alt.chi CHI 2012, May 5–10, 2012, Austin, Texas, USA Design for X?: Distribution Choices and Ethical Design Elizabeth Goodman Abstract School of Information This paper investigates an especially value-laden University of California, Berkeley product category: sex-oriented technologies. Reviewing Berkeley, CA , 94720 USA four systems encountered through qualitative fieldwork [email protected] at an adult entertainment trade show, we examine how designers make claims for distribution of agency in Janet Vertesi their systems, and the consequent technical choices. In Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts the face of diverse configurations of systems, users, & Sociology Department and designers, we suggest that designers treat their Princeton University practice less as an expression of enduring or user- 10A Joseph Henry House specific “values,” and more as a series of decisions Princeton, NJ 08540 USA about the ethical distribution of control and [email protected] responsibility within systems. Keywords Values; design; sexuality ACM Classification Keywords H.5.m [Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for HCI)]: Miscellaneous. personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that Introduction copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy Sex has recently become a site of interest at CHI. Much otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, of the HCI work in this domain examines the issue of requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. design for domesticity and intimacy [3][6][8]. Some CHI’12, May 5–10, 2012, Austin, Texas, USA. researchers argue for design that takes a variety of Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1016-1/12/05...$10.00. versions of human sexuality into account [17], while 81 alt.chi CHI 2012, May 5–10, 2012, Austin, Texas, USA others advocate designing specifically for human sexual androcentric and medicalized female orgasm, while encounters [4][7]. Still others review available designs feminist scholars such as Sandra Harding [16] study in this domain [2][10]. Above all, these researchers gendering in technology to interrogate ethics, argue that HCI, as a field interested in human designerly agency, and politics. Along these lines, experience, must account for human sexuality in its contemporary intimate technologies continue to design and research practices. configure the user [27] for a sexual experience that defines the role that participants are to play in that In this paper, we review a variety of sex-oriented activity. As each device provides particular scripts [1] technologies. However, we are not pursuing the themes for user engagement, it also supports a particular kind of embodiment, intimacy, or experience assumed to be of sexual experience. This experience may be value- inherent in the activity. Rather our interest lies in how laden, based on cultural norms, or designed around a sex-oriented technologies, a particularly value-laden particular view of sexuality (heterosexual, passive, etc). category of devices, make visible different arrangements of responsibility and control. We are well accustomed in HCI to discussing how artifacts embody values and social relations. Science We draw insight from case studies collected through and Technology Studies provides a useful point of observations and interviews at the Adult Entertainment departure for analyzing the social shaping of Expo in Los Vegas, which we attended as part of an technological systems, as well as how different devices organized Swarm Ethnography of the Consumer make different “capacities for action” [26] available to Electronic Show in January 2007 [25]. The Adult the user. The Values in Design framework brings this Entertainment Expo draws about 25,000 visitors a year literature into the conversation in HCI. Whether seeking [9]. While pornography companies and stars make up a to broaden the definition of user values that inform large part of the attraction, the show also displays the design [19], or advising commitment to normative latest sex-oriented gadgets and services to interested values such as sustainability or autonomy [15], work in vendors and consumers. Several of these products are this domain hopes to open technologies up to different particularly evocative as case studies for exploring how scripts, capacities for action, and user configurations. technological systems articulate models of user engagement. Our discussion of sex technologies contributes to this conversation, but not by analyzing what these devices Human sexuality is complex: multivalent, analytically say about normative cultural values of sexuality or charged, morally-laden, and subject to cultural norms. user-centered engagement. Instead, we examine the Thus studies of sex technologies present an excellent role of the designer in making choices about how extreme case for discussing value-laden design choices. designers, users, and devices interact. The discourse of This is not a new tactic: Rachel Maines’ [23] study of value-centered design, we argue, is not only about late nineteenth century treatments for hysteria reveals designing with the values of users in mind, nor even the role of vibrators in constructing a passive, about the importance of abstract principles. It must 82 alt.chi CHI 2012, May 5–10, 2012, Austin, Texas, USA also be about thoughtful decision-making about how advised one of the authors that a boyfriend was not systems might distribute capacities for action among its even required: she could get her own blog on their site users - and in some cases, to its designers as well. so that many men could pay her to plug their bowling pins into her private show. In this way, she explained, The Devices “every woman can be an actress.” We highlight four systems that we observed at the Adult Entertainment Expo. In each case, we did not At first glance, the system appears very flexible: two or interview or observe anyone actually using these more users can use it anywhere in the world. However, devices. We examine instead how inventors, designers, it distributes agency inflexibly. The “actress” controls salespeople, and marketing materials articulate choices the sensations transmitted to one or more passive Figure 1. The Segment service about the “distribution of competencies” [20] between partners. The rod’s sensors transmit and replicate system, featuring personal designer, user, and system. pressure within the bowling pin, but the bowling pin computer with display, two USB- does not transmit signals to the rod. That is, what supported peripherals, and Active and passive users happens inside the bowling pin does not relay a envisioned blogger display. The first design is an example of teledildonics: devices corresponding stimulus to the “actress.” When one that enable sex at a distance. The Segment system author asked about two-way communication, the [22], illustrated in Figure 1, received a lot of attention system’s spokeswoman said that this was too complex at the show. In this system, a pink plastic rod with a problem to solve.1 internal, colorful LED lights plugs into the computer through a USB port, while a model vagina (tucked into Thus the device’s one-way communication architecture a silver bowling pin for discreet storage, resonant with renders one user (presumably female) active in the importance of invisibility as described in [6] — pleasuring the other, passive, male participant. In although the rod displays no such discretion) plugs into terms of distribution of agency, the responsibility is the receiving computer’s USB port. Sensors on the rod fully placed on a singularly active female user, who respond to varying degrees of pressure placed on it, presumably derives her own pleasure from gratifying transmitting this data through the Internet. The interior one or more passive males. of the bowling-pin peripheral then replicates the sensor pressure data. A designer’s responsibility On the other side of the floor, another inventor proudly The system reaches beyond the hardware. In addition demonstrated his system to a crowd of visitors. As in to the peripherals, the company teamed up with a the Segment system, here a user could remotely blogging software site to provide a unique service: control a rhythmically moving dildo, although this time women could sign up for their own personal blog on the site in which they could transmit their activities with 1 Also unsupported were two bowling pins or two rods. While two the rod (and a webcam) online to a paying audience of men could use the bowling-pin-plus-rod configuration, lesbians bowling-pin-possessing subscribers. The sales rep might have some trouble putting it to use. 83 alt.chi CHI 2012, May 5–10, 2012, Austin, Texas, USA without an Internet connection. A complex series of responsibility for all modes of user engagement, buttons on a pink or blue plastic console hidden in a participating in the system even at a distance. briefcase (available in pink or in silver) moved the detachable dildo in several pre-set modes. The user-run community The OhMiBod device, also discussed in [2] and [11], While we were observing the display, a crew and plugs into an iPod (Figure 3).2 This device converts television personality arrived to film an interview with audio signals from any song played on the iPod into a the inventor for a foreign broadcast station. We pattern of vibration appropriate to the musical observed as the inventor demonstrated the variety of selection. We encountered the inventor and his product modes available on the system, the speed controls, and booth tucked away at the Retailers’ Display section, far the special combination setting that played all modes at from the bustle of the main floor. Here, product makers Figure 2: An unassuming once. As the dildo moved smoothly at a jackhammer were keen to find distributors and stores that would briefcase hides the control panel for this remote controlled device.