How algorithms break things

We’re finally into February, and I hope this month trots by at good clip, instead of the slogging along like January. There’s over a foot of snow in Chicago, and I’m drinking Irish coffees and making galettes for dinner -- seriously it’s an easy, flexible dish that will leave you feeling fancy and sated. Pair with a glass of wine and a green salad and indulge in a fantasy that you’re in a Parisian bistro, or any bistro. 

In between my food and drink indulgences, I’ve been thinking more and more about the not sexy but interesting and vital work of process, that is what systems are in place that allow, for example, teams to function well, that allows products to be designed and built, or in the case below, that fairly allocate vaccines.

I’ve touched on this before, about the behind-the-scenes, often invisible, thinking that goes into the products and services we use. But here’s a case that shows how that thinking can be riddled with blind spots.

This article details how Stanford Medicine botched their vaccine rollout. An algorithm gave priority to doctors who were not the ones on the front lines seeing Covid patients over those who were. Any person in charge would surely place those who would face the most risk at the top of the list, not the bottom. 

Besides flaws in the construction of the algorithm itself, there was a very human issue: at no point did the medical workers get any visibility into why they were placed where they were in the line to get the vaccine. It sounds like it had the feel of being assigned a random number, vs one programmed with a set of decision criteria. 

A core problem was one of process. Throughout the whole process of deciding who will get the shot first, from building and running the program, to communicating its “decision,” the people in charge didn’t include time to communicate with or provide transparency to the staff about how and why those decisions were made.

The algorithm also failed to take in feedback from the frontlines, which would have immediately alerted officials to significant problems with the algorithm.

Algorithms can be created because of a real desire for fairness, which is a great thing, especially in a case like this with a life-saving vaccine in short supply. They can also be deployed for cost-saving reasons, whether it is money and/or labor. Either way, what often ends up happening is those in charge punt the problem to an algorithm and walk away, as if the machine alone can fix it.

This Stanford Medicine example illustrates why this is a faulty way of thinking and the frustration and confusion and risk involved when we just toss out algorithmic decisions with a shoulder shrug. These programs clearly don’t fit neatly into our lives, into whatever processes we, our hospitals, our workplaces, have already established. They break them. 

I keep thinking, what if a couple of doctors or nurses or anyone on the medical staff were brought into the process early on, before the vaccine allocations were announced. What if the medical staff were asked, simply, “What do you think of this? What’s missing or confusing?” No doubt Stanford would have heard and seen their concerns. They would have been able to course-correct before rolling out their program to everyone. Before creating a disaster.

What this shows is, we need to rethink our relationship to AI, to the kinds of algorithms used by Stanford Medicine. We think we can simply delegate tasks, but maybe thinking about it as a partnership is better. We humans have to figure out how to work with these tools and how to reimagine our work, our processes to account for the breakage wrought by algorithms. New systems must be designed with the input from those affected. People need to be part of this reimagining. 

---

Subscribe to the newsletter Humdrum to get thoughtful essays about how design and technology affect our everyday lives. Sent monthly.

Thinking about objects we love and why we love them

For me and my fellow planner junkies, the beginning of a new year means a new planner. I’ve been dying to use the most beautiful planner I’ve ever held in my hands, the Hobonichi Cousin, since I ordered it in August. Truly, the quality of the design is top-notch. I’m sure my life will just be better because I’m using this planner. Do you know what I mean? That certain objects or tools can make us feel this mix of joy, satisfaction, and certainty that no matter the chaos in other aspects of our lives, in this one way there’ll be calm? Peace. 

So I bought the Hobonichi Cousin because it is the rare planner that contains monthly, weekly, and daily spreads all in one book. It started out as pure function. But I fell in love once I held it in my hands. The weight and shape of it make me feel like I’m holding an actual book, not a notebook, which is better somehow. The feel of it makes me want to use it. The pages are thin and smooth like silk and yet make a satisfying crisp crinkle with every page turn. The layout is elegant AF. Even the week layout, which includes a 24-hour time table for every day of the week takes up a mere two pages. It’s extraordinary how some tidy lines and columns make this otherwise empty collection of papers something I want to fill in. When I cram my nose to the spine, there is even a subtle aroma, like rainwater on damp paper (I do not have a sponsorship deal with Hobonichi but I 1000% would). 

I’m marveling at the amount of thinking that went into the design of this planner, that goes into any really well-designed item. It’s usually imperceptible that a team of minds is in the background, thinking hard about how something should look and feel and function. They went through numerous iterations before getting to the finished product. But the finished thing, like this planner, can seem so right that it appears to have come into being fully formed rather than through trial and error, like Athena exploding out of Zeus’s head. 

I’m sure (I hope!) you can think of objects in your own life that are just so good or so perfect at being what they are. Like an article of clothing that fits your body just right can make you feel cool, sophisticated, confident, sexy, stylish, the right object can make performing some task easier, more efficient, more pleasurable. Maybe it’s the keyboard that makes a satisfying clack when you type, the office chair that gives your back proper support, a good non-stick pan makes for easier clean-up, and a wide cutting board with a just-sharpened knife makes tasks like chopping vegetables faster and more satisfying. 

Having the right items, I think, can make small, subtle, but important improvements in our lives. But sometimes we hold onto items past the point of their usefulness, past the point where they’ve started to annoy us. And yet we keep them around, like those old sweaters and jeans that don’t really fit anymore, that make us feel schlumpy, frumpy, messy. Why do we do this, why do we hold onto things that we should let go of? 

Time gets me all the time. It takes time to find the right item, whether it’s trying out a bunch of paper planners or testing out calendar apps. That time could be better spent doing any number of things, like watching a movie or sleeping or working. Sometimes it’s stubbornness, or laziness. Inertia is pretty powerful. Maybe we think we don’t really deserve nice things. Maybe spending the money seems like a waste. Sometimes the budget just doesn’t allow it. Dropping a significant sum on one single purchase that might not be worth it is nerve-wracking. 

I stubbornly held onto an IKEA desk that I’m pretty sure was made for kids, for years. I bought it at a time when I had limited space and a limited funds for a desk, but I kept it well past the point where it’s smallness became a distraction. It’s fine, it’s fine, I thought as I put off the purchase of an adult-sized desk for months and months before finally clicking the buy button. Now I see what an idiot I was for not doing it sooner, for not investing in my own sanity or my own ability to work and focus. If I could only have quantified the mental effort I spent convincing myself a bad desk was working, maybe it would have been easier to spend the cash on something new sooner.

I suppose that’s one reason why all these reviews sites like Wirecutter, The Strategist, and CNET have popped up, why we’ve come to rely on star ratings on everything from restaurant reviews to shoes, to give us the piece of mind that spending time and/or beaucoup bucks on something won’t be a waste, that we won’t regret it.

I wonder what it would look like if we went around our homes and gave all our things star ratings. And then we’d have to get rid of all the 1-star things and some (maybe all?) of the 2-star things too. Like Marie Kondo meets Amazon. What are the 4- and 5 star items left, those that actually work really really well in some way?

My point is not about how we should only buy the best products or how January is such a great time to do some kind of things-purge. Rather, I’m thinking about what tools (physical objects or digital products) we use in our own lives that really fit us, those 5-star items. There are thousands and thousands of products on the market and literally millions of apps we can download that purport to make our lives easier or more fun. Which ones actually do? Why?

It can be deeply personal. For me, I prefer a paper planner over digital because I enjoy the act of writing and holding the planner in my hands. And I need a planner because I need to know what tasks to tackle and what to look forward to, which has become ever more important during this pandemic. Otherwise I sit on the couch watching endless episodes of Bob’s Burgers on Hulu (with the commercials because I haven’t yet upped to the ad-free tier :/) and feel crappy about it, the feeling of wasting time adding to my increased anxiety levels.

Of course there are scads of planners available and I’ve tried many. The Hobonichi Cousin is working for me right now. I hope you have something in your own life that is working really well for you. What is it? What do you use it for? Why does it matter? I bet we all have radically different answers to this question. Or is everyone thinking about a planner?!

---

Subscribe to the newsletter Humdrum to get thoughtful essays about how design and technology affect our everyday lives. Sent monthly.

Trying to imagine a future beyond 2020

I’ve been thinking a lot more lately about the future. It started with money. The pandemic has thrown many things into sharp relief and long term financial stability is one of them. But imagining what that magical time of retirement will be like completely overwhelms me. This year crashed into me, into all of us, like a freight train. How do you plan for the decades ahead when it feels like anything can actually happen?

By future I mean beyond the next few years. I mean the next decade, I mean the next 20, 50, 100 years. What will the world of your golden years look like? What sort of world will your great grandchildren see, hear, smell, experience? I’m sure I’m not the only one who struggles with long-term thinking. New technologies and ways of communicating with each other keep pushing us to the bounds of what we understand, and are comfortable with. 

In the 1950s computers were huge machines that could weigh over 2,000 pounds. Nowadays we carry tiny computers (that can also make phone calls!) in our pockets. It took 182 years to build Notre Dame. There’s this particular kind of awe that washes over you when you stand at the foot of some huge and solid structure, knowing it’s been around for centuries, knowing it will out last you. Notre Dame, though charred, still stands. I know my pocket-sized computer will not outlast me, or maybe even next year. It, along with Facebook and Twitter, were invented after I graduated from college. Kids these days apparently don’t know how to use a rotary phone. So who can easily think in terms of 100, 200 years when tremendous shifts in something as basic as how humans communicate happened in less than 20 years?

So I marvel at the people who could continue showing up to work on one piece of Notre Dame, knowing they wouldn’t live to see the finished result. Maybe their great grandchildren would see it finished. But would they have pictured the world that those great grandchildren lived in as very different from theirs?

Trying to predict the future

We always want to know what the future will bring. We’ve used fortune tellers, crystal balls, oracles, our own imagination. Now we’ve added technology and sophisticated math, algorithms and polling and modeling, to the mix.

The worlds we try to predict are informed by our knowledge of and experience of what’s occurring now, if not what happened in the past. In some instances, software created with AI that we use to help make decisions, such as who should get a bank loan, who should or should not get parole because they’re more likely to commit a crime, are designed with reams of historical data that predict what might happen. Because the data is historical and because the programs are created by humans (often white, male humans) the results are algorithms that can be loaded with racial bias, gender bias, bias of any kind. Real harm can come to people because of these baked-in biases. You might not get that loan, or be denied parole not because of you but because of the algorithm. (I oversimplify, but see Weapons of Math Destruction for an eye-popping exploration of these topics).

On the other hand, programs using AI that are created and integrated into systems with thought and care, can literally saves lives. My point here isn’t to get into good or bad AI (I will do that in another letter). My point is, it’s hard to envision the next decade, the next generation, even at times the next few hours, but we’re harnessing as much computing power as possible to help see through that fog. If only we knew what would happen we could be better prepared. If only we knew who would actually commit a crime. If only I knew how long I needed to save money for, if only if only, I could make smarter decisions.

It’s scary not to know. We can only really make good guesses and bad guesses. Even the most informed are still guesses. 2020 has shown this to all of us. The future is murky, and I sometimes feel overwhelmed by it, and how my tiny little world will be affected.

However, far more imaginative people than me have clearer visions of the decades ahead, and are stretching their imaginations way beyond the next month, the next year. 

Imagining the future

Trying to figure out things like bank loans and saving money are like small potatoes compared to climate change. Even as we see, if not experience ourselves, the effects of climate change (more hurricanes, more fires etc), it’s still difficult to connect that experience to a greater whole, like to the polar ice caps melting. And then, what can you do about it, since individualist action alone will not save us? The sheer scale of this problem can be shattering whereas a few hundred years ago, the scale of our world was the size of Notre Dame. However, Greta Thunberg, climate change activists, scientists, the incoming Biden administration, are thinking decades ahead, to what the state of our whole planet could be, and they’re pushing the rest of us to do the same.

In another example, the protests over the summer brought national attention to the movement to defund the police (meaning reallocating money in police budgets to social, health, and community services). It seems to me the activists who’ve been pushing for these measures have a vision of what the future could look like, depending if we maintain the status quo or if we try something new. They have been posing tough questions: what might our cities and our communities look like if there was more funding for community health programs? If instead of calling the police for wellness checks, we called social workers, mental health professionals, crisis intervention teams? They’re asking of us, can you imagine a world where anyone who needed mental health support actually received it?

There are plenty of other writers, artists, thinkers who have been thinking long and hard about what the future could be. You probably know some.

The pandemic has given us an opportunity to think more deeply about the future, about the future we want to have, not the one we’re stuck in. Maybe it’s a little too early to broach this conversation with COVID-19 cases in the U.S. and many other parts of the world rising as they are. But I’m jumping in anyway. The pandemic has shaken up our routines, changed our behavior, and thoroughly upended the idea of “normal.” Scientists have been able to listen to the Earth in new ways, there’s been a sudden drop in CO2. Maybe there’s something in all the chaos and stress and anxiety we can learn from. Michele Norris on The Michelle Obama Podcast said something like, “Let’s not reach for normal, let’s reach for better.”

So what is better? Climate activists, the movement to defund the police, have visions for what is better. There are surely others looking ahead and imagining the possibilities. That is something I want to take with me into 2021: possibility instead of the lonely havoc of 2020. My world right now feels really small, like I can only see the end of my own nose. Perhaps that’s part of the problem, thinking so narrowly in terms of what I want and I need.  The people who built Notre Dame, I doubt they thought so narrowly. To work on such a grand project for so long I would think they imagined beyond their own bubble. Activists certainly aren’t thinking in bubbles.

So here’s a not-bad thing about the pandemic, I hope: more imaginative thinking. We aren’t able to use a crystal ball or algorithms to predict the exact future we’ll end up with. But we have the smarts and tools and resources to progress toward a future we do want.

---

Subscribe to the newsletter Humdrum to get thoughtful essays about how design and technology affect our everyday lives. Sent monthly.

I don't like using public bathrooms, but they should still be designed better

I recently met up with my book club in the park for a socially distanced hang. Sunshine, fresh air, the yellow and green leaves dancing in a light breeze. It was the perfect kind of day for being outside and gabbing about romance novels. And it was all interrupted by one of the most annoying things about being a human: needing to pee.  

Three from our group tore off to the nearby fieldhouse, past a kids’ soccer game, past families strolling with their dogs and toddlers, only to discover that the fieldhouse and its much needed bathrooms were locked. A grocery store was a brisk 7-minute walk away. Where were those kids supposed to pee? There weren’t enough trees or bushes to provide significant cover for an outdoor emergency (I looked). Were they really going to all hustle to the grocery, or could their parents drive them home fast enough?

As enraged as I was, I was not surprised. A few months prior, on a bike ride by the lake, my partner and I stopped at five different public bathrooms in the Chicago Park District to discover them locked. We also had to leave the park for a grocery store bathroom. 

I couldn’t believe the city’s negligent cruelty. Why lock all the bathrooms (presumably all of the +240 fieldhouses) when the parks were open? There were scores of people walking, on bikes, some on rollerblades. Maybe there were concerns about COVID, but the parks were open. If you’re going to invite people into a space let them use the full space. You wouldn’t invite people over to your home and then tell them they couldn’t use the bathroom. 

So what does it mean when a city doesn’t provide basic amenities for its citizens? I can’t not see these locked bathrooms as a metaphor for how poorly we can treat other humans. It’s a way of saying, you are not wanted in this space.

Japan, however, seems to have the opposite attitude. Instead of trying to keep people out, they are thinking of ways to make public bathrooms better. Maybe you saw the articles dotting the internet over the summer about The Tokyo Toilet? Public toilets, though plentiful in Japan, were still comprised of a lot of squat toilets. Ahead of the now-postponed Olympics, Japan decided to redesign and update public bathrooms. They hired world-renowned architects to create “unique” public bathroom facilities.  

This design by Shigeru Ban grabbed headlines. His single-occupancy stalls utilized colored glass that was transparent when the door was unlocked and opaque when locked. The idea was this would allow people to see if the bathroom was occupied and how clean it was before entering. It is agonizing to pull on a locked door in a moment of crisis! Plus, this could take care of the other issue with public bathrooms: the surprise, gross-out factor of a filthy bathroom. But the transparent glass weirded people out. I get it, I would be low-key worried about a malfunction in the tech that would suddenly make the glass transparent and expose my derriere to innocent passersby. Still, I am all for experimenting with new designs of public bathrooms to make the experience of putting my butt on the same place that a stranger’s butt touched less icky.

Per Forbes, on a statement from the The Nippon Foundation: 

The mission was to apply innovative design to make public bathrooms accessible for everyone regardless of gender, age or disability, with a goal '“that people will feel comfortable using these public toilets and to foster a spirit of hospitality for the next person.”

That bit, “fostering a spirit of hospitality” is enough to bring tears to my eyes. In these world-feels-like-it’s-on-fire times, I’m ready to latch on like a barnacle to anything, whether it’s a nation or a person or a toilet, that wants to make something better, especially something that is using design for a public good. 

The everyday kind of hospitality of hanging out at a friend’s house or visiting your family for dinner doesn’t happen much nowadays. Instead, the opportunities for hospitality happen outdoors. In cities like Chicago, where so many of us live in apartments and are thus deprived of a private backyard, it happens in parks. To see friends, family, colleagues safely we need to use public spaces. Breathing the open air and seeing trees and sky instead of the same walls is a shimmering bit of joy, a memory made, instead of another dull moment inside, so similar to all the others it’s easily forgotten.

I get it, we don’t want to think about public bathrooms, or even private ones. We think public bathrooms are gross because we think human bodies are gross, with our farts and fluids and waste. We are ashamed of these things now, but not always. The Romans had extensive, probably co-ed, public bathrooms. Rows of seats were next to each other with holes in the bottom for butts. We all used to poop together. 

This is basically unimaginable nowadays. Farting in public or even around trusted friends could stop your heart from intense mortification. The shame of the smelly things our bodies do is hard to overcome. And we in the U.S. don’t really do public bathrooms. Truly public bathrooms—those not housed in a theater or mall, restaurant or office building—are not common. We are a nation of cars and many of us live within a short drive of our homes and our private bathrooms. Gas stations abound for when an emergency comes up. And for those long drives in our private bubble on wheels, there’s rest stops along the highways. But those too have a stigma. (I used to hold it in for miles until I could get to a fast food restaurant or gas station).

But we all will probably use public bathrooms multiple times over the 1.5 years of our lives that we spend in a bathroom. The Nippon Foundation made a point in it’s statement about making a public bathroom for everyone regardless of gender. The group Stalled! is re-imagining the public bathroom to be truly inclusive “for everyone regardless of age, gender, race, religion and disability.” Locks are not always needed to keep people out. Sometimes fear can, sometimes inaccessibility or lack of needed amenities can.

Stalled! went a step further than many of the designers of the The Tokyo Toilet by designing a space that would not isolate two genders into separate spaces. Rather Stalled! envisioned a bathroom as one big space with private, single-occupancy units, including ambulatory stalls and family rooms on one side, and an area with sinks for washing on the other. The safety comes from the overall bathroom space being open and accessible for everyone, rather than denying certain groups access. This bathroom design also incorporated a lounge area where you can rest.  This, I’d say, is hospitality.

But it is probably strange at first: all genders using one space. When traveling, I ran into something like a beta version of Stalled!’s design. At this restaurant, there were no separate men’s and women’s rooms, rather a few private, single-occupancy stalls and a row of shared sinks. I was shocked when a man emerged from one of the stalls and started washing his hands next to me. It felt totally weird, and I panicked that I got turned around and went to the men’s bathroom. But we politely ignored each other, as you do. It’s just something to get used to.

And I think we can get used to it. Our ideas of what is appropriate for a public bathroom have changed over time. Assumptions we have about the roles of men and women, cultural norms of what is and is not appropriate (18th-century women would surreptitiously relieve themselves in public by concealing a porcelain dish under their voluminous skirts) and technological innovations find their way into the design of the public bathroom. In other words, design is infused with the surrounding culture.

The Tokyo Toilet and Stalled! are two groups pushing design forward by putting intention and creativity and thought into a space that we just do not think of until we must brace ourselves to use it. 

Part of the design of a public space, and inviting people to use that space, requires acknowledging that we all (and we all of different genders, bodies, ages, religions, etc. ) eventually need to use the bathroom, and acknowledging that yeah, our bodies are smelly at times. So why not make public bathrooms better, why not make them places you at least don’t mind being in, if not ones that spark amusement. At the very least, unlock the damn bathrooms. Everyone should be welcome.

For more on the history and future of the public bathroom, listen to 99% Invisible’s episode on the topic, which partly inspired this letter.

Chart

View fullsize

---

Subscribe to the newsletter Humdrum to get thoughtful essays about how design and technology affect our everyday lives. Sent monthly.

Voting rules can be confusing, but filling out a form shouldn’t be

Maybe it’s the uber importance of voting this year or the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment,  but for whatever reason I’ve gotten really into voting laws and the history of voting. Like did you know that we (by that I mean men) used to vote viva voce - with the voice. Can you imagine going to the polls nowadays and announcing to the entire room who you were voting for? 

I’m also indignant and exasperated that voting is way harder than it should be with the confusing rules, the bullshit rhetoric about fraud, and now COVID. Voting should be a really a boring endeavor. And by that I mean the actual physical act of voting, of engaging with the paper or the electronic ballot, not the emotional component or the sense of civic duty, not the anxiety over how you’re going to vote, or who’s going to win. The literal act of voting should be so boring and straightforward it’s just like dealing with every other survey or multiple-choice test you’d taken since you could hold a pencil. 

If you want to vote absentee, getting your absentee ballot should be equally as boring if you live in one of the 40 states that do not automatically send ballots to residents. My state of Illinois is one of these 40 and thankfully, requesting an absentee ballot online was easy peasy. The website I bought a sweater dress from had a more complex series of forms than the Illinois Secretary of State’s office. 

But here’s my bugaboo: requesting a ballot isn’t always easy. I mean, yes, it’s ridiculous that there are 10 states that just send ballots to voters and Wisconsin, for example, makes you upload an image of your photo ID before it will mail you one. But I’m talking about the issues with the websites themselves that could make filling out an application for an absentee ballot difficult, especially if you are 1 in 5 Americans with a disability. 

Voting can be a confusing process, but filling out a form shouldn’t be. We fill out forms all the time when we buy stuff online, when we need a new driver’s license, when we go to our doctors’ offices. It’s mindless drudgery, time that we could be spending baking cakes or playing video games. 

Things that can make any kind of work online easy, whether it’s reading an article, buying shoes, checking a bank statement, or requesting a ballot are those mundane, unnoticed design elements. Like, providing a label to a form field so you know what information to put in. Or making sure the colors on the website contrast enough that you can actually read the information. 

And yet, often websites don’t incorporate these basic elements or follow accessibility guidelines. A study of all 50 state voting websites revealed that many were riddled with some basic problems that make them hard to use. The average score of the websites was 77% (a C grade?!). 20 websites scored below 76%. This is bad for anyone with a disability, for anyone who needs to use a screen reader or has a vision or mobility impairment. Aside from proper color schemes and labels, issues were technical things like: 

• Keyboard focus (when you use the tab key instead of a mouse, you see the selected element of the page outlined) 

• Tab order (when you hit the tab key, the order of the outlined elements matches the visual order of the page) 

Now I realize this is not the most exciting design or engineering work. But it’s vital for anyone who comes to the website that basic accessibility guidelines are followed. And we all do benefit from proper form field labeling. And that’s the thing - if you’ve ever found a website difficult to use and the information hard to follow, it’s probably not you. It’s probably the website. These little things add up, and they matter.

As we’re all aware, voting this year is both critical and nerve-wracking because of the pandemic and Trump’s fear mongering. Boring it is not! Legislators have managed to weaponize some of the most mundane things we humans ever have to do: fill out forms and take a multiple choice test. Let’s not add poor website design on top of the nonsensical rules of the voting process. Voting websites that are not accessible (I’m looking at you, Rhode Island) are both a pain to use and could actively prevent citizens from fulfilling a constitutional right. 

It’s critical to get these basic things right. This is very much within the power of the designers and engineers who maintain the websites. These websites obviously must adhere to and communicate the rules, but they can take care to ensure the instructions are visually clear and information easy to input so citizens can fill out a form to get their ballot in the mail.

Are you registered to vote? How are you voting this year?

---

Subscribe to the Humdrum Newsletter to get more essays on how technology and design affect our everyday lives. Delivered monthly.