundance-based community” — her example is authors, who “realiz[e] that readers are not a scarce resource to be squabbled over, but a community to be cultivated. The goal is not to get people to read one book over another, but to get more people reading period.”

I dig the rising tide lifts all ships idea, even if it’s hard to remember sometimes with my own work.

[S]top saying “I’m so old,” which effectively hides another scarcity statement: “I have so little time left.”

Oops, I am guilty of this 😅 She’s got a point though…

Categories
Art and Design Work

Our Powers Combined

Liked Create: The Nature of Water – Shifter.Media by Daniel Milnor (Shifter.Media by Daniel Milnor)

I get some of the craziest things in the mail and when I say “crazy,” I mean “crazy good.” You can add “The Nature of Water,” to that list. This is a beast of a book and I can’t even imagine the time and team required to pull this off but thankfully fifty-one photojournalists and Aaron Guy Leroux and Adam Malamis did just that.

It took me far too long to realize my work and my career were far more interesting when others were involved. All of the best projects of the last five years have been collaborations and nearly everything I’m involved in now is collaborative.

— Daniel Milnor

Collaboration takes work to make sure you’re aligned on purpose and logistics, and careful assignment of responsibility and credit so that effort matches investment and impact to be fair for all. But I suspect doing that work amplifies the value of the project for all involved. And combining your skills probably makes everyone’s work better – both for the inspiration but also the accountability of not wanting to let the team down.

I’ve been low key interested in doing a collaboration for a while but haven’t put any effort into seeking one out, waiting for kismet with someone I already know. I think it’s hard to propose a collab, since you have some ownership over the idea, and you need to convince others your concept is worth participating in – especially when you need a collaborator more than they need you.

I have a loose idea of a partnership to propose to another writer friend when I’m finally ready to publish, but at this point the idea is more of a way to split up work than co-create. I’ll have to think about it more – and she may not be interested – while I keep chipping away at the book. One day I’ll finish it 🤷‍♀️