Fellow - Caroline Sinders
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Caroline Sinders
Caroline Sinders is an award winning critical designer, researcher, and artist. They’re the co-founder and executive director human rights research and technology lab, Convocation Research + Design. They’ve worked with the United Nations, Tate Modern, Ars Electronica’s AI Lab, The Information Commissioner's Office, the Harvard Kennedy School and others.
Ambassador Project
Caroline focused on harmful design patterns, friction and 'bad design' that can impact communities, especially those newer to finance. She worked with South American immigrants based in the UK who work as freelancers. The frictions, confusing design and harmful design patterns in the banking tools they use impact their lives.
What Inspired Her Work
She has spent the past decade focusing on harmful design patterns (often called 'dark patterns' or 'deceptive design patterns') and has seen how design impacts consumers' financial well being, psychology and safety. When a setting is deeply buried, or a technical term is made even harder to understand, or the user flow tricks a user from making an action they would like to make, this impacts that person. Financial service platforms are an under-studied space in harmful design patterns research. Design can explain or confuse users as to what the technology is doing. Design isn't neutral, it's deeply political.
Vision for the Future
Caroline envisions a future where technology will be built for all ages, genders, abilities, races, classes and for all the different ways people access the Internet and technology. In this world, we've built software that understands that people are new to finance, and it's easier and safer for people to send and receive money. In this future, 'harmful design' no longer exists; software isn't designed to trick users or hide fees. This software doesn't prioritize the Western world or certain currencies, but instead, it's designed for the entire world.