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Contemporary connected things entail ongoing relations between producers, end users, and other actors characterized by ongoing updates and production of data about and through use. These relations are currently governed by Terms of Service (ToS) and related policy documents, which are known to be mostly ignored beyond the required interaction of ticking a box to indicate consent. This seems to be a symptom of failure to design for effectively mediating ongoing relations among multiple stakeholders involving multiple forms of value generation. In this paper, we use ToS as an entrance point to explore design practices for democratic data governance. Drawing on posthuman perspectives, we make three posthuman design moves exploring entanglements, decentering, and co-performance in relation to Terms of Service. Through these explorations we begin to sketch a space for design to engage with democratic data governance through a practice of what we call revealing design that is aimed at meaningfully making visible these complex networked relations in actionable ways. This approach is meant to open alternative possible trajectories that could be explored for design to enable genuine democratic data governance.

Once upon a time, it was a thing to choose with care what one would own. It used to be an investment of one’s time and money. In time, things and how we relate to them have changed with the introduction of smart phones and apps. Now, we have ongoing relations with these things that often start with a simple lie: ‘I have read and agree on the Terms of Service’. In our defense, Terms of Service (ToS) is not a good read; too long, complex, and boring. It is not that we don’t care but we just can’t. It is more like it is ToS that doesn’t care if we read it or not! 

This installation looks at ToS and reads it like a map in an attempt to trace care asking ‘Who does the ToS care about and for?’. The installation showcases a video of a spatial mapping exploration done in an urban forest in Umeå. Taking a femtech application’s Terms of Service ecosystem, ToSsphere, as a site for inquiry, the installation looks at who is present, who is absent, who is cared for and who is not. These questions and revelations printed on ToS documents form the backdrop of the video. Shot in juxtaposition to nature, the video highlights how natural resources essential in sustaining digital things, are absent in ToSspheres. As we move fast towards an every day we can’t imagine without generative AI despite its impact on the planet, the installation welcomes a pause to think with care our digital footprint. 

The installation carried out as an artistic research practice in design at Umeå Institute of Design and DCODE Network, opens pathways for design to engage with democratic data governance for designing new eco-social contacts that care for our more-than-human planet.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has created a divide as AI hypers and AI doomers presenting on one hand, a positive account and outlook of AI, and on the other, a very problematic one. At the core, it seems, this divide arises from the tension between what these machines are and capable of, and how they appear to be and what they claim to do. This requires thus attending to what these things are. To do so, I propose decoupling ‘artificial intelligence’ expression and taking a pause with the word ‘artificial’. Starting with a search of the meaning of this word, I arrive at a space where I explore ‘artificial’ as human-made and ‘artificial’ as ‘not sincere’. This leads me to a discussion on the ethics and aesthetics of ‘artificial’ as ‘not sincere’ and its commitment to creating an illusion. Through this, I open a space for considering artificial as more-than-human-made.

Digitally textured everyday is controlled by Terms of Service agreements. These documents are used to legitimize extractivist data practices of technology companies. To do so, they tap into the power of words. By gathering words in a specific flow and structure for a specific purpose, these create a specific type of narrative. They define who is who, who can do what, who can’t do what and set the rules of the game serving to the benefit of the technology companies. Through these tactics, they make a specific type of world for us to live in and control our sense of being online and offline. 

Counter-acting lexicons for the Terms of Service is an exploration into the power of words in shaping our worlds. At the garden of BioArt Labs, lexicons that attempt to change the conversation for imagining eco-social contracts as alternatives for the Terms of Service will be exhibited. Using the letters of ‘eco-social contracts’ as a starting point, the installation presents counter-acting vocabularies that think with humans and nonhumans rather than only with corporations. How about ‘E’ for ‘entanglement’, ‘C’ for ‘care’, ‘N’ for 'negotiation'? This exhibition is a conversation starter to change the conversation for imagining eco-social contracts.

The contexts of design are constantly changing, sometimes to the extent that once a ‘good’ designerly response to an issue, over time becomes increasingly problematic. Therefore, there is often a need to rethink design and its concepts. Programmatic design research may provide an exploratory space for inquiry through specific examples in relation to certain theoretical and conceptual framings. In this paper, we explore [dis/re]orientations towards design histories for creating alternative programmatic research spaces. We work through an everyday challenge, ‘Terms of Service’ (ToS), a regulatory mechanism amplifying power asymmetries in relating to data-intensive things. Disorienting design by making an odd association between today’s ToS and the ‘ornament’ in early industrial design, we explore resulting reorientations to rethink designing in this domain. Finally, we outline how [dis/re]orientations could be considered a speculative method for making a kind of ‘Programmatic Time Travel’, using reflections of pasts to reimagine designing for just futures.

The artificial has changed. We now design and interact with fluid assemblages that consist ofmaterial and immaterial elements distributed over networks, receive ongoing updates, have multiple versions for multiple audiences, and evolve through use. (Redström & Wiltse,2019). While these new things destabilized the distinctions between design and use, and production and consumption (Coulton & Lindley, 2019; Giaccardi & Redström, 2020;Redström & Wiltse, 2019), they try to appear ‘as if’ things as we have known hiding away their complexity and simulate similar uses. This creates a rift between ethics and aesthetics (Hauser et al., 2021), that is further complicated with the form of engagement these things impose: ongoing relationships (Özçetin & Redström, 2024; Özçetin & Wiltse, 2023).

In my PhD project, I take a pause with ‘artificial’ to attend to the problems arising due to this rift by using Terms of Service (ToS) as a key site for inquiry as it facilitates and controls users’ participation by legitimizing this rift. By moving in-between disciplinary boundaries, scales, mediums, and time periods, I explore how we might design authentically artificial relationships attending to the more-than-human entanglements that are hidden from view. I frame my explorations under a design research program ‘Designerly ways of becoming: aesthetics of in-betweenness’ consisting of four practices:

In ‘Designerly ways of reading: Relaying foundations for Terms of Ideas’, I position my research in related work. Demonstrating the limitations of the usability approach to ToS interfaces, I move towards technological mediation, care, and democracy.

In ‘Designerly ways of attending: Releasing design for Terms of Trauma’, I highlight what needs to be released in business models based on surveillance capitalism (Zuboff, 2019) that shape ToS, the user experiences ToS prescribes, and user-centered design approach that serves frictionless ToS interactions.

n ‘Designerly ways of seeing: Revealing design for Terms of Entanglement’, I reveal the entangled relations and intentionalities as expressed in policy ecosystems hidden behind the ‘I agree’ checkboxes by looking through posthuman lenses such as entanglements, decentering, and co-performance (Özçetin & Wiltse, 2023).

Building on these, in ‘Designerly ways of hoping: Reimagining design for Terms of Radiance’, I begin to explore how we can design eco-social contracts that better distribute power and control among the various more-than-human actors that co-perform digital interactions.

Through design explorations that emerge in dialogue with theory, I highlight the necessity to shift towards more-than-human design for a democratic data governance design space to emerge. In support of this, I problematize certain concepts that not only fall short but alsoprevent us from thinking otherwise. By mapping the dynamic policy ecosystems distributed across continents brought along by corporations making the fluid assemblages, I propose ToSsphere concept to replace ToS (Özçetin & Wiltse, 2023; Özçetin & Redström, 2024). I reflect on the potential policy implications of my explorations as well as design as a practice of policymaking.

Digitally textured everyday is controlled by Terms of Service agreements. These documents are used to legitimize extractivist data practices of technology companies. To do so, they tap into the power of words. By gathering words in a specific flow and structure for a specific purpose, these create a specific type of narrative. They define who is who, who can do what, who can’t do what and set the rules of the game serving to the benefit of the technology companies. Through these tactics, they make a specific type of world for us to live in and control our sense of being online and offline. 

Counter-acting lexicons for the Terms of Service is an exploration into the power of words in shaping our worlds. At the garden of BioArt Labs, lexicons that attempt to change the conversation for imagining eco-social contracts as alternatives for the Terms of Service will be exhibited. Using the letters of ‘eco-social contracts’ as a starting point, the installation presents counter-acting vocabularies that think with humans and nonhumans rather than only with corporations. How about ‘E’ for ‘entanglement’, ‘C’ for ‘care’, ‘N’ for 'negotiation'? This exhibition is a conversation starter to change the conversation for imagining eco-social contracts.

This paper explores how everyday practices can be an inspiration for novel designerly ways of relating to others and cultivating care in response to the prevalent lack of care in our precarious world. We present Urban Recipes, an ongoing project that combines the spatial exploration of drifting with the recursive practice of recipe-making, opening up a space for new ways of relating to the more-than-human urban environments that are home to both humans and nonhumans. Applying the metaphors of cooking to this paper, we trace the evolution of the project, starting from the recipe and developing it into the cookbook and the test kitchen. Finally, as we gather our reflections at the table, we meditate on how the transformation of the personal, the destabilization of the quotidian, and the creation of the joyful through Urban Recipes facilitate a new way of noticing and caring.