Alienation by design

I was seven or eight when my nan’s friend Millie was moved into the nursing home by the locks in Marple (I say moved, given that one seldom chooses to move themself into a palliative institution). With her shrunken frame and curly woollen crop of white hair, Millie must have been—despite my nan’s own advancing years—considerably older than her. Given that several of my nan’s friends were older than her, I soon became familiar with the various facilities for the elderly in the area.

Millie’s care home was a bloated Victorian villa that straddled the corner of a potholed gravel road (which I can confirm persists in such state to this day); a building too large to live in and too small to do much else with. I don’t remember visiting her there more than once, but those early memories are so prone to fallibility that my entire narrative here may well be make-believe.

I had wandered off. Bored, naturally. I was never sure why my nan dragged us to see her old pal, sweet as she was. School holidays, probably, and my younger sister and I, entrusted to her care, had no choice but to tag along. Children don’t typically revel in such environments, and to this day, nursing homes make me understandably uncomfortable. Sauntering off from the sun room with its jaunty arrangement of bodies delaying the inevitable in their armchairs, I found myself in an adjoining room where a group of octogenarians were shouting and merrily carrying on, literally leaping out of their seats to gesticaulate enthusiastically at each other with the grey plastic devices in their hands.

From these devices trailed a delta of cables to a grey box on the floor that fed visuals to the bulky black CRT in the corner of the room. All of this was new and stunning to me, and yet I knew precisely what the grey box was. I had seen it advertised. I had seen it within the pages of the Argos catalogue that targeted teenagers, as I flicked through on my way to action men or transformers or whatever trending toys I’d be writing to Santa for that year. Elusive and alluring—the pensioners, behaving like children, were playing a PlayStation.

I hope that such scenes have become familiar in most care homes. What struck me in that stowawayed minute amongst those aged gamers before being shooed back to my nan’s watch was the marked contrast in the atmosphere between that shabby side room and the sun room that, despite its grand, vaulted ceilings and bay windows welcoming in a wealth of northern English light, remained cold and crypt-like. The residents shared two worlds, metres apart: in one room brimming with life, in the other waiting for death.

Death of a Salesman

Fast forward several decades. A few weeks ago, I was picking up some medication from my local chemist in Amsterdam. This branch had recently installed a couple of self-service checkouts—a technology that, although I have continually derided it over the years, I will admit has markedly improved. The interface was well designed, with generous buttons, clean type, and a well-considered flow. Secondary information around applied discounts and health warnings was rendered appropriately. The touch screen was snappy, and the sonic feedback provided welcome reassurance. It may seem a strange thing to admire, but the urge for designers to critique the designed world around them is irrepressible.

Then I noticed the second screen, positioned about eye level, above the touchscreen. A view of the top of my head, broadcast from a tiny floating camera in the ceiling above me. You are being watched. The panopticon, writ on an 11” LCD, proposing a distorted alternate reality where I’m tempted to steal toothpaste.

I recognise that such techniques are designed to act as a deterrent more than anything else, but it still felt somewhat aggressive. It imagines me as a law-breaker who has yet to be caught, a form of technological paternalism that, in its attempts to enforce behavioural self-regulation, contributes to an asymmetrical power dynamic in which we are never quite sure when we are being watched. And soon enough, no doubt, with the aid of AI, we will be.

But of course we have nothing to fear if we’ve nothing to hide.

As I left the store, having declined the machine’s suggestion of a paper receipt (one must consider the environment), I realised that I had completely ignored the cashier. I had failed to say goodbye or thank you or have a nice day or yes it sure is getting cold now isn’t it but I don’t mind as long as it stays dry or any of those small but significant salutations that help make us feel just a little less alone. He stood behind the checkout counter, understandably distracted, head lolled over his phone, scrolling.

The antisocial city

What do these seemingly unrelated stories, thirty years apart and in different parts of the world, have in common? In both, a human interacts via a physical input device with a computer system mediated by an audiovisual interface. In both scenarios, the human has what product teams like to call a job to be done. But whereas in the care home, the PlayStation encouraged lively in-person exchange and emotional bonding, the checkout system discourages interaction with the human staff.

What is the gradual cumulative effect on society when the systems that designers shape to reduce inefficiencies and support people’s ‘jobs to be done’ risk incrementally displacing such everyday human interactions?

Amsterdam is a city rich with immigrants, many of whom (like myself) come from anglophone countries. Because English is so widely spoken, a paradox emerges: fewer people learn Dutch, and in turn, Dutch becomes harder to learn by immersion.

There will be many people who welcome services like self-checkouts. For neurodivergent users or those with social anxiety, such systems offer autonomy. But they also remove the anxiety-inducing necessity of attempting to communicate with staff in Dutch and bypass the small doses of shame that can accompany a conversation reverting to English after a failed attempt.

What is the gradual cumulative effect on society when the systems that designers shape to reduce inefficiencies and support people’s ‘jobs to be done’ risk incrementally displacing such everyday human interactions?

Sofa days

I grew up in what will be considered the golden age of in-person co-operative gaming. From Goldeneye to Gran Turismo, I’d sit with friends on sofas or beds and squint at the split screen, watching their side as much as my own as I tried to figure out where they were in the labyrinthine mazes of FPS maps or on the race track (behind me, ideally).

Over the years, the number of titles that offered split-screen multiplayer dwindled. Improving graphics demanded exponentially higher computing power, and faster internet speeds unlocked new online potential. And gradually, the massive maps and lower lag that had previously been the preserve of higher-end PC gamers were welcomed by console owners. We still played together, huddled on sinking sofas, passing the sweaty controllers back and forth, but we now had to wait our turn.

And why wait for your turn when you can play for as long as you want at home?

Displaced relationships

Video games and videogaming have received an unfair and unqualified barrage of criticism over the decades. Arguments about their influence on violent behaviour have been largely debunked, but their role in the increasing isolation of (especially young, male) individuals is not to be underestimated. They may be less the cause and rather a symptom of larger and more complex socioeconomic challenges that we face in a polarised and anxiety-riddled world, but that doesn’t mean that hang-wringing over the psychosocial impact of modern videogaming culture is unwarranted.

By the early 2000s, researchers worried that online gaming was displacing real-world relationships. Heavy gamers, one study found, reported poorer-quality friendships and smaller social circles (Kowert et al.).

This is not surprising, especially to parents of teenage children. Although greater threats now dominate in the form of social media and the adjacent emotional casinos of instant messaging, streaming entertainment, and pornography. Books will continue to be written about the shocking impact of years of very conscious design decisions on the psychological development of teenagers, the desocialising tendencies of supposedly social media, and the negative consequences for mental (and to some extent physical) health more generally.

But the relationship between loneliness and video games and the broader domain of what healthcare researchers call ‘digital technology interventions’ (DTIs) is complex.

Gaming in the golden years

Old people don’t play video games. Or at least that was the commonly held belief when I was younger; as far back as my nascent observation of the care home residents, seeing old people playing on a console positioned as for teenagers had struck me as odd.

But obviously both the demographic appeal and definition of what qualifies as video gaming has broadened considerably since the nineties: an increasing number of older adults engage in digital gaming activities, and according to a recent study by Eunie Jung and Jiadong Yu, “video game–based technology can create opportunities for social connection and help alleviate social isolation and loneliness in this age group.” But not all video games are equally effective in this regard, and Jung and Yu’s study emphasises that social interaction within the gaming world is key, with “interventions designed to encourage collaboration yielding the most consistent benefits”.

In the hierarchy of digital technologies that can help reduce loneliness, video games rank highly due to their active nature, especially compared to passive media like YouTube and streaming. Whilst mobile apps, particularly communication apps, have been identified as playing a genuine role in the reduction of emotional loneliness, this is typically in relation to scenarios of wider social estrangement, like rural living or during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Loneliness has been highlighted as one of the key contributors to dementia, increasing risks of Alzheimer’s disease, vascular dementia, and cognitive impairment by up to 31%, and there is an observable negative feedback loop between cognitive impairment and dementia. To aid the case for video gaming, a 2018 study in Frontiers in Medicine suggests that “video game training improves several aspects of cognitive functioning, such as reaction time, memory, and attention span, as well as general cognitive control and multitasking” (Kyriazis and Kiourti).

This research points to a phenomenon called ‘hormesis’, by which exposure to repeated but mild stress stimuli results in health benefits that can include the reduction of age-related cognitive decline and dysfunction. It so happens that the cognitive challenges invoked by interaction with online video gaming worlds in particular can upregulate neuronal health.

So, the same artefacts accused of isolating youth could also animate the elderly. The authors conclude with the advice that “We need to encourage increasing use of online action video games for older people”. Imagine the memes…

Alienation by design

That gamification techniques and principles are used in so much software these days blurs the line between entertainment and productivity, education, dating, and (quite ironically) even personal health. We’re levelling up every day—be it running faster, journaling more regularly, learning how to say the snake is hungry in Spanish, or simply checking off mundane to-dos.

All this is being designed and by design. And like the vast majority of design work, it is done with only the best of intentions. It’s easy to convince ourselves and stakeholders that dopamine hits are an entirely valid source of joy and that personal mastery can be indexed and quantified. All the while, Silicon Valley continues to convince itself that digital connectivity is somehow synonymous with connection.

There are second-order questions that designers should try to bring to light, even when the inertia of technological progress seems to dictate that rampant digitisation of services and human-to-human interaction can do nothing but good.

Online gaming and digital forms of interpersonal communication more broadly may supplement but cannot replace the need for in-person interaction. There are second-order questions that designers should try to bring to light, even when the inertia of technological progress seems to dictate that rampant digitisation of services and human-to-human interaction can do nothing but good. Online relationships do not substitute for in-person ties: “While online gaming networks provide some degree of social support, in-person social capital exhibited stronger associations with mental health. This reinforces the importance of face-to-face relationships for emotional well-being.” (Prochnow and Patterson)

The designers of the self-service checkout surely conducted rigorous research, prototyping, and testing. Without doubt, the system does what it’s meant to do and surely meets all the success criteria. Efficiency (whatever that means) goes up. Costs (whatever they mean) go down. Everyone wins. But over time, what do we collectively lose? Living from screen to screen. Sharing the same physical space but living in alternate realities, the possibilities for serendipity and ‘happy accidents’ designed out of existence.

Human trace

I will continue to use self-scanning checkouts because, in the grand scheme of things, they serve a perfectly valid purpose, and the concerns above may seem a little ridiculous in light of the larger, more complex contradictions in how technology is being designed to increase alienation. But it’s for this reason that they serve as an apt example. Designers and product makers don’t like to consider that their work may have unintended negative consequences, arguably beyond their influence. But every time we design systems that intentionally or unintentionally sever the small ways in which humans bond with each other, we erode the fabric of society.

But every time we design systems that intentionally or unintentionally sever the small ways in which humans bond with each other, we erode the fabric of society.

Where technology tends towards atomisation, design can strive to recompose the conditions for discovery. The aim is not to return to some imagined past of analogue warmth, but to insist that every digital intervention retains a trace of the human hand. Heck, even the odd dose of clumsiness can be charming.

After all, cohesion is synonymous with stickiness. And a little friction can go a long way.