Design Considerations for Data Daemons: Co-creating Design Futures to Explore Ethical Personal Data Management

TL;DR

This paper presents a participatory design approach using futures and fiction to involve end-users in shaping ethical personal data management, making abstract concepts tangible through Data Daemons.

Contribution

It introduces a novel participatory process combining design futures, workshops, and fictions to co-create ethical data management concepts with non-experts.

Findings

Engaged end-users and designers in envisioning ethical data futures.

Created tangible representations of data concepts as Data Daemons.

Enabled active participation of non-experts in ethical data design.

Abstract

Mobile applications and online service providers track our virtual and physical behaviour more actively and with a broader scope than ever before. This has given rise to growing concerns about ethical personal data management. Even though regulation and awareness around data ethics are increasing, end-users are seldom engaged when defining and designing what a future with ethical personal data management should look like. We explore a participatory process that uses design futures, the Future workshop method and design fictions to envision ethical personal data management with end-users and designers. To engage participants effectively, we needed to bridge their differential expertise and make the abstract concepts of data and ethics tangible. By concretely presenting personal data management and control as fictitious entities called Data Daemons, we created a shared understanding of these abstract concepts, and empowered non-expert end-users and designers to become actively engaged in the design process.