Why it matters
Filter bubbles are starting to pose major issues and worries in the context of increasing anti-democratic tendencies, by pigeonholing users into narrow, and highly polarising viewpoints.
What if social media platforms began to take effective measures to prevent this echo chamber from getting stronger? What if platforms introduced a "complacency counter" to notify users when their feed becomes increasingly homogenous? This system could make users aware of the lack of diverse content and perspectives, gently nudging them towards a healthier range of content consumption. Through such gentle but aware interventions, social media sites could contribute to the preservation of democratic and inclusive ideas, and encourage its users to accept and coexist within a much wider array of values and viewpoints.
Browse the live research board on Miro
How we did it
Re-Imagining Algorithmic Interactions
Through participatory workshops, we co-created a collection of 20+ provotypes - evoking themes of meaningful participation, agency, mindful friction, constestability, computational literacy, plurality of needs, agonistic design, ecological impact, democratic values and more - to serve as catalysts for critical reflection and dialogue on how interface affordances of AI systems shape our individual and collective behavior.
Browse the library or add your own provotype
Output
Project Preface
Toward a Feminist UX of AI: Indexing + Imagining Supportive Design Patterns for Algorithmic Systems
AI is increasingly shaping our lives. “Just as we live in the city or the countryside, so too do we live in these systems to some degree or another.” There’s a general sentiment of people growing critical of their lack of agency and control in algorithmic interactions and seeking improved transparency, empowerment, and ethical design in the digital landscape.
Read the 🎠[Preface] Toward a Feminist UX of AI: Indexing + Imagining Supportive Design Patterns for Algorithmic Systems outlining research intentions, inspirations + plans
Read the Feminist UX of UI Preface
Library of Provotypes
The provotype library is a co-created and community-led collection of 20+ provotypes that imagine, provoke and propose alternative ways of interacting with AI systems informed by Feminist HCI principles.
Each idea is framed as a what-if question and supported by a speculative wireframe that illustrates the idea visually. Their aim is not to prescribe ‘patterns’ or ‘best practices’, but to open up potential pathways for design and conversation beyond the limited controls, familiar affordances, and commercial design norms of current AI interfaces. Explore the collection below, dig deeper within their pages to learn more, or submit your own.
Browse the provotype library
UI + Wireframing Kit on Figma
An invitation to continue building to provotype library
To support you in the visualization step, we’re open-sourcing the components we used ourselves for creating the speculative wireframes in the provotype library.
This way you can make your own provotypes and focus on the idea rather than finding the visual elements.
We’d love to see what you create!
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(2019-25©)
