Fortress Tech: The Hostile UX of Borders

This meetup was originally supposed to be about borders in general. But now it’s about specific borders: the EU, UK, and US. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is a stark reminder that we need to talk about what we as individuals and communities will do about what ever-hardening borders do to us and to our communities. But it’s not the only reminder we’ve had. We don’t even know what Europe will look like by the time this event comes around, but we do know that this has never been more urgent.

A border is not just a line on a map. If you’re not a person with institutional or significant economic power, it’s always been a form of structural violence, and that violence is invisible to the people inside that border, who have the power to do something about it.

Borders harm us, our peers and our colleagues. Who is facing struggles and challenges we can’t see? Formal education, expensive conferences, and industry reading material aren’t equally accessible to everyone. What happens when companies rely on labor markets outside the EU – are we treating our contractor colleagues as equals?

And who’s had to emigrate, relocate, or flee? In addition to all of the little reminders that someone doesn’t belong – error messages, input fields, impossible system requirements – work permit systems, white supremacy, and immigration policies make life hard for all but the most privileged among us.

At the interface level, what happens for a migrant user when content and design professionals use words like “citizen” or “resident,” or when error messages tell people their names are wrong? When a product goes global, who makes decisions and who sets the standards for users?

A border is not an interface. Crossing borders is almost always a hostile user experience.

In this meetup, we’ll talk about ways we can work together to make borders more visible, with the aim of making them weaker. We’ll hear about the human cost when everything is seen through the lens of a small number of Silicon Valley product companies. We’ll talk about the cruelty of immigration systems, the trauma of borders, gates, and barriers, and, the practical realities of having to get up and go at short notice. And we’ll talk about our own responsibilities to design against borders, both professional and geopolitical.

Papers are for show dogs, and borders are for flower beds! International solidarity forever <3

Speakers:

• Kateryna Osadchenko, Technical & UX Writer
  Navigating the world of “native” English writing: from contractor to full-time writer for product teams

• Miroslav Damyanov (he/ him/ his), Lead UX Researcher at AsylumConnect
  Bordering and the emerging spaces of hope in tech

• Jillian York, author of Silicon Values
  Borders and disparities in content moderation

• Bridget Homem, UX Writer
  Crossing my life’s infinite borders and how that makes me a better UX writer

Image credit: https://unsplash.com/@timmossholder