Design in the age of big data: Examining the case of online education.

摘要

This work engages the question of design in an era of large scale data, focusing on the development of the values, concepts, and meanings that come about in the production of large scale systems of socio-technical interaction. Using the example of the design of massive, open, online courses (MOOCs), philosophical and interpretive methods are used to examine the nature of design, big data, and the engagement that exists between designers and users. Starting from an analysis of the work of design as it seeks to merge technological possibilities with the needs of users, the design of socio-technical systems is conceptualized as an ethical event, one which opens up the possibility of the the definition of new values and concepts. Placed into the context of large scale user data, the agentive situation of the work of design is considered, with such "big human data" coming to be seen to play a central role in the determination of the products of design. In this, the concept of "peak empiricism" is developed in order to address the epistemic exhaustion that comes as increasing levels of user data is confronted in the work of design. As part of this, a new mode of conceptualizing data's role in the work of design is explicated. The specific function of the relationship between large scale user data and the work of design is demonstrated through the development of a typology of critical incidents as such incidents are found in the course data from a number of MOOCs. The implications of these findings are then leveraged toward the re-evaluation of the critical perspective put forward in Martin Heidegger's canonical analysis of the social implications of technology. Through this, established metaphysical framings for the understanding of the relation between human actors and technological systems are reformulated. Ultimately, what is put forward is a de-centered conceptualization of design as an eventful occurrence across a field of human and technological possibilities.