Ames' syllabi

Terms and conditions are something that people see and experience daily but if you were to ask someone what they just agreed to the majority would not have a response. The companies who put these policies together and have you blindly agree to these conditions are not doing this to protect you, they are protecting themselves and invading your privacy. Some make the terms and conditions 5 pages long in an unreadable font so that you’d rather blindly agree to them than actual read them. Companies that actually want you to be aware of their polices, make theirs short and to the point. Signing agreements like this didn’t come around until new technology made it necessary. Laptops, smartphones, tablets, and more are now constantly have us sign and agree to things that we would probably need a lawyer to actually help us understand these terms. Every app, website, or new technology has a programmed terms and conditions policy that is constantly trapping people and stealing their privacy. Some people would think that its everyone’s fault for not reading these terms thoroughly, but it would take one month every year to read all user agreements. Which for the majority is baffling to even consider. Companies could have you accept anything, for example Instagram taking your photos without giving you credit or compensation. AT&T could tap your phone to prevent illegal activities, and cookies learn information about you and send ads. Those are just a few ways people are tapping into our privacy through technology. In 2001 bills were trying to be passed to protect privacy laws. Of course none of those bills were passed. Privacy policies are now used to take away privacy. Google users used to be anonymous and then through out the years they kept updating their terms and conditions to the point that now they can share any information on our account with domain administrators, for external processing, or for legal issues. Google hid and lied about their previous policies which makes you wonder what else they’re hiding. People also like what’s free and they’re willing to give up their private information for it. In 2009 Facebook changed its policy without notice, and throughout the years Facebook default settings have made it more public and less private. Overall our search records are becoming more public, companies are monitoring our every cell phone move, wiretapping programs are still out in the world, and sites can hand data to the government without people knowing it. Privacy is dead.

It is really scary to think that I myself have agreed to terms and conditions and things that I really had no idea what they were about. I have never actually sat down and read those. As they said in the video, really no one has actually read them, even the person writing them really has not. That was an obvious joke but it really made me think what I was really agreeing to when I enter a website. Sooner than later, they are going to have you agreeing to terms and conditions practically without you even knowing that you are. One fact that caught my eye during the video was that “250 billion dollars was lost in a year due to what was written in print.” That is an insane amount of money we are talking about here. Another thing that caught my eye was about Instagram. On Instagram terms and conditions it says that they can sell your photos. I have an Instagram and I did not know that they could take any of my photos and actually sell them without telling me, but they can. It is in their terms and conditions policy that I clearly did not read. I never really understood what “cookies” were on the internet until this video. Which makes sense to me why I will be on Facebook and an advertisement for EXPRESS shopping store will pop up. I online shop a lot and it makes sense why most of the ads that are shown are fashion related. It is crazy to me that the internet knows so much about me, more than half of the people that I know based upon my searches online. It really makes me think, “Do I really have privacy?” I don’t believe privacy exist in this world today. There are many reasons why I think that. First off, our safety. Safety comes first in America and well honestly, I agree with it. The internet is a different world. Some people believe that if you post something and delete it, it is gone forever. Meanwhile, it is there and will ALWAYS be there, you just cannot see it yourself. Is our personal data worth that much to the government? Yes. I think the more they know about people the easier it is for them to keep us safe. The kind of world we live in today is a world where anything can happen at any time. The more the know I think is better off for us. I don’t believe we will ever have privacy on the internet or using any kind of technology device. I think if you want privacy you need to stay off technology, stay off the internet and do things to old fashion way. TALK!! That is something that us humans do not seem to know how to do anymore. The internet has really taken over the world and it is most definitely not a private world.

In today’s world, there are so many times that we have an agreement to sign.  This can range anywhere from iTunes, Facebook, Amazon, and even for things like buying a house or car.  With agreements coming up so often in our lives, half the time we don’t even care to read what it says.  We think it will never affect us anyway.  We are wrong to think it will never affect us.  It could be affecting us right now and we not even realize it.  There could be someone out there going through every purchase we made or every single letter we typed on our phone.  Does this sound like privacy to you? We have a serious privacy problem on our hands and if we don’t do something about it soon, it will be too late to ever turn back.  We have things like the Patriot Act that gives the government permission to seize information to try to fight against terrorism.  Although this can be seen as a good thing to some people, it is clearly not a good thing.  This is just like the situation Apple is facing right now.  They have to face the fact that if they give up information to try to help the FBI out, they could lose a lot of their customers because their customers wouldn’t feel safe anymore with Apple having all their information.  This isn’t the only thing that Apple is facing.  If Apple gives in to the FBI that will cause an avalanche of other companies that think it is okay to share your private information just because Apple did.  A few years ago, Facebook started changing its privacy policies to start publicly sharing your private information without the users knowing.  By 2010, everything but your contact information and your birthday were shared publicly to everyone.  That is a complete violation of our rights and privacy as American citizens.   In this movie, they made a great point about deleting things that I had never even thought of before.  They said that when you delete something that was out on the internet,  It only deletes it from you being able to see that it is out there.  It is still sitting somewhere, probably in Utah, in some data warehouse just waiting till the day it can be used or sold.  This is not comforting to me at all.  I know there are sometimes when I accidentally delete something and would love to get it back, but if I am trying to delete something of of the  internet that I don’t deem worthy to be out their in reference to me, I want it gone for good! The NSA has been looking at our information for years and none of us even knew about it or would have ever known about it until the people came out and told us or we got a knock on our door.  This scares me a little.  We could be just like that little boy who was just trying to look out for the president and wined up getting a visit from the secret service instead.  That probably crushed that little kid.  He was just trying to be nice and then he gets interrogated and accused of something he never would have even thought of in a million years.  The privacy standards in our society are well below the acceptable level and its just going to get worse from here unless somebody steps up and does something.  Privacy will remain dead unless the behavior tendencies of the intelligence agencies that collect all this data change.  Just like the guy in the movie said, we hop in one CM at a time thence look back and we are sinking with no way out.  If we don’t change soon, there will be no way out and our privacy will be completely compromised.

 

 

The age of new media has greatly changed the definition of privacy.  With almost everything being digitized in the current state of society, people have lost a great deal of privacy because others have access to their information.  At the same time, though, people generally do not read terms and conditions and in doing so, blindly grant outside parties this access.  People agree to the privacy policy and give up their rights to privacy when checking “I agree.”  It is easy for companies to sneakily insert policies that give them permission to see and use information that, had people known these policies were in the terms and conditions, people would not have agreed to in the first place.

Take, for instance, the Patriot Act, which gave the government permission to take surveillance of emails, information on the Internet, and cell phones in an effort to combat terrorism.  This brings to mind the kind of Big Brother state of society as expressed in George Orwell’s 1984, in which the government spies on its citizens.  It begs the question: how far is too far?  With the introduction and growth of Facebook, people have been confronted with the issue of sharing too much information that can be accessed by unwanted third parties.  Facebook also secretly changed its privacy policy, and by default, a user’s information is shared with everyone.

Why would the default be to share information on Facebook with everyone?  Most users would like to share with just their friends, yet Facebook does not account for this in their default settings.  One would hope that companies have people’s best interests in mind when creating user experiences, and privacy is more than a mere preference; it is a right.  It seems that new media, however, makes privacy more susceptible to being treated as an idealistic preference.

Ultimately, people value different information for different reasons.  It is a personal decision to allow for certain pieces of information to be made available to others and in what ways they are available.  It is plain to see that searches are monitored, for searching for a particular product on Amazon will later prompt an ad for that product when visiting a different website.  In this way, companies are using data about our Internet habits to draw conclusions about us and act on it.  The NSA also had access to people’s personal data, which shows just how many hands data can be put into without our knowledge.

“Terms and Conditions May Apply” prompted thought about what privacy means in the age of new media.  Although Mark Zuckerberg justified some of his questionable actions by saying that he wanted to “create a more open society,” society does not necessarily want to be as open as he is suggesting.  The idea of de-anonymizing private searches takes search tracking to a whole new level that prowls farther into our personal lives.  Ultimately, privacy as we once knew it does not exist.  Now, privacy means that perhaps some people do not have access to information, but there is a good chance that some others do.

What information can ethnographic tools give you to improve the interactivity of an online banking website? 

Ethnographic tools help the interaction designers recognize and know their audience better. They improve and help you gather the data about your customer base to improve the designs. These tools are used by observing, interviewing and analyzing people. This understanding would ultimately create a better experience.

 

At what point is a design finished? What makes it a success? What is its purpose?

The design can be finished based on many different stages depending upon the project and how the designer sees it. When the project meets all the goals that are to be met and the outcome is an overall success. A design is finished when the designer feels like their work is all done. Whether or not a design is successful or not is subjective. If the project was a success depends on the designers. A design purpose depends on the person who is actually using it.

 

Identify a product family you use regularly. How has its branding effected your use, relationship and experience with the product? 

Personally, I would say google. I use google on a daily basis for everything and anything that I need to search for. Google is very reliable, therefore, I use it most often and use it before I would use any other search engine. Their site is fast paced and very easy to use. I also use Google Docs and Google drive on a daily basis to save all of my artwork. It hold and keeps safe all of my files and everything that I need to get in touch with on a daily basis. Google is very reliable.

 

Challenge: Come up with a solution for the situations presented in the above photos that would either prevent people from leaving the garbage there or encourage them to do the right thing.

Solution: This problem could be solved by redesigning the garbage cans to be sloped at the top.  For the first design, the one seen in the first two photos, the hole could be on top so that nothing can rest on the ledge above it, and the area surrounding the hole could be sloped.  This way, since a slope would make them slide off, the box and the cup would not be able to rest on the ledge as they do in the photos and would have to be properly disposed of in another way.  For the garbage can in the third photo with the stacked pizza boxes, the can could be redesigned so that there is not a flat top on it and instead make it downward sloping to the holes on both sides.  This way, nothing can be placed on top; garbage can either be placed within the holes or be taken somewhere else.

Here are some of the desired paths I’ve located around campus.

The overview of Chapter 6 talks about norms and negative behaviors. So, what exactly are norms? They are behaviors that are common for people that are within a certain group of something. One thing can be a norm for someone and not for another person. If someone thinks that someone or something such as a design goes against of what they believe are “norms” then they will usually have a certain judgment or feel towards that which leads to a negative behavior. Another thing that is mentioned in Chapter 6 is called discursive design. Discursive design is a rubric beneath which other existing, similarly-minded approaches exist, such as Critical Design. The primary intent of the discursive designer is to encourage users’ reflections upon, or engagements with, a particular discourse; the goal is to affect the intellect. In Chapter 6, they explain this as a category of design that treats products as ideas. Lastly, the Chapter spoke about the shifting of negative behavior throughout design. Negative behaviors can be shifted by people rethink of things.