Workshop: Peer Feedback
Background
As a design student, you attend presentations by peers of their design work all the time, and you are often expected to offer feedback. Constructively critiquing designs created by others is an essential skill to develop. Good critique goes beyond mere opinion, but tries to understand what a design is trying to achieve, how it is trying to achieve that thing, and what the shortcomings or unintended consequences of the approach taken might be. Critiquing responsible urban AI systems is especially challenging because we are dealing with a number of different levels or dimensions: ethical, political, technical, and societal. This exercise is designed to practice giving good feedback while taking these different dimensions into account.
Learning Objectives
After completing this exercise you will be able to critique a design of a responsible urban AI system from a number of different perspectives.
Instructions
- Pair up with one of the other groups
- Take turns presenting your design concept
- While one group is presenting, the other group takes notes on potential feedback they want to give, keeping in mind the following roles:
- A civil servant employed by the city, who is responsible for developing and executing on policy related to the issue the design is addressing
- An activist employed by a local civil society organisation (e.g. De Waag) who is working to ensure technology developed by government and companies respects human rights
- A data scientist employed by a development company tasked with actually building the design, who is trying to make sure they understand how the system is supposed to work in terms of dataset and model
- A citizen who has a stake in the issue that the design is addressing, who is invited to a public participation procedure on the system’s development
- Once both groups have presented, split up again, and discuss your notes within your own group
- Write a note on the other group’s Miro board that captures your feedback from each of the four roles
- Re-join your partner group and take turns to briefly explain your feedback
- Split up again, reflect on the feedback you received, and discuss it with your group members
Product
The outcome of this exercise is a number of feedback statements (one for each role) on your design concept, from one of the other groups.
Follow-up
During the plenary following this workshop, you will summarize the feedback you received from the other group, and give your perspective on it.