This document discusses accountability-oriented design, which calls attention to issues of governance and shapes public discourse through managing visibility. Accountability-oriented design makes systems more legible and acknowledges its own limitations. It can collect data, coordinate volunteers, and spread messages to ask hard questions. Examples discussed include technologies that track waste collection and provide public WiFi while also sensing urban data. The document argues accountability-oriented design does not explain but shows to facilitate discussion about limiting opacity through transparency in systems and infrastructure.

1. A Case for Accountability-oriented Design
Dietmar Offenhuber, PhD
Art+Design / Public Policy and Urban Affairs
Northeastern University
@dietoff

2. Ezra Stoller, TWA Flight Center, Eero Saarinen, New York, NY, 1962
1. Design is governance, governance is design

4. Dodge, Martin, and Rob Kitchin. 2004. “Flying through Code/space: The Real Virtuality of Air Travel.”
Environment and Planning A 36 (2): 195–212.

6. Categorizations and design
Morville, Peter. 2014. Intertwingled: Information Changes Everything. Semantic Studios.

7. “An organization is its language.
Narrowing language increases efficiency.
Narrowing language also increases ignorance.
[…]
To regenerate, an organization creates a new language.”
Dubberly, Hugh, and Paul Pangaro. 2002. Notes on the Role of Leadership and
Language in Regenerating Organizations. Sun Microsystems.
(new forms of measurement)

8. via Katja Schechtner

9. Manila Improstructure, 2015
Dietmar Offenhuber (NU), Katja Schechtner (ADB), Julia Nebrija (Manila)

10. Informality is inside, not outside the system
Co-production with residents - Arleen G. Braga, Chairman bgy. 822, Manila
Manila Improstructure, 2015
Dietmar Offenhuber (NU), Katja Schechtner (ADB), Julia Nebrija (Manila)

11. Main streetlight switch, Bgy. hall 821, Paco Manila
Manila Improstructure, 2015
Dietmar Offenhuber (NU), Katja Schechtner (ADB), Julia Nebrija (Manila)

12. Improstructure - governance as call & response
Ad-hoc repairs, lighting hybrids (K. Jagsch)
Manila Improstructure, 2015
Dietmar Offenhuber (NU), Katja Schechtner (ADB), Julia Nebrija (Manila)

13. Infrastructures of Transactionalization

14. The “Bitcoin End Game”
Barski, Conrad, and Chris Wilmer. 2014. Bitcoin for the Befuddled.
San Francisco: No Starch Press.

15. “Just as robots have helped the world reduce menial
physical labor, so cryptocurrency technology now
gives us the tools to automate the menial labor of
bureaucracy. Optimistically, the entirety of humanity
will benefit as a result.”
Barski, Conrad, and Chris Wilmer. 2014. Bitcoin for the Befuddled. San Francisco: No
Starch Press.

16. Bitcoin and Public Infrastructure
“In this future scenario, the roads on which Jen is driving will
have also become autonomous actors, doing trades with the
car … They can submit bids to the car about how much
they're going to charge to use them. If she's in a hurry, Jen
can choose a road that's a bit more expensive but which will
allow her to get into the city faster.
Awesome, right?”
Mike Hearn. The Future of Money - Turing Festival 2013. Edinburgh.

18. Public good from an economic perspective
Excludable
Non-
excludable
Rivalrous Private goods
Common
goods
Non-rivalrous Club goods Public goods

19. Measurement turns a public good into a private good

20. Bitcoin as a paradoxical commons*
Excludable
Non-
excludable
Rivalrous Private goods
Common
goods
Non-rivalrous Club goods Public goods
*outside: private good
inside: common good

21. The Commons
deals with limited resources
involves conflict
requires monitoring and enforcement
has to be constantly re-negotiated
shared instead of individual perspective
Ostrom, Elinor. 1990. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for
Collective Action. Cambridge university press.

22. 4. The aesthetics of transactionalization

23. –Erik Voorhes, Twitter, Oct 1. 2012
Bitcoin “is regulated, only by mathematics
instead of politicians.”

24. A governance conflict typical for common goods
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3adkxc

25. Karl Gottlieb von Windisch. 1783. Briefe über den Schachspieler des Hrn. von
Kempelen, nebst drei Kupferstichen die diese berühmte Maschine vorstellen.
Human agency disguised as algorithms

26. Gregor Aisch, 2011
Clean outside

27. Accountability Technologies
collecting data
coordinating volunteers
spreading the message
Guttenplag activity, visualization: User8, reproduced in:
Offenhuber, Dietmar, and Katja Schechtner, eds. 2013. Accountability
Technologies - Tools for Asking Hard Questions. Vienna: Ambra V.
Messy inside

28. Accountability-oriented
design
http://www.soofa.co/

29. http://intellistreets.com

30. http://intellistreets.com

31. “Jack Kutner hoped to re-position Bigbelly's solar-
powered trash compacting stations beyond trash and
recycling and use them also to provide public space Wi-
Fi, advertising, and urban intelligence sensors.”
http://bigbelly.com/is-that-just-a-trash-can-or-might-it-also-be-a-wi-fi-hotspot
http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=50059

32. Accountability-oriented design calls attention to
issues of governance

33. Accountability-oriented design makes systems
legible
Chinese bitcoin mine

34. Ambient Accountability -
Dieter Zinnbauer Know Your Rights mural by Dasic Fernández

35. Memory Matrix - Azra Aksamija
Cryptographic Heritage - Dietmar Offenhuber

36. Accountability-oriented design shapes public
discourse by managing visibility

38. Opacity
through
transparency

40. Urban Entropy (2015), Dietmar Offenhuber, Ars Electronica Center

41. Accountability-oriented design does not explain, it
shows
Adrian Pratt
Router

42. Accountability-oriented design acknowledges its
own limitations

43. Workshop
Maria Cecilia Loschiavo dos Santos, Professor, University of São Paulo
Anne Scheinberg, Noë Waste Measurement Consultants (NWMC), the Hague
Dietmar Offenhuber, Assistant Professor, Northeastern University, Boston
Full-day workshop, April 22nd from 9am - 3pm
Join our workshop tomorrow
(please)