Declare Your Values

Website development

Currently in development, this blog is dear to me and is intended as a space to review and recommend books centered around design, data, and responsibility. My interest in these topics is rooted in my past work in libraries.

In the U.S., before privacy reforms in the 1970s and well before reports of electronic data breaches became regular news items, the American Library Association's 1939 Code of Ethics established user privacy and confidentiality as core library values. In being responsible for library user records, I began reading up on the history of data collection and the ways in which marginalized populations are particularly vulnerable to privacy violations. I am convinced that privacy and confidentiality are also core values for designers if we are to truly call the design we do "human-centered."

I am tremendously excited about all the recent books that have been published around these topics and look forward to reading as many of them as humanly possible. For now, I'd like to call attention to a few books that felt particularly important:

• Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism by Safiya Umoja Noble
• Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor by Virginia Eubanks
• Design: The Invention of Desire by Jessica Helfand
• Technically Wrong: Sexist Apps, Biased Algorithms, and Other Threats of Toxic Tech by Sara Wachter-Boettcher

If you have your own recommendations or would like to chat about these topics, please do get in touch!