karen louise smith

This afternoon I sent off a revised copy of the paper 'Playing with surveillance: The design of a mock RFID-based identification infrastructure for public engagement' which is accepted for publication in the journal Surveillance & Society. The image above shows a component of our mock infrastructure which is written about in this paper. Brenda McPhail, Joseph Ferenbok, Alex Tichine and Andrew Clement are my co-authors on this work.

Our abstract reads:

In many jurisdictions around the globe, governments are developing ID schemes based on radio frequency identification (RFID) and biometric technologies. In Canada, four provinces recently implemented RFID based ‘enhanced’ drivers licences (EDL) in response to the United States’ Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI), which requires all persons entering the United States to present a valid passport or alternative ‘secure’ document to prove their identity and citizenship.

As researchers, we were closely involved in following the EDL policy development process. It became evident, as we attended legislative hearings, that parliamentarians needed clarifications to understand how the RFID identification scheme would function in practice. This project began with the goal of designing prototypes to demonstrate security and civil liberty concerns with a new RFID-based identification (ID) scheme in Canada. Influenced by participatory design and probe approaches to technology design, we built and tested mock infrastructures of RFID-based identification systems including low fidelity paper prototypes, and high fidelity prototypes using RFID-chipped cards, a database, antenna and reader. We also worked closely with civil society organizations to run public engagement activities.

This paper reports on our attempts to create spaces for ‘playful’ engagement with RFID-based ID scheme technology at a time of ‘serious’ policy deliberations. Designed in the spirit of serious play, our mock ID infrastructures make the security and civil liberties challenges inherent in the proposed combination of ID cards and databases more visible, while demonstrating how such ID schemes work. At this point, we see future promise in the design and use of mock ID infrastructure for public engagement during relevant policy deliberations about ID schemes and databases which contain personal information.

I am at ChangeCamp (aka #ChangeCamp, @ChangeCamp) today at the M@rs center at U of T today. I will post more later.

My most recent post at metronauts.ca highlights an upcoming content-generation and research opportunity which promises to be very interesting. This initiative will make use of Metrolinx's online consultation mapping tool and remix screencast materials on the metronauts community blog with participant permission.

Today I presented a paper at OISE at the Learning Democracy by Doing conference. My paper was titled: Transparent Technology? Exploring the political and design values of eDemocracy for citizens. My paper explored:

• transparency as a design value in eGovernment websites
• conflicts between government and citizen definitions of transparency
• the CAIRS database as an example of different enactments of transparency
• design and use of technology as a form of ‘doing democracy’

I promised some of the audience members to place references online. Please click the title of this post to access them.

For the past week I have been attending the Values in Design workshop at Santa Clara University in California. The organizers and guest faculty presented on a number of design projects and design methods which are interesting and noteworthy.

• Helen Nissenbaum presented on Track Me Not, which is a Firefox browser extension which allows users to hide their search queries. Essentially the system works by sending information generated from common searches, instead of the user’s actual searches to the search engine companies. Limitations of the system are that it is in English only and functions for the US versions of the engines only.

• Tracy Fullerton and Mary Flanagan presented on game design. As an interesting methodological contribution, they showed us the Values@Play Grow-A-Game cards for use in teaching reflective and value conscious game design
• Shay David did a demo of Kaltura which is an online environment for open source video editing, interaction and collaboration
  
  
  Presentations by Paul Dourish, Geof Bowker, Susan Leigh Star, Fred Turner and many others were also excellent parts of the event.

I was in a panel today as part of the design research series at KMDI. The paper (in progress that) I presented is titled: ‘Cloudtags and talk back: Sketches from critical and digital design research practice.’ With this paper, I am interested in asserting two key ideas. First, I consider Schon’s idea of talk back in the design studio. Schon describes talk back as something communicated from the design materials to the designer. I feel this idea can be extended by considering participatory media and web 2.0 technologies where user generated content and contributions are prominent. Second, I discuss how the cloudtag’s status in the design process is fluid. Tagclouds can be a rough sketch or a 'final' design artefact. This panel and the design research series in general, grew out of a reading group. It was interesting to hear the four divergent directions we have taken with papers originating from a common body of literature.

This semester, I have been involved in the design research series at KMDI. Here is the abstract for the series of talks:

"Epistemologically, what do designers ‘know’? Are there ‘designerly ways of knowing’ distinct from the recognised scientific and other scholarly ways of knowing? Speakers from different disciplines will take these questions as their point of departure to explore what, for them, constitutes a legitimate knowledge claim. And, since research in knowledge media design is typically trans-disciplinary, we will also explore ways of fostering communication across disciplinary boundaries and bridging traditional epistemological divides."

The series has been successful so far and I’m looking forward to the speakers in future weeks, including Nigel Cross.