Policy and design - UX Podcast

A transcript of Episode 307 of UX Podcast. James Royal-Lawson and Per Axbom are joined by Alexandra Schmidt to discuss talk about policy and design and how we can, as designers, help reduce or avoid the harm new technology can cause.

This transcript has been machine generated and checked by Cristian Pavel.

Transcript

Per Axbom
This episode was recorded with an audience of Ambition Empower members. Empower is a continuous learning programme that rethinks how you learn new topics within the field of design. Instead of attending a conference, you attend Ambition Empower and take part in one or several tracks taught every week by industry design leaders. For more information, visit uxpodcast.com/empower .

RoboTitle
UX Podcast episode 307.

[Music]

Per Axbom
Hello, I’m Per Axbom.

James Royal-Lawson
And I’m James Royal-Lawson.

Per Axbom
And this is UX Podcast. We’re in Stockholm, Sweden, and you’re listening to us all over the world from Spain to Ethiopia.

James Royal-Lawson
As a researcher, strategist, and UX designer, Alex Schmidt has worked both for agencies and in the public sector. Her greatest interest lies in the wicked problems inherent in enterprise design, and the mysterious ways of large systems.

Per Axbom
These are all areas she has delved into as product strategist for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. She also has a background as an award winning reporter, and producer for NPR and others, covering arts, business, technology and urban development.

Per Axbom
Alexandra’s new book, “Deliberate Intervention” aims to show both designers and policymakers how to work together proactively to create tools and rules that truly serve the public interest.

Alex Schmidt
And I should say that my views do not represent the views of the Federal Reserve.

James Royal-Lawson
When technology moves so fast that regulation can’t keep up, people’s lives and livelihoods are put in jeopardy. Designers and engineers often react by creating ad-hoc policies that might lead to even bigger problems. Alexandra’s new book, “Deliberate intervention” aims to show both designers and policymakers how to work together proactively to create tools and rules that truly serve the public interest.

Per Axbom
So Alex, they say “honesty is the best policy”. But what then is policy? Is it possible for us to pin down what we mean when we use the word policy within the digital design and tech space?

Alex Schmidt
Well, I think policy in the digital design and tech space and policy in society means similar things, governmental policy, you could say, which is simply shaping things to produce a world or a result that you are happy with. That’s really all it is. You know, you can break it down further into details. But that’s what it comes down to. And in digital policy, that’s what they’re trying to do. And the same goes for government policy.

Per Axbom
That’s such a great way of not defining it, but really expressing the goal of it. I love that.

Alex Schmidt
Thank you.

James Royal-Lawson
So how did your background in like radio and you have a really interesting master’s degree that you’ve done as well with? What was that? There was..ooo, I’ve forgotten the name exactly. You know the name better than me.

Alex Schmidt
Oh, yeah. I did a master’s in…

James Royal-Lawson
“Cultural reporting and criticism”. There we go.

Alex Schmidt
Yeah, it’s been quite a journey to get to the point that I’m at right now. But I think that there’s a lot, so I had this background as a journalist. And I think there’s a lot of overlaps between journalism and UX. I actually wrote an article about that a little while back. You know, I still interview people a lot, right? You know, I interviewed people as a journalist, I interview people as a UX person. A lot of my work in UX is selling ideas. And that is something that’s very similar to what I did, as a journalist. You know, wrapping things up with a bow and presenting it that’s very similar, UX and journalism. So there’s been curious major overlap. So there’s a lot of areas of overlap, and in some ways, it was a very natural transition that I made. Yeah, but the criticism piece, you know, I think that comes through in this book that I wrote, I know, we haven’t, like touched on that, or maybe we did a little bit, but the criticism piece is really just kind of taking a little bit of an unconventional view on things and pushing back on the prevailing narrative. And I think that’s kind of what I did in the book a little bit.

James Royal-Lawson
Because you, yourself in the beginning of the book, you out yourself as a, now what’s the what’s the phrase you use there?

Alex Schmidt
Technophobe?

James Royal-Lawson
Technophobe, yeah. Which is nice that you kind of put that straight out there at the very beginning of the book. Is that… I guess that’s connected to the criticism angle that you’re talking about?

Alex Schmidt
Absolutely, absolutely. You know, I think that it’s great that a lot of people who work in the tech world are sort of cheerleaders and interested and excited about it. And I just don’t come from that angle, right? I just come from a more doubtful, sceptical place, I suppose. And I think we need both we need all of that we need, you know, the excited cheerleaders, and we need the people who kind of take a step back. And they’re both important points of view.

Per Axbom
So one narrative that a lot of companies within the tech industry have, obviously, is that they are going to save the world. And what you start off saying is “design can’t save the world”. You’re not saying it won’t, you’re even saying it can’t save the world. Talk to us a bit about that.

Alex Schmidt
Yes, another one of my kind of unconventional pushback on the prevailing narrative stances. But, you know, I think that that perspective really comes from understanding the points of view of designers where I think a lot of folks in the design world have a bit of a saviour complex, where, you know, they take a lot of the problems on their shoulders, we take a lot of problems on our shoulders, we’re told we are the advocates for the user, and we are going to help people and we’re going to solve their problems. And we can’t do that. And we It shouldn’t only be our job. And we actually have systems and institutions in society that it is their job. And so to your point of, you know, companies saying they’re going to save the world, well, you know, how does the public sector interact with those, with those private companies that have in some cases, laudable goals. But we all have to shape things together, right? Public sector and private sector, design and policy. That’s what the book is about.

James Royal-Lawson
I’m going to kind of stick up for the for UX designers for a moment and say, I can imagine that we’ve got listeners out there that are saying “no, but I feel I can make a difference as a was an individual designer”. What do you mean, that something… you don’t want to crush that spirit, I guess?

Alex Schmidt
No, not at all. And I, actually in the book, there’s an entire chapter on, you know, the book is about how do harms emerge from technologies, and then how do we react to that? And there’s an entire chapter of the book on like, internal interventions? In other words, what can companies do inside to react to harms that emerge from technologies? And then there’s another chapter, which is, you know, and policy comes into play external facing policy? And so, no, absolutely, I think that design has a major role to play, but up to a point, you know, so… You can’t do everything, but there are things you can do, there’s really important things you can do, and I can get into some of those. But yes, I’m not trying to crush anybody’s spirit. And I think that, you know, also, I think it’s empowering probably, maybe for design to understand how, you know, it interplays with these wider systems of policy. And that’s kind of what I was trying to think about when I wrote the book. Maybe it even gives people new frames for thinking about how they can help and new ideas.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, because you as an individual, you are part of that bigger system. And you’ll be working, I guess, you’re working within your organisation, which in itself has been, it has to follow policy regulations that come from outside the organisation.

Alex Schmidt
Yes, that’s, that’s true. That’s right.

Per Axbom
And speaking to what the book covers, I mean, “harm”, because when people are actually intending to do good, and save the world, and having all the… want to have all this impact, and are being really careful designers, and realise in end that even though they take all this care, harm happens, something goes wrong. And how do you even reconcile with that? How do you acknowledge it as a designer? And how do you go about addressing it?

Alex Schmidt
I think maybe the first thing to realise is that it’s quite natural. And you know, I have a whole chapter about technologies throughout history and how harms emerged from them. And you know, every system creates a sort of unintended consequence. That’s just the way of the world and there’s no way to reduce all of the side effects of what we design and our technologies. And so understanding that is something that’s going to happen and then from that frame of reference coming into, well, how can I make it as least harmful as possible when those harms start to emerge and react to that? That is sort of the question that’s at the core of the book.

Per Axbom
Something I really love that you talk about is how pain points and harm are different things. Because sometimes people will say, when we talk about ethics “well, that’s my job, I work with pain points, I can do customer journeys, I find the pain points and I resolve them, so I eliminate harm”. Whereas you really get into how… sure, pain points can be addressable by design interventions, but perhaps harm cannot.

Alex Schmidt
Yes, thank you for saying that maybe better than I did, I think. You know, that was like a very good crystallisation of those ideas. Yeah, so as designers, we look, you know, at the detailed journey of a user or try to identify the pain points, the points of friction. But harms aren’t usually something that users identify in the course of research. They, for two reasons. One is they accrue to society on a broader level, not necessarily to individuals, and they also become apparent later on in time. They’re not something that a user is going to say that’s harmful to me, come on, think about it. You know, like my example that I use a couple times in the book, one of them is the YouTube algorithm, right? So, you know, it’s feeding me more and more sensational videos. And I like those, I perceive that as exciting and something that literally brings me delight as a user. But again, the harms accrue later on in time, and they accrue at a level of broader level of society. So you’re not going to identify harms in the course of standard design research. That’s just not how our work works.

James Royal-Lawson
I think, I guess as well, that even if you do stumble across some of the harms, then I think we’ve all been part of that situation where it’s dismissed as an edge case, or, you know, it’s something that’s not affecting the bulk, so we don’t need to worry about it.

Alex Schmidt
I’d love to hear more about that actually, maybe I should have interviewed you for the book.

James Royal-Lawson
I think it does come up when you’re… well I say “harm”. I mean, well, you do come across things that maybe you don’t want to fully design something because it can feel like an effort to cater for a particular situation or a particular group of people. And for them, it might be quite harmful, it might exclude them or, you know, a lot of the time we’ve had this issue around accessibility, for example, that you maybe have pushback from an organisation to bother making something accessible, because I don’t see the people with accessibility needs as part of their core audience or primary audience or want to prioritise dealing with it.

Alex Schmidt
Yeah, and that’s actually one of the, you know, when you talked before about, “we don’t want to crush the spirit of design, there are things design can do”. I think one of the big things that design can do is, for proactive mitigation of harm, is target designs to those most likely to be harmed, right. And this is something I talked about in the book. So you know, what happens is when you target designs to those most likely to be harmed is that benefits accrue to a much wider group of people, I’m sure you know, this.

Or you’ve heard these ideas before, one of the examples that we have, I don’t know if this is the case in Stockholm, or in Sweden, or other parts of the world, but we have things called curb cuts that, you know, they’re on some sidewalks and not others, and they let you kind of roll. And sidewalks were not always designed with curb cuts, you know, they had to retrofit the sidewalks of cities in order to accommodate for originally wheelchairs, right, so people who couldn’t walk, and what ended up happening is that a lot of other people benefited people who were pushing babies and strollers and you know, there were perhaps people who just were on crutches or just had a pain in their knee or whatever it is, you know, so the the point is that, even though it might seem like a very small number of people who are being harmed by something, there’s a much wider group that benefits from addressing those harms.

James Royal-Lawson
So the gathering, the summation of knowledge or observations of that greater benefit for society. That’s not going to come from the individual organisation. That’s gonna have to come from a bigger part of the system.

Alex Schmidt
Yes, that’s right. And in fact, you know, here we have the ADA, the Americans Disabilities Act, which was a landmark piece of regulation policy that caused our cities and institutions to have, you know, handicapped stalls and bathrooms and tonnes of you know, had a million design implications for our built environment. And it didn’t come from the original… it didn’t come from the private companies that were building, you know, our infrastructure, it had to be something that would came down from on high and was sort of dictated to society, you must do this. So, you know, I think the point that you’re making, which I think is my point in the book, is that, you can’t necessarily expect individual designers within a capitalist ecosystem, to address all of this, it’s just probably not going to happen. In all cases, as hard as you might try, and our society writ large has to come in and address these things.

Per Axbom
This makes me think about what I’ve started now calling “the dance of policy creation”, I don’t even think you call it the dance. But when I was reading that chapter, it was more like, so it’s both proactive and reactive. So something happens, technology is introduced into society, society reacts, and then it reshapes the technology itself. And then the policies have to change. So there’s always something going on. So just with the accessibility example, like having a ramp for wheelchairs, yes, I have a ramp for wheelchairs. Okay, so it turns out, it’s too steep. So people can’t actually get up, so we have to change the policy. What how does that happen in a space where everything is moving so fast?

Alex Schmidt
Yeah, you mean, like in digital tech?

Per Axbom
Yeah.

Alex Schmidt
That is a great question. I think that’s something that we’re struggling with right now. And, you know, there’s this idea of like, the pacing problem, you know, that I mentioned in the book, which is basically that technology moves really fast. And policy moves really slow. So they’re operating at different paces? And how do we bring those things closer together? And, you know, there’s a chapter in the book about bringing policy and design closer together. And I think that there’s a lot of interesting movement in that space. So for example, you know, you could be a designer who gets interested in policy and how your work interacts with it. There’s somebody who I interviewed who works on healthcare UX, and he’s super involved and aware of policy and has opinions on it and actually tries to impact it. So I think that, you know, there is a place for designers to, to kind of reach up if you want to think of it that way and connect with the policy sphere. And there’s lots of other examples of these spheres coming closer together. But I think that that’s, the nascent idea of how maybe we start to address this problem.

James Royal-Lawson
So yeah, I think in the book, you mentioned, like Per brought up as well, policies reactive rather than proactive, and you suggest that we need to be more thoughtful and collaborative. Now I’m getting the understanding now that when you say collaborative, you mean with the policy makers themselves?

Alex Schmidt
Yeah, in some cases, yes, right? So convening policymakers, and everybody who’s part of the work of shaping technology is one of the things that can happen and does happen in some spaces. And in other spaces. It really doesn’t. We have, an agency will issue an intentive… I mean, this is in the US, right, this book is does not cover the policymaking of the entire world. So it is US centric, I’m sorry, but I had to focus in one place.

James Royal-Lawson
But I do like the fact you pointed it out at the beginning of the book. That was nice to see that you actually put it out there that “yep, I know, this is US centric, but it will be usefull to the rest of the world as well.” It’s nice to see.

Alex Schmidt
Exactly, there was no way to kind of, at least in the time that I had, to cover all of the policymaking apparatuses in the world. But, you know, there are some patterns that are going to hold true no matter what country you’re in. But, you know, we have that agencies issue like an intent of rule making, and we’re going to, we intend to make a rule, and then companies read this essay online, and they write back a letter, and they sort of go back and forth. And then it’s like, you know, a thing gets created. So, that’s a very, you know, not modern way of collaborating, right? You know, you can think we have workshops, we have methods of talking, we have to discuss things, you know, there’s a whole piece in the book where I talk about facilitation and collaborative policymaking. That’s something that doesn’t happen as much right now. And I think there could be more of that.

It is complicated, right? Because there’s so many different parties that you need to bring to the table. I’m sure you’ve had, you know, the challenge of scheduling a workshop where you need lots of different people, and you need them all there or else you’re not going to get you know, the right, the right solution. So, I think that that’s one of the challenges of doing this well, is bringing everybody to the table, and having those types of conversations. But that’s one of the things that I think is an opportunity space.

James Royal-Lawson
So where’s the… I guess, where is the line then between collaboration and lobbying?

Alex Schmidt
Well, I guess when I think of lobbying, I think of, coming in and saying I want… first of all lobbyist is like somebody who’s paid by a company to get a certain policy outcome. And when I think of designers collaborating with policymakers, I don’t think of the designers maybe I’m putting the superhero.

James Royal-Lawson
The reason why this question popped into my head, I just thinking about, you know, going back to the individual designer, and kind of that what powers an individual designer, the enthusiasm. And then if you’re in an organisation, bubbling that up, you’re gonna reach organisational level, and then that made me think about, “yeah, especially in America, once you get to organisational levels, there’s an awful lot of lobbying goes on where the organisation pushes for a certain policy”. So I just kind of start to wonder about where that a multi layered approach or system, where do we, is there anything we can look out for to see when we’re moving across into lobbying, and we aren’t maybe pushing policy, our ideal policy anymore?

Alex Schmidt
No, you’re right. I mean, I think that that’s a really interesting perspective. And I guess what I would say is that, you know, we’re dealing with like, giant, in some cases, institutions and organisations where, people doing lobbying are like, in a completely different space from, somebody who’s saying, I’m working with whoever’s writing this policy, and I’m working with the UX of “fill in the blank”, and it’s like, completely… you might not even be aware that there’s lobbying happening, because you’re at a completely different part of the organisation. You know, sometimes the left hand doesn’t speak to the right. And, that’s not a great thing. But my point is that these things don’t necessarily need to be impacted by each other, they can happen in separate spheres.

Per Axbom
I feel like you’re opening a door for people who are struggling within their own companies, perhaps to make a difference and raise their hand and say “this isn’t working for me, and I see all these dangers”. Where they can actually put that energy into perhaps, I’ll call it activism, to actually influence policy, and go in that direction, instead, and perhaps have more sustainable impact.

Alex Schmidt
Yeah, and that’s exactly what I’m going for here. I mean, I just think what we’ve been doing hasn’t exactly been working, and I’m trying to find other approaches. You know, I think one of the things that a lot of folks are are talking about right now are sort of like ethical toolkits, and using ethics and design. I think that’s a sort of trend or wave that we’re seeing right now, and I think it’s laudable and important, but again, I come back to this idea of that has limits, you’re still in a capitalist paradigm, and you’re not going to be able to escape that, even with all the ethics that you bring to the table. And so this is exactly what I’m trying to do, thank you for putting it that way. You know, what are other things that you can do to try to be the most positive force within technology that you can be? And this is why I wanted to look at this policy lens.

Per Axbom
So what should I do as a designer, tomorrow to support the idea of creating policy to safeguard people who are impacted by by my industry?

Alex Schmidt
Well, so I mean, this is something that I struggled with on this book, because my editor and publisher, they really wanted it to be a “To do” you know? A “How to”, right? And I was always pushing back and I was saying, this book is not a “How to”, this book is not a “How to”, this book is a “How to think”. And I always thought that “How to think” is sort of the first step in this extremely dense space and the “How to think” is the “How to”. So I’m gonna push back a little bit on the “What do I do next?” question. I think immersing oneself in these ideas and starting to ponder them more deeply is the first step. At the end of the book, I do have a list of things that you can try, you know, one of them is like facilitation, getting to know policy, getting curious about it, understanding how it’s being shaped in your space. That’s an awesome first step. But again, you know, the book is not a how to, it’s a how to think. And I’m trying to stay away from too many prescriptive solutions.

Per Axbom
Changing mindsets, rather than providing the toolkit.

Alex Schmidt
Exactly, I’m not ready to be like “Check!”, “You have a checklist now, you’re done!”. You know, that’s not what I’m going for here.

James Royal-Lawson
You are now a certified policymaker.

Alex Schmidt
Exactly, that’s not what this is about.

Per Axbom
I think that was a perfect note to end on.

Alex Schmidt
Thank you. That was really fun.

Per Axbom
Thank you so much, Alex.

James Royal-Lawson
The thing that just keeps coming back to me on, I suppose, nagging me when it comes to policy and listening back to the interview with Alex is this whole thing where we have the boundless internet, this global thing that we created, trying to be harnessed by bounded policy, by policies that are other are framed within the context of a country. Alex herself, we gave a praise in the interview about how her book opens up by being very forthright and open about the fact that she has limited the scope to the USA, when it comes to particular policy details, which is excellent that she says that upfront. But at the same time, it’s kind of, I suppose it reveals the whole problematic nature of this area that you have to deal in a legal framework. And that legal framework of policy is within a country or region, I suppose if you’re looking at the EU, I guess, or in America it’s state level and the federal level. But at the end of the day you’ve got machines that are connected to whichever globally.

Per Axbom
Right, so as a country, you can regulate within your own borders. But the corporations and the Internet companies, they work globally, so they actually have to comply with all the laws of all the countries.

James Royal-Lawson
Ultimately, that’s what we’re talking about if you’re offering a global service, and yeah, you’ve got to comply to everything.

Per Axbom
Right. And so when we hear people say, like the billionaire say that, well, the cost of doing business is being sued and fined for breaking the law, we sort of that feels awful, but at the same time, thinking about how many laws and policies they actually have to know and understand. It’s quite hard to comply with them all.

James Royal-Lawson
It is. And I guess… so what you end up with as a natural state for organisations is a little bit of one of fear or ignorance, or both that when you when you’ve met with a policy sphere… Okay, can we comply to this policy sphere in another region? And if the answer is kind of, well, I don’t think so then you’re naturally going to close the door to it. And in internet terms, that means not making your product or service available in a certain territory.

Per Axbom
Right. So essentially, you put up a geographical wall for your service.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, that becomes the legal requirement effectively if you’re not prepared to meet policy in other region. And we’ve seen this I mean, since GDPR came on board here in Europe that especially medical websites, American medical websites, most of those… Healthline is a is a prime example there. When we google for things, and Healthline result comes up in the search results, you click on it, and you’re met by a cookie banner message asks to give your consent for loads and loads of cookies. Fair enough, that’s I’m trying to comply with various policy and law. And if you say no, no, thank you, then you basically get told you’re not allowed to view the content.

Per Axbom
Yeah.

James Royal-Lawson
And there are some sites even where he doesn’t even give the choice, you just can’t view the content because you’re in Europe.

Per Axbom
Yeah. I’m surprised by the number of news sites actually, that have this thing saying that you’re visiting from the EU. So you’re not allowed to view our content.

James Royal-Lawson
I’m just presuming this is where policy, someone has explored policy in other regions, and they’ve gone, the legal team, whatever, they’ve gone “Look, you know, we’re not meeting, we’re not living up to this. So you need to do something”. And then someone’s gone “Whoa, that’s really complicated, expensive for us to do and maybe even clashes completely with our business model. Just shut the door quietly and leave”.

Per Axbom
Yeah.

James Royal-Lawson
That goes against all this, I suppose, for some of us, the hope and dream of the internet was something global and unifying.

Per Axbom
Exactly. That’s sort of the point. And I mean, that is why web three is going into the whole idea of decentralisation and there, of course it’s all in conflict with each other, it’s in conflict with the idea of having localised laws really.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah. Of course it is, because it’s global. And then, so we’re back to the whole, the main point of Alex’s book and the work that, policy goes slow and technology goes fast, and people can get harmed and what can you do to stop people from getting harmed.

Per Axbom
For me there this or also the power imbalance of these huge companies having more money than some of the countries they’re active in? Which means how could you possibly have any power over a company, that’s so much, much richer than even your own country?

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah. We have an example there. Let’s take Iceland, for example, when it’s what, 300.000 people? You know, it’s…

Per Axbom
I think it’s the perfect example.

James Royal-Lawson
I mean its GDP is nowhere near many of these large organisations that are heading up both the policy debate and the policy problem, I guess. So all they can do Iceland, I guess he’s just tag along. Ultimately, maybe they can try and influence. I mean, maybe that’s the question. How do you in that kind of situation, exert an impact and try kind of shape things? Because you are on the backfoot as a small nation?

Per Axbom
Exactly. I mean, it does come down to activism. Really. That’s your power to protest, to make people aware.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah. And we were.. I brought it up in the interview, the distinction of where does… what is collaboration, and trying to work together with those creating policy dealing with policy? When does that end and lobbying starts? The example would be if you’re working for Google, and as part of your job at Google, you are meeting with policymakers, people are working within the policy world, and giving them your advice. Who’s checking to make sure your advice is genuine neutral advice, rather than what Google wants you to say as part of your role when meeting those policymakers?

Per Axbom
I mean, which you would have to assume the latter, I guess, but, and then that makes me think of the policymakers then, of course, applying for jobs within these companies. So how does that lead to any sort of trust at all? I think you, was it Nick Clegg that you mantioned, when you went to Facebook.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, in UK, Nick Clegg was part of the government, David Cameron’s government a little while ago now. And after finishing up in government, when they lost the subsequent election, he then signed up to be part of Facebook’s. Yeah, he was working for Facebook in this particular area of policy. And yeah, so you wonder kind of like, how does that work? And you can you, there’s so many ways that it could be, you could manipulate the situations and end up being creating something that’s not genuine.

Per Axbom
So it does come down to power and whose voice matters and who gets hurt and who gets and who understands what is going on. I mean, that’s a huge aspect of it, who understands?

James Royal-Lawson
Excellent point. I mean, in the digital world, we’ve seen time and time again, that politicians and policymakers really don’t understand what they’re dealing with what they’re talking about, and the speed at which policy moves, means at the time, they’ve even started to maybe understand it, we’ve moved on. So you end up something getting more regulated or policy has been set for something which actually isn’t really relevant anymore. And we’re kind of like three steps beyond that already.

Per Axbom
So that makes it even harder for people even with activism to help make people aware of the issues, because I think you need people to understand the larger majority of people to understand something for them to be able to push lawmakers and policymakers to making a change.

James Royal-Lawson
The the last chapter of Alex’s book, the conclusion is the, we mentioned it a bit in the interview the “To do” list, the concrete advice of what you can do. And a lot of is, of course, around being more aware of, having more conversations around when you could be causing harm and staying on top of, of both design and policy and building bridges. Making sure you try and move things upstream. It’s collaborate, facilitate and collaborate. And that made me start thinking about maybe we need to have more education for policymakers. I think we need to not just collaborate with them, but actually do design, you know, UX for policymakers or whatever, technology for policymakers. Really kind of lift their understanding of, not necessarily of the details, just the space and the messy world that we’re in. Because it’s global.

Per Axbom
It’s a good point. I think some policymakers actually do a good job of that, and actually do make certain that they do study up on whatever they’re deciding on but of course, there’s a huge gap there. A the gap never stops.

James Royal-Lawson
Sometimes politics forces policy, to move a different speed to what the policy makers would like.

Per Axbom
Exactly.

James Royal-Lawson
We might not be ready yet. But particular political situation means that you have to be ready this needs to go in, now. Because we’ve got a window of doing it now. Other people demand it, other people demand it that way.

Per Axbom
That’s the thing isn’t it? The window is always there, the window where you have power, which puts so many constraints on the whole idea of policymaking.

James Royal-Lawson
We still haven’t solved the international aspect.

Per Axbom
Still, to end on a positive note, I mean, for me, since I’m a person who’s been very engaged in truly working with digital ethics, her points about helping educating people as you’re saying, making people more aware engaging in activism towards policymaking is something that is I feel like yes, that’s a really good next step or a good complement to the work I’m doing now.

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah, and I think we can be more… those times when we kind of notice something and maybe push back a bit and say, Look, we shouldn’t be doing this, then I’d like us to be more vocal about those moments we do it.

Per Axbom
Yes.

James Royal-Lawson
Because that communication will raise awareness and normalise some of the good behaviour in some of these areas, which backs up some of Alex’s points that we canbe ahead of the curve, we can avoid things from happening the more we talk about some of the things that we didn’t do, we make it more likely I guess that other organisations won’t do it either.

Per Axbom
Exactly. Good one. I’m now looking at “recommend listening”. And it’s always you who puts these together, so I’m always curious myself “So what does James recommended this time”? I’m seeing, is it episode 92?

James Royal-Lawson
Yeah.

Per Axbom
Wow, that’s a long long ago. “Managing chaos” with Lisa Welchman. Love that one.

James Royal-Lawson
That was our first chat with Lisa. Around the time she released her book about our digital governance. So here I’ve pulled in an episode which links in with governance because policy and governance they’re not the same, but they’re, I guess the bedfellow?

Per Axbom
Oh, yeah, definetely.

James Royal-Lawson
So that seems really relevant listening. It’s always relevant to listen to Lisa.

Per Axbom
It is. Remember to keep moving.

James Royal-Lawson
See you on the other side.

[Music]

Per Axbom
Did you know James I’m like the fabric version of King Midas?

James Royal-Lawson
You’re like the fabric version of King Midas?

Per Axbom
Everything I touch, becomes felt.

This is a transcript of a conversation between James Royal-Lawson, Per Axbom, and Alexandra Schmidt recorded in and published as episode 307 of UX Podcast.

transcript