Feedback on the utopia/dystopia workshop for the Audiodescription project

Author: Anne Faubry

Whenever we create a digital service, especially for the public sector, we anticipate the user benefits most of all. But what would be the impact on non-users? Who will be affected? How? What are the potential negative effects that we could have anticipated or prevented?

The following exercise, tested on the real-life Audiodescription startup (French) from the Ministry of Culture, puts forward a methodology aiming to tackle these questions.

Contents

A practical application: the Audiodescription project

The Audiodescription platform aims to make it easier for blind or visually impaired people to access movies since existing websites often lack accessibility and make it difficult to find works with audio descriptions. In France, about two million people are affected and find themselves excluded from accessing cultural contents and social interactions associated with them.

"With audio descriptions made available, I can watch the same movies seeing people do, and at the same time, so I feel more socially included."
Feedback from a blind user

Launched in January 2024 by the Atelier Numérique (business incubator for the French Ministry of Culture), the Audiodescription startup entered its development phase in July 2024 and is expected to be deployed in early 2025.

Audiodescription landing page
The landing page prototype as of December 21, 2024. The visual reference points on the home page have been highlighted as very important to visually impaired users.

The portal will officially be opened on February 25, 2025.

For further information:

Introduction to the Audiodescription portal: https://beta.gouv.fr/startups/audiodescription.html (French)

A systemic design workshop

On November 25, 2024, the multidisciplinary startup team gathered for its monthly seminar, during which a workshop on systemic design was organized to stimulate their vision and roadmap.

Participants:

The workshop lasted two hours and followed this outline:

Diagram showing the process followed for this workshop, from the starting point to a utopic scenario, before contemplating a dystopic one and finally reaching the end point.
The general process can be summarized with this diagram.
  1. Introduction - 10 mn
    Introduction to systemic design, to the methodology of the workshop, and to the stakeholders' map.
  2. "Ideal" scenario or utopia - 30 mn
    1. Individual ideation about the potential developments of the service under ideal conditions of growth, and positive externalities that could result from it.
    2. Stimulating reflection with the stakeholders' map and with selected questions from the Tarot Cards of Tech.
    3. Group sharing and gathering of ideas.
  3. Negative externalities or dystopia - 40 mn
    1. Individual ideation about the potential negative outcomes of the service, including those that could be brought about by the ideal scenario.
    2. Stimulating reflection with the stakeholders' map and with selected questions from the Tarot Cards of Tech.
    3. Group sharing and gathering of ideas.
  4. Consequences for the project - 40 mn
    Identifying leads and solutions to improve the product and reinforce positive externalities, and safeguards to prevent and limit negative ones.
Post-it notes of different colors placed on a wall during the workshop
The immediate result was a set of post-it notes representing positive externalities (yellow), associated with negative externalities (orange or pink) and steps to take or solutions (blue).

Downloading the materials 📁

Things we learned while facilitating this workshop

This experiment allowed us to identify factors of success and other improvement ideas.

Make a stakeholders' map

The mapping of all stakeholders that are directly or indirectly involved in the service can be its own exercise in systemic design. When you know your product well, it can easily be put together within an hour and ahead of the workshop itself, and it offers the following advantages:

  • ensuring that the product management team members are all on the same page when it comes to the boundaries of the service
  • identifying externalities for non-users and other affected stakeholders who are directly and indirectly impacted by the service so as not to overlook anyone during the ideation phase
Stakeholders' map for the project
Example of the mapping of stakeholders in the context of the Audiodescription project

Push utopia to the maximum

It is easier to identify negative externalities if we push the ideal scenario to its peak in order to create the conditions for dystopia. Do not gloss over this phase. For instance, if a service gains 20 million users instead of 1 million, then it will potentially harm some of the stakeholders and lead to a transformation of behavior on the societal level.

Ideas of things to improve 💡

By extending the workshop from two to three hours, it would be possible to:

  • List the main areas of impact that come out at the end of the utopia ideation. e.g. impact on inclusivity, impact on cinema, impact on the environment, impact on the economy, impact on cultural events.
  • Splitting into pairs to work on these areas of impact and drawing out the dystopic aspects of each of them by reading the suggested questions.
  • Produce a fictitious design scenario for each. (This can help project outcomes, make presenting easier, and expand the list of externalities identified.)

Make the most of the questions from the Tarot Cards of Tech

The Tarot Cards of Tech are a set of cards available online for free, which were created several years ago by Artefact Group, an English design agency. Recently translated into French, they offer several advantages compared to other systemic design tools: they are easy to use, pleasant to handle, they do not require specific theoretical knowledge (making them especially well-suited for students), and lend themselves to ideation exercises very well.

Example
List of questions from the Tarot Cards of Tech that can help identify a service's externalities

Tips on how best to use the Tarot Cards of Tech

  1. Choose the relevant questions based on your context so that you're not overwhelmed by quantity. For instance, in our case the questions geared towards moderating interactions or on the pernicious effects of our economic model were not relevant. Conversely, those about environmental rebound effects or about the impact on social interactions were especially relevant.
  2. Supplement with other questions that are specific to your context.
  3. Split them with those regarding utopia on one side, dystopia on the other. Some questions can fall within both.
  4. Print several copies of each question and make them available to the participants.

“The questions were cool and helpful. They're relevant and make it easier to get into the mindset."

Feedback from one team member

Making the most of the results

The innovation of this workshop compared to previous experiments done on systemic design is that we were able to turn the results into deliverables for the product management team.

Ideas were summarized in the following ways:

  • Creation of a Notion database containing all positive and negative externalities organized by topic (environment, inclusivity, etc.) and evaluated based on how probable they are.
  • Filling in the product road map with ideas proposed during the "consequences for the project" phase (some propositions complement existing ideas).
  • Creation of a Notion database for "team tasks" filled with all other ideas that are not so much features but rather safeguards in the management of the product: things to discuss with partners, follow-through indicators, steps to take in cybersecurity, etc.

"It provided us with good ideas for safeguards regarding negative externalities that need to be addressed earlier on to complement the road map."

Example
Notion page showing a negative externality linked to features on the road map

Connecting externalities to elements on the road map

Elements on the road map are connected to positive and negative externalities via Notion. During planning, this makes it easier to keep them in mind when deciding what to prioritize.

Assessment of the workshop: a very practical exercise

While preparing this workshop a lot of tools were ruled out for lacking practicality for a product management team: causal loops, flowchart of consequences and impacts, etc. We decided to prioritize an approach based on externalities and how to tackle them for an easier integration into the product road map.

In addition, the results are not a quickly forgotten deliverable, but rather can easily be merged into existing product management tools such as the road map with a full list of expected features related to the identified externalities.

“In two hours, we laid out what we want to achieve with this platform but not in a road map format. It was very interesting. It gives us perspective, as a team."

Feedback from a team member