Jon Kolko visited us last week. He mentioned two important things. One: that we have become very good at designing, but we are terrible at choosing worthwhile things to design for. Two: the cost of making something has become extremely low, almost 0, especially web and digital services. So now we have the luxury to ask what problems we should solve.

He said there are three kinds of problems.

First, well structured problems, like a chess game, where there is a definite solution.

Second, ill structured problems, which most of us designers currently try to solve, like rebranding Budweiser.

Third, wicked problems. We had read about wicked problems in cybernetics too. These don’t have any definitive solutions. In fact it is is difficult to define the problem itself. Most bigger system level problems like poverty or consumerism or terrorism are wicked problems.

We discussed why designers and technologists aren’t trying to solve the third kind of problems. They are extremely complex and tackling one aspect of them usually creates other problems. If you design something for the homeless, then you are trying to affect their lives considerably, and that’s a lot of responsibility. Often this responsibility becomes intimidating. But with new tools these days it is very easy to build, test and iterate.

Slavery Footprint tells you how many slaves are working for you around the world, based on your lifestyle and the products you use. The name of the app itself is scary, because we assume that slavery is a thing of the past. The truth is that forced labour is deeply embedded in every supply chain (even in first world markets). For instance, in my own hometown (Meerut), 6 year old children stitch footballs for well-known American and European brands, and earn 8 cents for 15 hours of work each day.

The survey did require require a lot of input, but it was so engaging, with beautiful illustrations, fun interactions and animations. See? - drag the sliders to tell the app how many clothes you’ve got in your closet. I could specify exactly how many toothbrushes, pillows, socks and bulbs I have, but I was eager to get to the result and so I rushed through it.

It’s ironic how I felt that doing the survey was too much work, when the objective was to find out how many people sweat their lives for me.

So I’ve got 33 slaves working for me, most of them in China and India. I wasn’t satisfied so I went back and fine tuned my answers, and my new result was 22 slaves. But exactly how much of this was because of my toothbrush? I wished to see a more detailed connection between my data and the result and the beautiful illustrations.

I liked the fact that I could take some action after learning all this. I sent notes for action to Apple, Amazon, Samsung, Colgate, Reebok and Dove. I put my scores on facebook and twitter and signed up as a volunteer.

My slave count might be 22 or 33 or some other number, but this survey surely forced me to think about who makes my products, and now I’m conscious about all the stuff I own: gadgets, clothes, food, medicines. I’m yet to see how this information will connect people and inspire them to change, but I’m positive.

For our Entrepreneurial design course, we’re supposed to get some experience as a worker in an online marketplace like Task Rabbit, Work Market, Gig walk. I decided to try Amazon’s Mechanical Turk because I find it interesting, this concept of people doing mindless chores for small amounts of money, only because machines that can do them don’t exist today. Their founder Jeff Bezos calls this crowdsourcing “Artificial artificial intelligence”. 

The name Mechanical Turk comes from an 18th century chess playing machine, an automaton that defeated many famous challengers including Napolean and Benjamin Franklin. Of course it was a hoax, it was controlled by a chess master sitting inside.

In comparison, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk turned out to be quite dull. There were thousands of so-called “Human Intelligence Tasks” (HITs). Comparing product listings, clicking on errors in a transcript, classifying images of mammals, copying text from business cards, and many surveys, with rewards ranging from 1 cent to 5 dollars. Is it worthwhile for anyone to invest time and effort for such small amounts of money?

After much searching, I found something that I didn’t mind spending my time on. It was a survey for graphic designers about their career. I had to rate and write about how good I think my profession is, how satisfied I am with it, how amazing the opportunities are. That was pretty easy. It took me only 45 minutes, much less than the allotted 2 days.

I found another task which asked to imagine as if you are working in the marketing department of a company, and that you have been asked by your boss to write a fake, but persuasive review of a variable temperature kettle; “as if it were written by a customer”. There was a link to the product page, and they wanted two reviews, one positive and one negative. Clever (and dirty) way to populate product reviews. Take a look at some of the reviews yourself. It surely is making use of an “artificial artificial intelligence”.

Having worked on this marketplace for sometime, I am already thinking about what useful Human Intelligence Tasks, could I get done through this mechanical task-force.

We began Thesis Preparation with Liz Danzico last week, the first of our three thesis courses here at SVA IXD. We started by asking ourselves what thesis means to us. I see it as an opportunity to do something I’m really passionate about, but haven’t yet got a chance to do.

Liz asked us to do a little exercise where we had to think of a story from our past or present life. The story was to be: ”…the one thing that has always been on your mind. Something that you have always considered, for 10 years or more, that bothers you, brings tears to your eyes, or hope, or revolution in your day, or feels unfinished. Something that has stayed with you…”

The iPad Human Cost story - about the state of the Foxconn factories in China - has not been with me for 10 years, but it has surely bothered me over the past few weeks. The article made me really sad about something that until now I hadn’t heard about or cared about.

In fact I know nothing about the consumer products that I use. My pants, my toothbrush - who makes them, where do they come from? I also wonder where these products go after I’m done with them. Does my toothbrush get shipped across the Atlantic to a landfill in Ghana? Or is it recycled or re-used in some way?

I want to find out how the life of a product affects the people, economy and ecology of where it comes from, and where it goes to. I want consumers to know these stories, but I wonder, would it affect them? Or would they continue to buy stuff that they know is produced irresponsibly? I want to do something that really changes consumer behaviour.