Introduction
Personal assistants and chatbots (PA&C) are today one of the most promising application of advanced technologies such as AI and speech recognition. However, the seamless gathering and use of personal data from such technologies rise concerns over individuals’ ability to control their data that have to be taken into account within the design process.
For these reasons, designers involved in the development of such technologies need both an in-deep understanding of legal aspects so to master limits and opportunities allowed by regulations, and increase their awareness related to the impacts of the use of personal information in the designed solution so to foster conscious choices during the design process.
The present workshop aims at giving an understanding of the regulation and its design aspects and providing participants with the fundamental knowledge and tools for designing more acceptable and desirable services grounded on voice assistant solutions, and to test them with real-world examples during the hands-on phase. In order to achieve such aim, the workshop will unfold as follow:
1. Introduction (30m): the workshop begins with an introduction to the design aspects present in the data protection regulation (GDPR), with a focus on PA&C, and of practical methods (developed during a 3-year PhD research) that can be used for analysing potential issues and envisioning practical solutions. This introductory phase aims at providing the participants with a deeper understanding of both issues for users’ rights and potential approaches to tackle them.
2. Hands-on workshop (1h45): consecutively, the participants will be invited to form, preferably, interdisciplinary teams and work on a range of case studies concerning PA&C solutions. As a first step teams will be required to critically evaluate one or more case studies concerning the use of PA&C technologies in order to identify both aspects which may conflict with the current regulation and possible design opportunities, users’ rights and design hints for future solutions.
In the following step teams will draw upon the insights emerged from the previous phase for envisioning future use case scenarios for novel solutions to improve the user experience while exercising the rights over the management of personal information.
3. Discussion (35m): finally, each team will have to present their work and solution to the given challenge. Each presentation will be followed by discussion with all the participants to get insights on what are the pros and cons of the envisioned proposition.
Participants will be guided throughout each phase by a multidisciplinary team formed by designer, researchers and privacy regulation experts form both the Digital Innovation Lab promoted by the French Data Protection Authority (CNIL) and the IEX Design Innovation Lab of the Politecnico of Milano. Furthermore specific tools and materials will be made available to participants to carry out the proposed tasks.
Note to the participants: This workshop consists of two parts. Reserve the time to join the Part 2 at 11:45-13:30.
Presenters and host:
