Hodal Recommends: Five Things Digital to Explore in December

Photo: Oliver Herlitschek

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Hodal Recommends:
Five Things Digital to Explore in December

30. Nov 2022

If you work with digital products and services, read on to get five recommendations that will help you make more ethical choices. This month our intern Oliver Hodal shares a book, a documentary, and some online resources that help you make better decisions

Quick insight

Big data and robot-like technologies play a more significant part in our lives, whether we like it or not. The digitalization of our society brings new dilemmas and responsibilities that demand the proper knowledge to make the right decisions.

I share five recommendations that I hope you will find helpful in this jungle of modern technology.

Book by Peter Svarre: Digital Etik

To create a better digital world, we must start with ourselves and the choices we make in the design phase. Digital strategic Peter Svarre just published his new book Digital Etik. In this book, you will obtain a language to talk about digital ethics and understand the importance of possessing those skills. You also learn why digital ethics should be the first thing to incorporate in your digital design phase. Based on more than 20 years of experience Peter Svarre gives you tangible tools to improve your digital solutions and arguments on why working with digital ethics benefits your company.
Khora: How to use VR/AR to help people with mental health issues

Isn’t virtual reality (VR) just fun and games? – a question that seems obvious but only has one correct answer. Not at all…

The Danish VR company Khora is a magnificent example of a group of people that have understood the opportunities of using VR in a meaningful context. Their spinoff project Heka VR uses Virtual Reality to support and treat schizophrenia patients suffering from continuous malevolent auditory hallucinations. This unique and innovative project allows patients to create and design the avatar they have listened to for years to meet them in a virtual world. The patient learns to stand up to and manage the hateful voice, which will help improve their mental health and well-being significantly.

This is just one out of numerous essential projects Khora is working on – check out more of their work in healthcare here.
Hall of Shame: The bad guys of UX design

The Hall of Shame gathers some of the most extraordinary deceptive designs on the internet. It’s not breaking news that many companies are trying to trick you by misdirection, hidden buttons, tricks questions, etc. The Hall of Shame is a collection that showcases these companies, so you can be aware of how to avoid being tricked.

Following your contempt for these companies and their unethical methods, you can learn how not to design lead by example of the tech bros from Facebook, Google, and Apple.
Documentary: The Social Dilemma

The 2020 Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma is as scary as it’s good. If you are one of the few, who haven’t seen it yet, you should watch it immediately. This movie will give you a true understanding of how social media manipulate our nature addiction. Through interviews with former employees of big tech companies and social media platforms, we get an insight into social media’s role in political polarization and its immense contribution to a generation of young people struggling with mental health issues.

Watch this documentary, not because it makes you feel good, but because it’s important.
Ethical design recourses

The website Ethical Design Resources is a collection of, well, you guessed it, ethical design recourses. The website gathers everything from toolkits and frameworks you can use in the design phase to recommended talks and books to expand your knowledge of digital ethics. It’s a helpful website if you want to work with ethics in digital design and gather new inspiration worldwide.

On the website, you can, of course, hehe, also find our very own The Digital Ethics Compass as a part of valuable toolkits. We co-developed the toolkit in 2021 with three design agencies, three private front-runner companies, and digital strategic Peter Svarre. The Danish Industry Foundation funded the project.