Human Flourishing Design Guide: the science of well-being in the service of technology design

Thank you for the references, @aschrijver.
And yes, PERMA is currently the flourishing and well-being model with the most empirical evidence of reliability. As well as it’s tool of measurement, the PERMA-Profiler, has good reliability and acceptable levels of validity.

Fascinating to read through this conversation having taken a few days on other things. It is so reassuring to read about people talking about the things of most interest to me.
I’ve just signed up to study psychological science next year because I would love to be involved in ethical design of tech and AI but do so from an informed perspective.

I often communicate to kids in terms of “the trick is…” for all those useful things someone can show you in a second which make things easier but in response to this comment the issue of who is trustworthy is a vexed one and I’m in pretty much the same boat as you.

My sense of urgency about building ethics into data collection, tech and AI stems from an urge to be part of the social change needed to respond to what I see as deliberately engineered conflict on a global scale.

If you aren’t already aware of how this has been happening recommended watching from my pov is:
BBC expose of Cambridge Analytica
Address to the Oxford Union by Brittany Kaiser
Alexander Nix (then CEO of CA) presentation at Concordia in Sept 2016 (on the Concordia youtube channel they describe the video as: “In a presentation at the 2016 Concordia Annual Summit in New York, Mr. Alexander Nix discusses the power of big data in global elections. Cambridge Analytica’s revolutionary approach to audience targeting, data modeling, and psychographic profiling has made them a leader in behavioral microtargeting for election processes around the world.”)

There are also opportunists using the ecosystem that has been created but focusing on that feels a lot like sweeping the yard while there is a sewerage leak in the corner. There are fundamentals that our social systems have failed to address and on a philosophical level for me the response is best from a decentralised, self determination model.
Thus finding this community and learning about the enormous amount of work already done has been heartening. I am currently working my way through Matrix.org - Older documentation to build a better understanding of matrix and element.

Hi there @ibaldo :wave:

I am curious if you further elaborated on the Human Flourishing Design Guide. Where I spent most time the past couple of years, was on the Fediverse / Social Web, a natural field laboratory of humane technology evolved by people rather than corporations. There are a lot of technical challenges here, that I’ve been involved in via my participation at the SocialHub and FEP process.

Social experience design (SX)

But also, and more importantly, Fediverse faces a range of major social challenges. With the Fediverse gaining traction there are big opportunities to “do social better” online. I wrote about my take in this regard some time ago:

In the article is a link to Toshihiko Yamakami, who in a 2012 IEEE paper introduced the concept of Social Experience Design, or simply SX. This concept of SX didn’t get any real following AFAIK, and everyone used the term UX instead. But UX imho is more narrowly focused in practice on developing individual applications and products, and talks about “users”, not people.

Just letting you know that the Social Coding Movement (website, needs updating) is intent to focus on and revive the field of SX, though in the context of the Social Web and with a scope covering the entire Free Software Development Lifecycle (FSDL). And that “Human Flourishing” can be a major theme that SX methodologies and patterns focus on.

(PS. This community unfortunately is mostly inactive. You can find me on the social coding forum, or on the Fediverse at @smallcircles@social.coop. We also have a Social experience design matrix chatroom.)

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