Workshop: Mapping Use-time Contestability Loops
Background
Designing urban AI systems can be an overwhelming task. There are many parts and actions to consider, and keeping them all in your head is hard. When we want to design these systems responsibly, we must consider them as a whole. Furthermore, when we want to ensure the contestability of the system at use-time, we need to be able to “see” the system to figure out where best to intervene. In this exercise, we take a technique from the field of service design called “service blueprints” and use it to map out our system and its contestability loop at use-time.
Learning Objectives
After this exercise, you can design a contestability loop at use-time that can be added to a new or existing urban AI system.
Instructions
Create a service blueprint for your system:
- Review your list of stakeholders, and make sure you have identified the core (direct) stakeholder. You can think of this as the traditional user, even though they may not have any 1:1 interaction with your system. For example, citizens who want to get rid of their trash are the main stakeholders in a stray trash detection system, but they don’t use it directly.
- If you haven’t yet, establish what the ultimate goal of the core stakeholder is with your system—e.g., “keep home waste-free with minimum hassle.”
- Grab the empty canvas attached to this page and add it to your board.
- Notice the three horizontal lines across your map, from top to bottom. These are (1) the line of interaction—where user and system interact; (2) the line of visibility—beyond which the user can no longer “see” into the system; and (3) the line of internal responsibility—where the system hands over an action to an “external” or auxiliary system.
- Also note the swim lanes: (1) user actions, (2) frontline worker actions, (3) back-office worker actions, (4) AI system actions, and (5) third-party actions.
- Create a timeline of the lower-level actions your system’s user (or individual citizen) moves through as they attempt to achieve their overall goal—e.g., “collect trash in the waste bin” or “place trash on the curb.”
- For each step of this timeline, consider what your system must do to support that goal—list each action roughly underneath the corresponding user action—note that a machine does not necessarily perform these actions but can also be performed by a human.
- Place the actions your system takes below the appropriate lines.
- Connect actions that are related using lines.
- Next to the relevant actions, note any physical/material touchpoints/objects/resources involved with the specific action—e.g., “scan car.”
Add a contestability loop to your blueprint:
- Add an action in the citizen/user’s swim lane to “understand system decision” and another to “request human intervention.”
- Place the actions where you think they are most likely to happen on the timeline.
- Specify the actions the system needs to take in support of and in response to these user actions and place them in their appropriate spots on the blueprint.
- Once again, note the physical/material resources involved with these system actions.
Product
After completing this activity, you will have created a blueprint that describes how your envisioned system will work on a conceptual level. Your flowchart will also include a “contestability loop” at use-time—a means for people affected by system decisions to exercise their right to human intervention.
Follow-up
We will talk about your findings from this workshop later in the plenary.