Wage transparency in Denmark: designing for publics that do not exist.pdf

Abstract

In Danish society, the topic of wages is often referred to as a private matter. This makes the issue a difficult topic to discuss, especially amongst Danish workers, and maybe the lack of dialogue contributes to inequalities such as equal pay between genders.
Drawing on the recent collective agreement negotiations, the report issued by the Institute of Human Rights, and the Del Din Løn campaign, we explore how these interventions have, or have not, managed to spark the formation of publics around the issue of wage transparency.
This paper proposes that designing agnostic spaces of debate could serve as an effective way to challenge this issue.

Full text

Wage Transparency in Denmark:
Designing for publics that do not exist
Master Techno-Anthropology, Aalborg University
Project P8
Group: 10
Supervisor: Andreas Birkbak
Hand In Date: 06/06/2018
Number of pages: 37
Keystrokes: 87578

Loïs Charles Barnabé Vérot, student no. 20176992
Steven Michael Phillips, student no. 20172180

Louise Romain Watson, student no. 20172069 

Morten Christian Heuser, student no. 20172050


Mathias Braad Petersen, student no. 20172035

Table of Contents
Introduction 2
1 - Contextualizing the Lack of Dialogue Around Wages 3
1.1 ‘Hvad tjener du?’ Report by the Danish Institute of Human Rights 6
1.2 The Del Din Løn campaign 8
2 - The theoretical framework 10
2.1 Issue publics 11
2.2 Participatory design 13
2.3 Agonism, democracy and design 14
2.4 Design for politics and political design 16
2.5 Insights from American pragmatism 17
2.6 Actor-network theory 21
2.7 Black boxes 21
2.8 Translation 23
3 - Design Process 24
3.1 The design workshop 25
3.2 The role of materiality 26
3.3 The wage app 27
3.4 Scenarios 29
3.5 Ideal types as a tendency of reality 32
3.6 Why ideal types? 33
3.7 Building our game characters 34
4 - Analyzing our findings and suggesting design proposals 35
4.1 Exploring the workshop with adversarial design 35
4.2 Description of the app - creating arenas for debate 39
4.3 The process of translation and the opening of black boxes 40
4.4 A hypothetical example of translation 40
5 - Discussion 42
5.1 Acknowledging the limitations of our design 42
Conclusion 44
Bibliography 47
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Introduction
In Danish society, the topic of wages is often referred to as a private matter. This makes
the issue a difficult topic to discuss, especially amongst Danish workers. According to
the Danish Institute of Human Rights, this lack of dialogue contributes to inequalities
such as equal pay between genders. This paper proposes that designing agnostic
spaces of debate could serve as an effective way to challenge this issue.
Our study has its offset in three existing societal interventions aimed at this problem.
The first one is the report issued by the Institute of Human Rights “Hvad tjener du?:
Åbenhed om Løn på Arbejdspladsen”, which contains statistics and qualitative analyses
identifying a lack of debate around wages in Danish workplaces. This report states that
60% of the population do not talk about their wages (Warming:2017:43). The second
intervention is a wage application (app) developed by the analysis company Analyse &
Tal, for the Institute of Human Rights. The app is based on statistics from Statistics
Denmark, with the aim to highlight the lack of debate between Danes about their wages
and to show pay gaps between sectors and genders. The third intervention consists of a
campaign called Del Din Løn initiated by the Institute of Human Rights 38 Unions
encouraging people to “break the wage taboo because open pay is the way to equal
pay”(Facebook.com, 2018).
This study starts off by contextualizes our study, drawing specifically on the recent
collective agreement negotiations, the report issued by the Institute of Human Rights,
and the Del Din Løn campaign. We explore how these interventions have, or have not,
managed to spark the formation of publics around the issue of wage transparency. The
second chapter presents our theoretical frameworks, namely the John Dewey’s
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conceptualization of publics

, bridging STS and design approaches drawing on the
scholars Noortje Marres and Carl DiSalvo; perspectives from participatory design and
adversarial design. We also implement actor-network theory and the notions of situation
and interaction

, drawn from American pragmatism, which form the theoretical frame of
analysis of our findings. While designing the workshop, we also drew on perspectives
from participatory design, considering the importance of involving potential users in the
design process. The final chapter presents our analysis of the workshop, drawing on
specific findings from the workshop, and it develops a design proposal for a
technological artifact. We will conclude by acknowledging the limitations of our design
proposal and of the relevance of the topic of wage transparency in our current
democratic societies. This lays the ground for the following research question:
How can the theoretical frameworks of Dewey’s issue publics, ANT and adversarial
design be applied to inform a design proposal aimed at tackling the issue of wage
transparency in Denmark?
1 - Contextualizing the lack of dialogue around
wages
As mentioned in the introduction, the issue of wage transparency must be considered in
a broader context. This is done though the case of the collective agreement
negotiations, also known as OK18. They were initiated on March 1st, and have received
a lot of attention in both traditional and social media up until their completion in May.
The negotiations dealt with three main elements: the pay gaps between employees of
the public and private sectors, the paid lunch break of the teachers, and the distribution
of working hours of the teachers. The latter case became the center of the conflict,
considering the difficulty to reach a common agreement which was rooted in the
conflictual OK13 (Friis and Lyall, 2018). After a lockout of 67.000 teachers and street
protests (Sckerl, K. L., 2013 [Online]), these former negotiations led to the implementation
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of the law 409, which took away local agency from the teachers and pressured them to
follow an annual norm. Since 2013: ”72 out of the 98 municipalities have made local
agreements, which in various ways soften the law 409” (Elkrog Friis and Lyall,
17.04.2018, Altinget), although the teachers remain the only professional group which
working hours are governed by that law. Therefore, a central claim in OK18 from
Danmarks Lærerforening and the teachers has been to change the yearly norm to a
quarterly norm, which has been supported by representants from various unions across
the state, the municipalities and the regions (Vilsbøll, S., 2018 [Online]).
These antecedents combined with the current context, contributed to the formation of a
public around the issue of collective agreement negotiations. We will dive deeper with
the Deweyan conceptualization of publics in the next chapter, but in order to
contextualize the lack of dialogue around wages in Denmark, we want to introduce the
readings of DiSalvo “Design and the Construction of Publics” and Marres’ “Issues spark
a public into being”, of John Dewey’s work “The Public and Its Problems”.
DiSalvo formulates that “the public is an entity, which has been brought into being
through issues for the purpose of contending with these issues in their current state and
in anticipation of the future consequences of these issues” (DiSalvo, 2009:49). With
OK18, many publicly employed citizens joined and supported the teachers, because
they could relate to their issue and align their own (future and present) agenda with it.
“The solidarity with teachers, is not only a result of sympathy, but also about their own
long-term interests among the other public unions” (Elkrog Friis and Lyall, 17.04.2018,
Altinget). An important aspect of the concept of publics is its ties to the situation in which
it originated: “The bond of a public to its conditions of origin is an inevitable outcome of
the situatedness of publics. Publics arise from, and in response to, issues that are
qualified by the context in which they are experienced” (DiSalvo, 2009:50). As we have
seen, the negotiations of the teachers’ working time was tied to OK13 and to the legal
process that unfolded.
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What can we learn from the issues brought to light through OK18 and its engagement of
publics? It is worth noticing that, if the collective agreement negotiations did illuminate
aspects of the Danes’ relation to wages, such as the relationships with their unions, the
demand of their rights, or ways to get engaged and have their voices heard, neither
wage inequalities nor wage transparency seemed to be present in the debate. The large
media coverage and the controversy can be seen as means to represent these
“complex issues [which] enable public involvement in politics” (Marres, 2005:2),
demonstrating that democracy is a continuous state of contestation. However, if we
follow Marres argument that “publics are called into being by issues” (Marres, 2005:3),
what happens when an issue is documented but not recognized? This is what sits at the
core of our investigation, which we designate as the lack of dialogue and transparency
around wage. We explore the potential role of technological and design innovation to
foster the formation of publics around issues, specifically wage transparency.
Marres defines the Deweyan understanding of publics:
as a grouping of actors who are affected by human actions, but who do not have direct
influence on those actions. Lacking such influence, these indirectly affected actors must
get organised into a public if they are to address the problems ensuing from these
actions. (Marres, 2005:8).
The lack of dialogue and transparency around wages is an issue that concerns large
segments of the Danish working population. As we will now come to see, different
actors are calling for a change, attempting to engage publics through various means
and raise awareness about the issue of wage transparency. But taking into account that
“the public adopts problems that no one is currently taking care of, so as to identify an
addressee for these issues, which may take care of them.” (Marres, 2005:13), what
happens when an institution, such as the Institute of Human Rights, tries to initiate the
process of sparking a public into being around an issue that is seemingly not recognized
5

as a controversy. In the following part, we will try to depict how this actor tried to
generate public engagement around wage transparency.
1.1 ‘Hvad tjener du?’ Report by the Danish Institute of Human
Rights
The report “Hvad Tjener du? Åbenhed om løn på arbejdspladsen”, which translates into
“What do you earn? Openness about wages in the workplace”, was published in May
2017 and is available online (Institut for Menneske Rettigheder, 2017, [Online]). This
report maps out discussions around wages at Danish workplaces and brings forward
information towards wage transparency. The Institute of Human Rights conducted their
investigation through a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods. They collaborated
with the analytic bureau Megafon by designing an online questionnaire that was filled
out anonymously by members of a dedicated Megafon panel, who were screened
beforehand to assure that they were valid wage earners. The number of respondents
ended on 1007 workers over the age of 18, which is deemed by Megafon as being
statistically representative (Warming, 2017:33). Interviewees were contacted through
both Megafon and the National Network of Equal Pay, and 13 qualitative interviews
were conducted.
In addition to the report, we conducted a phone interview with Kirsten Precht working for
the Institute of Human Rights. We observed that she was hesitant to give information
away and that her answers were short. This could be explained by different reasons,
such as the format of the interview, the formulation of our questions, the topic itself
and/or other factors we are not aware of. One point she was insistent about was how
Statistics Denmark has an obligation to get information out to people, and how
challenging that is. Their focus seemed to be on understanding wage regulation, how it
affects society, and to shed light on the situation.
6

The report specifies many of their findings through statistics, the most prevalent one
being that 60% of Danish workers do not talk to their colleagues about what they earn.
This apprehensiveness is explained in the report, as a result of wages being seen as “a
private matter, that wage is complex and that talking about wages is considered
inappropriate” (Warming, 2017: 6, 83). Through these characteristics, the Institute of
Human Rights qualifies the topic of wage as “taboo” in Denmark. The interviewees
expressed that they have encountered, or expect to encounter resistance (and in some
cases retaliation) if they break the dominating norm of the workplace that dictates to not
talk openly about wages (Warming, 2017:82). 8% have been asked not to discuss wage
with their colleagues by their managers. Although Kirsten thinks that the “taboo” has
moved through collective agreement negotiations, she confirmed that when a worker
does not know what her/his colleagues earn and is afraid to ask, s/he is told that it is
best not to talk about it. The report further declares that 46% of the respondents are
unaware that they have a right to talk and exchange knowledge about their wages in
accordance with the equal pay law (Ligelønsloven). Only 10% have been informed by
their managers of their right to discuss wages with their colleagues. However, 43% of
the respondents express a wish that conversations on wages were normalized, which
would make it easier to assess whether one’s salary is correct, while 19% completely or
largely disagree with this, and 21% express that nothing could make them talk about
wages with their colleagues (Warming, 2017: 83). When we asked Kirsten about what
the Institute of Human Rights is doing to raise awareness, she told us that they don’t
have concrete activities, it is not their focus anymore although they still want to work on
the issue. She thinks that they have already influenced the public debate through
interviews and papers, which has garnered public attention in the media and by the
trade union.
The main emphasis of the report is the direct link between wage transparency and
equal pay:
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Previous investigations indicate that a lack of transparency concerning salaries has been
an obstacle to achieving equal pay. (...) In Denmark, it is illegal to pay men and women
different salaries on the basis of their gender. Nevertheless, men earn on average 4-7%
more than women (Warming, 2017: 9).
Furthermore, we were curious to know if the Institute of Human Rights had identified
social groups or segments of the Danish working population who are being
marginalized. Kirsten expressed that the Institute of Human Rights does not think in
segments, rather a broad and encompassing approach is a more practical way to
handle the situation. She claimed that overall, more transparency allows more control
and knowledge, therefore the agency should be distributed among the Danish workers.
Our interview with Kirsten made clear that the Institute of Human Rights aimed
principally to gain knowledge on openness about pay in the workplace on a large scale.
According to the means used to convey their findings (publications and interviews), and
to the lack of specificity or particular target audiences, their approach did not aim to
bring solutions to create more wage transparency. We will now look into an initiative
which directly targeted the workers and attempted to mobilize them through
contemporary media.
1.2 The Del Din Løn campaign
On March 8th 2018, simultaneously with the OK18, the Del Din Løn campaign (Share
your pay) began. This date was chosen specifically as it marks International Women’s
Day, with the motto stating “open pay is the road to equal pay” (Facebook page, 2018a
[Online]). 38 unions spanning across the main organizations LO (Landsorganisationen I
Danmark), FTF, and AC (Akademikerne) joined by the Institute of Human Rights, with
the intention to “push politicians to intervene with legislation, and to encourage workers
8

to break the salary taboo”. Amalie Bonde Jørgensen, organization consultant at PROSA
explains that:
If you do not know what your colleagues earn, unexplainable wage differences between
genders, ethnicities or terms of employment will remain hidden. If you know your
colleagues wage, that knowledge can instead be used to negotiate your way up as a
collective (Amalie Bonde Jørgensen, 2018 [Online]).
Previous to that, the Del Din Løn Facebook page was created with a first post on
February 26th. We can find testimonies of people identifying with the taboo and acting
on it and then posts promoting events related to the campaign. On the day of the
launch, a post shows a picture of two smiling radio hosts from DR displaying their
wages on large pieces of paper, with the text, “you can also help create more
transparency about pay by writing a sign, taking a selfie and putting it on your Facebook
page with the hashtag #deldinløn. It benefits, if we are enough!” (Facebook Page, 2018b
[Online]).
From there on, it seems clear that Del Din Løn wants to incentivize all Danes to openly
share how much they earn. Their purpose is to generate discussions, reminding people
that talking about wages is their right, to enable a debate in the public space, and to
inspire concrete ways forward to foster wage transparency.
We had the opportunity to interview Ronja Ravnskov, Vice President of the students of
Dansk Magisterforening. She is engaged in conversations with students about
inequalities, and informing them about their rights in general. Although she has not been
directly active on social media, she expresses that:
According to our informant, there is something about the Danish culture and its social
norms that promote discretion when it comes to the topic of salary:
9

I think it can be hard because it's in the Danish identity not to show off, and I think many
people connect the fact that they talk about their salary as a kind of show off. Like they
are scared that their salary is higher that their colleagues and they will think badly of
them. So I think it's very much of a cultural question and identity. (Ronja Ravnskov,
appendix 1:1)
At the time of our interview, the threat of a big lockout was pending, OK18 was widely
covered in local and national media, more and more people were being vocal online
using #nokernok18 or #viermereværd. She acknowledges that social media is one step
on the way towards wage transparency but that real meetings, such as between the
Unions and their members, are essential. She also states the importance of a good
working environment to enable transparency.
With this first chapter, we tried to outline the current socio-cultural context in which our
inquiry is situated. The concept of the construction of publics was shortly introduced to
put the collective agreement negotiations into perspective, of the report and the Del Din
Løn campaign, and how they do or do not address the lack of dialogue around wages in
Denmark. Wage transparency has been identified as an ‘unrecognized’ issue, and with
this identification in mind we present the following research question.
RQ: How can the theoretical frameworks of Dewey’s issue publics, ANT and
adversarial design be applied to inform a design proposal aimed at tackling the
issue of wage transparency in Denmark?
2 - The theoretical framework
Our project aims to illustrate how to design with these dynamics of engagement,
specifically with the intent of promoting debate on wage transparency and to “spark a
public into being” (Marres, 2005). As DiSalvo puts it: “it is precisely within this
contemporary socio-technical mess of people, technologies, and objects [a mess that
10

Dewey’s theory of the public is quite apt for negotiating] that this inquiry into design and
the construction of publics is situated.” (DiSalvo, 2009:51).
Previously, we apply the Deweyan conceptualization of publics on the specific topic of
OK18. Following on DiSalvo’s perspective, we will outline different characteristics of
issue publics framed within a designerly approach. We then explain how participatory
design has informed our project, especially the democratic values at its core. Expanding
on that, we also use adversarial design, a theoretical construct developed by DiSalvo.
This was an essential framework for our design proposal due to its application of
agonism and the integration of politics. In the final part, we apply key concepts from
actor-network theory as a way to articulate the lack of dialogue around wages. We also
use the notions of interaction and situation from American Pragmatism, which became
central in the design process of the workshop as well our design proposal.
2.1 Issue publics
DiSalvo puts the notion of issue publics into a design perspective. From his reading of
Dewey, he develops the following understanding of issue publics:
Within “The Public and Its Problems” are leads to investigating and understanding the
ways in which the products and processes of design intersect with publics. Of these
leads, the notion that publics are “constructed” is perhaps most salient to contemporary
design because it prompts a consideration of the means by which publics are assembled
(DiSalvo, 2008:48).
There is indeed a strong entanglement between the role of design(ers) and the
construction of publics. First, we must state that we consider design from the
perspective of participatory design (which we elaborate below). Therefore, we
understand it as an instrumental, creative and action-oriented process, which role shifts
from conceiving material artefacts and products, to more heterogeneous systems. As
Erling Bjögvinsson, Pelle Ehn and Per-Anders Hillgren formulate it, “a fundamental
11

challenge for designers and the design community is to move from designing “things”
(objects) to designing Things (socio-material assemblies)” (2012b:102). Designers must
now be able to take into consideration a variety of elements not originally tied to their
fields of expertise, from the stage of conception up to the final design outcome.
An additional challenge is expressed in the article “Designing for publics who are
already busy: A case from Denmark” by Andreas Birkbak, Morten Krogh Petersen and
Tobias Bornakke Jørgensen, which raises the question of “how to design with

rather
than for publics” (2018:2). This brings us to a central point developed by Marres’
reading of Dewey: the problem of relevance. Because publics emerge unevenly from
issues, they:
are always struggling with how to make their situation relevant to actions taking place
elsewhere. (…) Problems of relevance can play out as public controversies over what
parties should be considered and accounted for in relation to an issue, and as disputes
over how to delineate the issue in the first place. For Marres, such processes are what
define public engagement (Birkbak et al., 2018:3).
This notion of publics entails a certain contentious dimension. The boundaries of what is
problematic, and for who, are constantly being re-defined, and this is precisely where
design interventions can be enriching, yet complicated to implement. How can design
be used to mediate these controversial processes, thereby assisting the engagement of
publics? Or to use a well-known STS expression, how can we “stay with the trouble”
(Haraway, Donna, 2016) to understand the stakes of publics around the issue of wage
transparency, an issue that has so far gained little recognition?
The tradition of participatory design: “reflects the then-controversial political conviction
that controversy rather than consensus should be expected around an emerging object
of design.” (Bjögvinsson, Ehn and Hillgren, 2012b:103). We will now unfold this idea,
first through the perspective of participatory design, then with adversarial design.
12

Drawing on the question encapsulated in the previously mentioned article, we wonder
how we can, as techno-anthropologists, contribute to the organization of publics when
designing a proposal for a technological artifact (Birkbak et al., 2018:1)?
2.2 Participatory design
According to Jesper Simonsen and Toni Robertson, the word design is both a verb and
a noun, it can refer to a process and a product (2012:41). With the rise of the Nordic
Design movement starting after World War II, designers in Scandinavia started to merge
functionalism with art, technology, and politics. Apartments and household objects were
designed for the masses, who also produced them. This trend was nicknamed ‘Funkis’
and it became elasticated with the growing working class. With the expansion of this
movement in design, it was starting to be understood that science and technology could
be used to solve social problems through design (ibid, 2012:38). We understand design
as the combination of art and technology into a product or artifact that has political
and/or social meaning for the user. The voices of actors who would otherwise have
been marginalised are especially important in participatory design (Pedersen, Signe,
2016).
The ‘participatory’ in this design tradition represents how stakeholders work
cooperatively and democratically to develop technologies or products that are in their
interest. The ‘design’ part is complicated since the term lends itself to having a broad
definition. Design in its modern day usage is better fitted to describe a process of
change rather than the crafting of an object. Designers today have a much more
abstract role than the ability to dexterously manipulate shapes and objects. Herbert
Simon’s definition of design illustrates this point in “The Sciences of the Artificial” when
he says that design means devicing “courses of action aimed at changing the existing
situations into preferred ones” (Simon, 1996:111).
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Therefore, participatory design is built off of the central idea that: “those affected by a
design should have a say in the design process” (Björgvinsson, Ehn and Hillgren,
2012b:103). Since wages are an issue that every part of the working class must content
with, we found that participatory design took into account the views of the people we
want to design a product for. Simonsen & Robertson define the participatory design
tradition, as the: “the need for providing means for people to be able to be involved”
(2012:41). We interpret this as a practice enabling users of a product to take part in its
design, and it should be our prerogative to give a voice to these users. This project uses
the practices of participatory design in its attempt to design for wage transparency. We
choose to see design as a flexible network of actors and objects, as opposed to putting
focus solely on the design of objects.
Bjögvinsson, Ehn and Hillgren ascribe two types of values guiding this movement of
design:
One is the social and rational idea of democracy as a value that leads to considerations
of conditions that enable proper and legitimate user participation. The other value might
be described as the idea affirming the importance of making participants’ tacit knowledge
come into play in the design process—not just their formal and explicit competencies,
but those practical and diverse skills that are fundamental to the making of things as
objects or artifacts

(2012b:103).
These values played an important role throughout our design process. In the workshop,
we implemented a variety of participatory tools (detailed in the following chapter) which
put an emphasis on generating agency through interactions between the participants
(with each other and with us), and through the material artifacts we created. In that way,
we wanted to gain empirical data through involving the participants in the instructive and
playful format of a workshop.
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2.3 Agonism, democracy and design
The design framework of this report builds on the concept of agonism and its ability to
contribute to democratic practices and processes. In his book “Adversarial Design”, Carl
DiSalvo draws on the political theorist Chantal Mouffe, and refers to agonism as: “a
condition of disagreement and confrontation – a condition of contestation and
dissensus.” (DiSalvo, 2012:4). DiSalvo formulates that:
The ongoing disagreement and confrontation are not detrimental to the endeavours of
democracy but are productive of the democratic condition. Through contentious affect
and expression, democracy is instantiated and expressed. (...) For democracy to
flourish, spaces of confrontation must exist, and contestation must occur (DiSalvo,
2012:5).
As a process and a practice, design surely presents a tremendous potential for
democratic facts, believes and practices to be challenged and examined through
contestation. In this report we propose the argument, that this agonistic approach to
design and democracy is helpful when designing towards transparency, where the lack
of dialogue and debate is a key problem.
According to Birkbak in his reading of DiSalvo, the consequences of issues are
normally: “variously felt and perceived by various groups in society, resulting in a
multiplicity of publics” (Birkbak, 2018:2). When transparency is lacking however, we
argue that the issues exist, but are not felt or recognized. We therefore choose to root
our design proposals in adversarial design, because it provides the designer with the
ability to let users explore a topic through contestation. We argue that this approach is
an innovative take on the lack of debate. It gives the users the chance to define and
unpack the issue based on their own situations, which then works in conjunction with
Marres’ notion of publics, because it opens up for the issue to be recognized through
debate, enabling publics to form around it.
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Adversarial design is a branch of design in which contestation and disagreement are
heralded as qualities of a healthy democratic debate and political life. We realized the
relevance of using adversarial design once the workshop took place, since the most
fruitful moments were debates. These debates often came out of small disagreements
or different perspectives on the issue between the participants of the workshop. We
could see that even flatout disagreements between the participants were fruitful, since it
enabled the participants to reflect about the perspectives of the others.
2.4 Design for politics and political design
According to Mouffe’s agonistic perspective, democracy can be seen from two angles,
politics and the political, as two notions that should not be conflated. The difference
between them is that one is characterized by ongoing acts of disagreement, whereas
the other revolves around administrative operations of government. As Mouffe states:
By “the political” I refer to the dimension of antagonism that is inherent in human
relations, antagonism that can take many forms and emerge in different types of social
relations. “Politics,” on the other side, indicates the ensemble of practices, discourses
and institutions which seek to establish a certain order and organize human coexistence
in conditions that are always potentially conflictual because they are affected by the
dimension of “the political” (Mouffe, 2000:101).
DiSalvo uses this distinction to differentiate between two types of design for each
democracy idea, design for politics and political design. Design for politics aims to
enable and improve the means and mechanics by which a state is put together
processes, like governance, access to information, voting, etc. Political design “reveals,
questions and challenges conditions and structures, (...) it opens a space for
contestation; and it suggests new practices of design” (DiSalvo, 2012:8). Where design
for politics can be seen as supporting democracy, political design is more of a normative
activity that makes claims about politics and society, thereby enabling debate. The latter
16

holds the ability to provoke or engage the public in new ways. DiSalvo states that it is a
condition “expressed and experienced in the dealings between people and
organizations in a multiplicity of ways, including debate, dissensus, and protest” (ibid:8).
Both design for politics and political design could be useful approaches when designing
for transparency, you could for example in a very extreme degree of design for politics,
make wage transparency required by law. However, in this report we choose to use the
frame of political design to inform our adversarial design proposal because of its
inherent strive to reveal questions and confront current societal structures and
conditions (ibid:7). It should be noted, that adversarial design does not claim to be
neither radical nor revolutionary. It uses the terms adversary and contestation, but not in
the sense that their implementation in design is made to create upheaval, revolution or
conflict with a one-sided outcome. Whereas Mouffe uses the term adversary to
characterize “relations between actors and positions within an agonistic democracy”
(ibid:7) DiSalvo focuses on the designed artifacts and systems: “In labeling an object as
adversarial, I mean to call attention to the contestational relations and experiences
aroused through the designed thing and the way it expresses dissensus” (ibid:7).
By “doing the work of agonism” (ibid), adversarial design means to conceive artifacts
that enable controversies, thereby supporting a thriving and democratic society.
Furthermore, the issue of transparency can be seen as a wicked problem, and therefore
it is difficult, if not impossible to know as designers, which way the controversy should
be taken beforehand. Political design operates a wide distribution of agency, where the
different opinions of the publics can be expressed, and hopefully represented and
visualized. By providing such agency to the publics, we leave it up to them to debate
issue of transparency. Our role as designers is therefore to provide the platform in
which this exploration is enabled.
17

2.5 Insights from American pragmatism
American pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that goes beyond dichotomies
between practice and theory, epistemology and ontology, structure and actor. It is
deemed applicable to this study because it attributes a central role to interactions
between subjects and their surrounding environments. In “The Productive Role of
Material Artefacts in Participatory Design”, Nicolai Brodersen Hansen and Peter
Dalsgaard, describe one of the central principles of pragmatism, called the primacy of
practice:
Theory and practice are not separate entities; rather, they are intertwined, as theories
arise from practice and must be evaluated on the basis of how they scaffold our
understanding of, and actions in practice (Hansen & Dalsgaard, 2012:667).
This key tenet highlights the dynamism inherent to pragmatism, and critically reflects on
the classic dichotomy of theory versus practice. Similarly, there is a high emphasis on
the interplay between action and reflection, which contribute to the iterative
transformation of practice. The notion of “reflection-in-action” has been elaborated by
Donald Schön to refer to the reciprocal process occurring in design in which a
practitioner will: “generate both a new understanding of the phenomenon and a change
in the situation” (Schön 1983:68). In this situated worldview, the agency is widely
distributed and transformed, and so is knowledge constantly emerging and being
activated through interactions between subjects and their surrounding environments.
The term subject shall here be understood beyond its original submissive nature, since:
pragmatism dispenses with the rationalist subject-object dichotomy in favour of a
reciprocal and dialogical understanding of the subject’s dynamic relation with the
environment through ever-evolving interaction in order to adapt to and transform his
conditions (Dalsgaard, 2009:63).
18

These general conceptualizations proper to American pragmatism, lead us to a pivotal
notion for Dewey, as well as for our project. In order to inform our design process, we
acquired new knowledge on the social interactions (rather lack of interactions) between
Danish wage earners. This was done first through interviews with a specific set of
stakeholders who had been involved in the design of interventions around the wage
transparency issue (Analyse & Tal, the Institute for Human Rights, and Dansk
Magisterforening). We believe that understanding these interactions hold a tremendous
potential as vector for change since they challenge: “the establishment and ongoing
development of habits and knowledge” (Dalsgaard, 2009:73). But beyond
understanding them, we want to bring visibility to these interactions through the
agonistic space of our design proposal. By interacting with each other, the potential
users can reinforce, question and transform their perspectives on the issues, debating
with each other, thereby contributing to thriving democratic practices. As Dalsgaard
formulates: “it is through interaction that it becomes possible to examine the properties
of self, others, surroundings, artefacts and social constructs” (2009:69). This loops us
back to the mutual influence of reflection and action, theory and practice, subject and
surroundings. Although pragmatism develops various concepts, we want to center our
attention on the concept of situation.
The concept of situation is formulated as:
what is designated by the word ‘situation’ is not a single object or event or set of events.
For we never experience nor form judgments about objects and events in isolation, but
only in connection with a contextual whole. This latter is what is called a ‘situation’
(Dewey 1998:66-67).
In the case of our project, a situation could be OK18, as the larger context concerning
the public issue of the salary negotiations, where the relationships between workers
through their representatives (the Unions) and the Danish state, the regions and the
municipalities are represented. In the situation of collective agreement negotiations, the
19

subjects are quite diffuse entities, such as the Danish workers and the Danish state,
with confrontational power relations. Understanding this situation would require a
comprehensive understanding of history, law, economics and politics in Denmark within
a relevant time frame.
Otherwise, several situations took place during the workshop. We were particularly
interested in the situations of debate and contention, and how the interplay between the
participants, their social constructs, the artefacts and their surrounding environment
informed their points of view. Throughout the workshop, we noticed the shifts of
perspectives of some participants, especially after strong contentious interactions.
Finally, in Dewey’s strand of pragmatism, technology plays a double instrumental role:
“acting both as constitutive of experience and as means of altering it” (Dalsgaard,
2009:75). Since we are designing a technological artifact, we wanted take both roles in
consideration, keeping in mind that users can potentially use it in unexpected ways.
The available technologies may be what enable us to experience central aspects of the
situation at first hand, help us explore the problem space, develop hypotheses, and carry
out more specific actions intended to transform the situation. (Hansen & Dalsgaard,
2012:667)
However we argue that the transformational impact of technologies can only be limited if
the emergence of the issue of wage transparency is prevented. As Birkbak stated, it’s
not about the “better means of communication [which] might be mobilized to help
multiple publics come together and deal with the issue that mobilized them” (Birkbak et
al., 2018:3). If technologies aren’t made relevant to the publics and the indirect
problematic consequences they might face, they won’t be utilized and appropriated.
20

2.6 Actor-network theory
In this report, we argue that the network perspective, specifically the actor-network
theory (ANT) can be utilized to enhance the understanding of social change as a
complex inter-relational dynamic between human and non-human actors. The
insistence on the agency of non-human actors enables a complex discussion of how the
design of technological objects can help problematize the issue of wage transparency.
Furthermore, it opens up for an analysis on how material objects, such as props and
artifacts, affect a participatory design process. For these reasons, ANT is able to
provide a theoretical lens that we can utilize in our analysis, as well as in our
methodology. We take a theoretical foothold in classic ANT and specifically the ideas of
translation and black boxes as put forth by Bruno Latour, John Law and Michel Callon.
2.7 Black boxes
This report investigates the complexity of networks and actants related to the lack of
debate around wages, which is a complex socio-technical problem. To navigate it we
can apply another notion from ANT, namely the concept of the “black box”. A black box
can be effectively described as the disappearance of a network and the appearance of
unity, or to use a single word, simplification.
“If a network acts as a single block, then it disappears, to be replaced by the action itself
and the seemingly simple author of that action. At the same time, the way in which the
effect is generated is also effaced: for the time being it is neither visible, nor relevant.”
(Law, 1992: 385).
In this report, we make the argument that the wage transparency issue can be seen and
analyzed as a network that has been effectively black boxed, and that it is widespread
on a general societal level in Denmark. This argument connects to the report by The
Institute of Human Rights about wages, in which it is stated that Danish people do not
21

discuss what they earn with their colleagues and: “The reasons most often adduced for
this reluctance to talk about salaries are that salaries are considered a private matter,
that salaries are a complex issue, and that it is considered inappropriate to discuss what
one earns.” (Warming, 2017:9). The report does not specify why it is a private matter, or
deemed as inappropriate. These facts remain unexplored, and we propose that this
knowledge has been revealed. We also claim in correspondence with ANT, that there is
no analytical reason to differentiate between micro-social and macro-social, or
micro-actors and macro-actors, the only size-determining factor that exists is the
amount of black boxes an actant sits upon. In their common work “Unscrewing the Big
Leviathan; or How Actors Macrostructure Reality, and How Sociologists Help Them To
Do So?” (1981) Callon and Latour explore how micro-actors successfully grow to
macro-size. The reflections of that work are suitable for constructing a perspective on
the lack of transparency as an actant.
A black box contains that which no longer needs to be reconsidered, those things whose
contents have become a matter of indifference. The more elements one places in black
boxes - modes of thoughts, habits, force and objects - the broader the construction one
can raise (Latour, Callon, 1981: 285)
The more black boxes an actant amasses, the more freedom it will have in its
negotiation with new potential allies in the process of translation. Black boxes however,
do not remain closed and dark. They are leaky and must be continually reclosed and
protected from being forced open by other actants (Latour, Callon, 1981). In this report,
we propose that one could see the lack of dialogue as an actant, that has successfully
black boxed a network of the discourses around wage. It is beyond the scope of this
paper to demonstrate how the wage transparency issue actant grew to macro-size,and
how it has been effectively black boxed. It is the intent of this report to propose a
technological artefact that is inscribed with design ideas that aim to force open the black
boxes of the lack of dialogue.
22

2.8 Translation
In actor-network theory, translation describes the “[…] processes through which an
actant acquires strength by associating with others” (Jensen, Torben Elgaard 2003:8). It
entails a re-arrangement of a network of actants, in which one actant positions itself so
that it can speak or act on behalf of others. An example could be a politician talking on
behalf of her voters. The title of actant in ANT can be given to anything that can be
ascribed action, which is literally anything (Jensen, 2003). An oil rig, a swarm of
honey-bees, or a technological artefact designed to spark debate around wages, all can
be equally ascribed the ability to act. This enables very complex networks of analysis,
but in order to understand and navigate social change, it is imperative that one accepts
that such matters are complex. As John Law states:
There is no reason to assume, a priori, that either objects or people in general determine
the character of social change or stability. To be sure, in particular cases, social relations
may shape machines, or machine relations shape their social counterparts (Law, 1992:
383).
Whether an actant is human or non-human, what enables it to have an effect is that it
acts on behalf of a chain of superseding translations (before the statements of the
politician come party-membership, election campaigns, meetings with professional
bodies, voting etc.). When a politician steps forth with a certain degree of credibility, it is
because she appears as the last link in a long chain of translations as a stable actant
(Jensen, 2003:?). The process of a translation is described as happening in four phases
by Michel Callon:
Translation of allies refer to a process consisting of four moments: problematization (a
problem/hypothesis is introduced as an Obligatory Passage Point (OPP)), interessement
(actors become interested in joining the network and start negotiating the terms of their
enrolment), enrolment (the roles of the actors are defined and interlinked), and
23

mobilization (the actors actively work for the network’s agenda) (Pedersen, 2016:44;
Callon,1986).
What this study seeks to achieve using ANT, is to explore how a potential process of
translation could unfold that would arrange a stable network with the following agenda:
to enable debate around wage between Danish workers so as to increase transparency.
This process of translation deals with the wage transparency issue as a black box,
which becomes destabilized or opened through this process. This would involve human
and non-human actors creating alliances in order to open various black boxes of wage
transparency, such as the right to pass on one’s wage informations rooted in the equal
pay law. This agenda is a complex one to achieve, especially because it could be very
hard to efficiently problematize the corresponding issue, as well as creating
interessement - as we explored by analysing such attempts made by Del Din Løn
campaign and the Institute of Human Rights. This report proposes that such attempts,
given that they are intentional and designed, can benefit from the frame of analysis that
ANT provides. In chapter four of this study, we conceive of a hypothetical translation,
concerning how potential users of our design proposal would engage with the issue of
wage transparency, becoming aware of the issue and opening its black boxes, by using
the imagined platform as a space for debate.
3 - Design Process
In this chapter we will discuss the theories and methods used to develop the design
workshop we conducted. This involves the way in which we have designed the
workshop, the role of materiality, the way we integrate the wage app in the project, how
we developed the scenarios as well as the way we developed the characters for the
scenario.
24

3.1 The Design workshop
We adjusted our methods towards a workshop style format, where users sat around a
table to take part in collaborative activities setup. With the workshop, we aimed to
collect empirical qualitative data about their experiences and perceptions on the lack of
dialogue around wages. We use the concept of role playing (Svanæs & Seland, 2004),
which was one of the main methods used during the scenarios, where users play out a
situation in a mock-up environment with low-fidelity models or props. Since one of our
group members was already familiar with role playing, we decided that he should
facilitate the scenarios.
Our workshop was created to facilitate five participants and run for two hours. We
recruited them through our personal networks, with the requirement of being fully active
in the Danish labor market. We acknowledge that our selection of participants
introduces a level of bias into our empirical data. Even if they did not all know each
other, they all had some social bonds to at least one of us. Participants were previously
informed on the topic of the workshop, so they could decide whether or not the topic
was something they felt comfortable interacting with. All of them were in their 20’s and
30’s, distributed in the private and public sectors. The participants we selected were:
Jette is an information architect for the municipality, Nina works as a freelance stage
designer, Peter is a junior management consultant, Simon is a physiotherapist, and
Kasper is Chairman of a students Union.
We choose to host the workshop at Aalborg University Copenhagen campus in a room
we had reserved. The room was empty and mostly quiet since the workshop was being
held at 5pm. The agenda for the workshop started with a short introduction to the
project. We then started a discussion with the participants, asking them whether or not
they had heard about the Del Din Løn campaign. This was done to assess their
knowledge on the topic and also served as an ice breaker, to develop rapport because
of the sensitivity of the topic. We then presented the wage report from the Institute of
25

Human Rights. With these presentations, we wanted to give them factual knowledge to
be discussed later on. Next, we had a brainstorming round which consisted of questions
regarding wage negotiations (how they approach it, how they communicate their
negotiation results, and if it should be made publicly available); and dialogue around
wages (if they talk about it with their relatives, if they had ever shared their own wage on
social media and/or seen someone doing it). These questions were drawn blindly by the
participants out of a big selection. Before letting the participants interact with the
Analyse & Tal wage app, we played a game called “the number behind faces”, where
they had to guess the wages simply from looking at portraits of people, with a mention
of their jobs, sectors and seniority. We chose these features because they reflected the
ones in the wage app, and the data from the game was drawn from the app. The game
created an atmosphere of surprise and questioning, which was a fertile ground when we
suggested them to interact with the wage app. They used our own computers and gave
us their feedback on post-it notes as to what they thought of the app. No information
was given to the participants before they were invited to interact with the app, as to not
influence their first impressions. We then started to play the scenario, in which users
received characters which were based on ideal types. Finally, we ended with a short
feedback discussion where the participants could give us overall thoughts on the
workshop and discuss potential design proposals.
3.2 The role of materiality
As explained previously, pragmatism supports the identification and articulation of
problematic aspects of a situation. The materiality is directly entwined in our design
practice in this project, because it helps us to understand how the design process of the
workshop unfolds through an interplay between participants, artefacts, surrounding
environment and social constructs. Therefore, this “framework [also] addresses how the
use of materials leads participants to discover new problems.” (Hansen & Dalsgaard,
2012:666). We deem it important to reflect on how the role and use of materiality was
implemented in our design workshop, and how it could reveal new insights for our
26

design proposal. We wanted to apply the collaborative potential inherent to materiality,
because as described by Hansen and Dalsgaard: “The material design artefacts are
used to help facilitate cooperation between users and designers, to frame the event in a
specific way, to provoke insights” (ibid:666).
It was central to the design workshop to apply existing and imagined technologies,
because they affect the debate around wage. We created a set of resources and
materials, which included: four wooden game boards representing different laser
engraved environments (a café, a kitchen, an office and a representation of Nørreport
with an art installation) ; four character figures laser cut from wood; four character cards
with pictures and characteristics, a laser cut phone and a laptop. Other resources made
available were the laptops set up for the participants to interact with the wage app. All
these technologies simultaneously help achieve what Hansen and Dalsgaard propose
above, as well as frame the experiences of the participants and serve a means for them
to affect and transform the situation.
3.3 The wage app
We were introduced to the app for the first time in our meeting with Håvard Lundberg,
partner at Analyse & Tal. This app is a minimalistic website where the user can search
for the salary of a profession based on their seniority and public or private sector. The
data for this app is from Statistics Denmark, who sampled users from various
professions and age groups nationwide. The app only accepts certain inputs for
professions, while the user types the app will attempt to predict or suggest a profession.
This is done because the database that is used for this app is limited in professions and
will only accept certain key phrases for professions.
27

Once a search is made, it displays the monthly average wage (before taxes and
excluding pension) in large text at the center of the screen. By scrolling down, it allows
the user to also see a bar graph of how seniority affect the wage, and other
comparisons based on gender, private vs. public, and relatively with the rest of
population. Although after the bar graph, there is no visual queue in the design to
suggest you can view further information by scrolling down.
In the initial meeting, Håvard expressed that the app should be more controversial and
start the discussion regarding wages than what the current design allows for.
We chose to include the app in the workshop because we felt that a technological
product aimed at gaining knowledge about wages, and spreading awareness about the
lack of transparency. It was important in influencing our design process, because
wanted the participants to point out the design problems with the app and give us their
feedback. The entwined role of materiality in this interactive situation between the
participant and the app unfolded through the material artefacts. The participants were
provided with a laptop each, four pieces of A4 paper to share, titled: “What Did You
Learn?”, “Layout Navigation”, “What Did You Input?” And “Suggestions for features” as
well as post-its to write findings from the output of the app and attach to the A4 papers.
28

We provided the participants with these material artifacts to make them able to voice a
take note of their findings, and so that we got a visual representation of their input. That
explains the way in which the interaction with the app was situated and entwined with
participants, but furthermore the materiality of the app is entangled in an abstract way,
because it also functions as a tool which can raise public awareness on the topic of
wage inequality and spark a debate about it. Such conversations unfolded throughout
the workshop. To put it in another way, the app is an actor implicated in a public debate.
Similarly the entire design process must also be considered as a part of
material-semiotic perspective in practice.
3.4 Scenarios
Our workshop featured a session of scenarios of around 45 minutes. We had designed
four different scenarios to gain insights on social interactions around wage transparency
(or the lack of it). The participants were meant to engage with each other, via their
characters in different contexts and events taking place. We set up each scenario to
represent a different situation regarding the lack of dialogue around wage and how
technology could come into play to help the characters close the scenario. The
scenarios were the following:
The first puts a shy handyman called Bjarne who did not feel comfortable talking about
his wage, against a goal driven office manager called Tom, who was eager to talk about
wages. The goal of this scenario was to have the participants play out this social
confrontation out with the idea that an app could assist the shy handyman. The second
scenario puts a hesitant teacher called Barbara and a nurse, open to share about
wages, called Lili. The goal in this scenario is for Lili to convince Barbara to participate
in the Del Din Løn campaign. The third scenario has all of the characters together in
Nørreport viewing a public art installation that allows people to photograph themselves,
enter their wage and show it on a screen. The goal of this scenario is to see how each
29

character would react to this situation given their ideal type. The fourth scenario again
has all the characters interacting together and discussing how each of them would
handle wage negotiations during a medarbejder udviklingssamtale situation

(employee
performance review, referred to as MUS). However, one of the participants brought to
our attention that a MUS does not necessarily mean there would be a wage negotiation.
We modified the scenario on the spot to focus instead on how the characters could help
one another prepare for a potential wage negotiation.
In the first scenario, we split the participants into two groups, one group acting as if they
were the handyman, and the other one acting as if they were the office manager. We
allowed participants to brainstorm with one another in their teams about what each
character would do or say, before answering back to the other team. We invited the
participants to switch characters and roles every scenario, so none of the participants
would play the same ideal type too much. We planned the order by which the
participants would play out the scenarios, and while our format was open enough to
allow the participants to express their inputs, they still followed the path we had set for
them. We did this in order to better guide the participants during the activity. We were
concerned that giving the participant too much freedom would be confusing and
perhaps they would not be very forthcoming with their input.
Role playing is at the center of the scenario part of the workshop, and is one of the
methods we used to elicit knowledge from our participants during these activities. Dag
Svanæs and Gry Seland used role playing to have their participants act out scenarios
from their own lives and draw from personal experience. This creates an environment
where participants take on roles using basic social skills. These scenarios are a type of
simulated drama which can be seen as a metaphor for the everyday social life from the
participant's perspective (Goffman, Erving, 1959). In role playing the participant
successfully achieves a willingness to suspend their disbelief. Meaning that, despite the
scenario and the objects clearly being inauthentic, in the sense that they are not real,
they are able to overlook this and interact as if they are truly there (Laurel, Brenda
30

1993). By doing so, we are able to create an imagined world within the real world
(Svanæs & Seland, 2004:485). While our scenarios are certainly in a game like format,
they were part of the broader frame of the workshop. The goal of the scenarios was not
to beat a certain level but it was to solve a problem collaboratively. However, having the
participants role play as the characters, was a method used to allow them to suspend
their disbelief. We hope that by doing this, the participants would bring in experiences
and judgments from their personal lives that would influence what the characters in the
scenarios say or do.
We developed our workshop around feedback from other experiences role playing in
workshops. Svanæs and Seland (ibid) talk about the importance of having materials
present during the workshop for users to interact with. This helps participants to create
an imagined functionality of the product in the case. However, their participants had
troubles with the integration of fantasy objects in their scenario. They felt that users
found it difficult to find ways to use such objects. Based on these findings, we wanted to
make sure our scenarios were not too 'fantasy' or far-out for our participants. Svanæs &
Seland also discuss their experience with health workers interacting with new
technology. First, they interacted with the new technology and were allowed to explore
it. Then, they could use it once again during the scenarios that were conducted
afterwords. They were able to use the new technology in various ways through out the
scenarios to solve the problem that came up (Svanæs & Seland, ibid).
Hansen and Dalsgaard hosted workshops where participants interacted with blueprints
of building designs, via scenarios using cardboard cutouts of characters. The cardboard
characters were created during the workshop by the participants. Because the
participants were the ones that created the characters, this allowed the scenarios to be
more controlled by them. We took inspiration from Hansen and Dalsgaard’s approach
and used characters which the participants played with during the scenarios. However,
in our workshop there were several key differences. While allowing the participants to
31

create their own characters helps them to bond and relate with the characters, we
deemed it was unnecessary in our case since we wanted them to focus on the social
interactions. Therefore, we carefully pre-designed the characters that the participants
would be using and did not allow them to create their own. We based the characters on
the concept of ideal types which enabled us to grasp a tendency of the labour market in
order to present pertinent characters with what the majority of people can relate to.
3.5 Ideal types as a tendency of reality
As mentioned above, we based the characters that we developed for the scenarios on
Max Weber’s conception of the ideal type, in order to give the characters distinct
personality traits. The ideal type is a conceptual abstraction helping social scientists to
interpret reality. A researcher requires a mental frame of reference to structure her
research process. This is a strategy used to describe, compare and test hypothesis
relating to empirical knowledge. It is not to be regarded as true pictures but as tentative
models. It is a theoretical form of social action, which ascertains the similarities and
deviations in the actual course of social conduct (Sociology Guide, 2018 [Online]). The
ideal types help in conducting comparative analysis and in establishing causal relations.
Here are Weber’s theoretical concepts of four ideal types upon social actions that can fit
with social activities in the scenarios of the workshop, goal-rational (Zweckrational),
value-rational (Wertrational), affective

and traditional

(Weber, 1968:25). These
represent any kind of human behaviour at which an agent assign a subjective sense
that can be understood as one of the four ideal types of action, or as a combination of
them (Delas, Jean-Pierre & Milly, Bruno, 2015:147).
-Goal-rational:

the actor perceives a specific goal and combines logical means to
succeed.
-Value-rational:

the actor acts in compliance with a duty or a requirement that it
forces itself to achieve.
32

-Affective:

this action is dictated by the mood, passions or feelings, it is irrational
and emotional.
-Traditional:

it is influenced by customs so rooted in tradition that it becomes
second nature.
3.6 Why ideal types?
During the process of game design, we questioned which theory would be the most
relevant to build up our characters, and we had the concept of persona in mind, since it
is a methodology commonly used in participatory design. In order to use the concept of
persona properly, it is required to have a proper set of data, usually from a quantitative
method, about the target users so as to know who they are, how they relate to wage
transparency and how many they are. So the point of having this set of data is to build
hypothesis about different users in order to find patterns that could be seen as particular
groups with different roles and ideologies. From there on, it is possible to design
personas with the help of data categorisation which implies “body (name, age, picture),
psyche (extrovert, introvert), background (occupation)” (Nielsen, Lena, 2007), even
emotions, attitudes and personal traits. In other words, the concept of persona is meant
to play the role of participants by being a theoretical user built on statistics. The
concepts of ideal type and persona are close to each other. On paper, these two terms
are both supposed to be used to reflect a tendency of reality, but for quite different
purposes. While ideal types can be used to structure tendency of human behaviours,
the concept of persona wants to design fictive users out of quantitative data in order to
create participants to help to develop a technology or a design. Thereby, we draw a
clear distinction between these two concepts. Drawing on this conclusion, we decided to
use Weber’s concept to design characters for the game we used with our participants in
order to make them interact with one another.
33

3.7 Building our game characters
As explained above, the concept of ideal type is meant to depict a tendency of reality,
which means that these conceptualizations can not be found in their pure form. Given
that using ideal types helps illustrate social activity, we draw inspiration from the
theoretical constructs of ideal types of social actions mentioned above in order to create
characters for our scenarios. Thus we made up four different characters based on
statistics from Analyse & Tal’s app (Analyse & Tal 2017 [Online]), World Economic
Forum, 2016 (Online) and the wage report. The app is related to the wage assessment
of a specific profession linked with the seniority. The result given is an average from
each person that replied to the survey and this is without taking into account the gender
factor.
We created descriptive character cards which included a picture, name, gender,
profession, age, seniority, wage (based on data from the wage app), and characteristics
compiled from the wage report and the ideal types of social actions (see appendix). We
used arbitrary seniority that could match with genuine cases. We chose the professions
based on what we believed the participants could easily relate to in the workshop, as
well as central professions in previously mentioned situations, such as the teachers in
OK18, and nurses in the Del Din Løn campaign. Then, through a large spectrum of
seniority (2, 8, 12 and 25 years) we assigned relevant ages to each character.
Furthermore, we sorted out the empirical material from the wage report. The answers
from the report are related to certain kinds of behaviour, therefore to specific ideal types
of social action. For instance, for a positive answer to ‘being involved in worker rights
negotiation’, we assigned the ideal type value-rational

. Finally, we chose to use two
women, Barbara and Lili, and two men, Bjarne and Tom.
34

4 - Analysis and design proposals
In this chapter, we will start by drawing on findings from the workshop, we will examine
two sets of interactions between the participants of the workshop, due to them
illustrating agonistic democracy at work, and explain the relevance of these situations
regarding the wage transparency issue. We will then describe two design proposals
informed by adversarial design, since they are rooted in contentious interactions and
exchange of viewpoints facilitated by the workshop. We argue that such interactions
give people new perspectives on issues and the ability to explore and debate values
which according to DiSalvo and Mouffe contribute to a healthy democratic condition.
4.1 Exploring the workshop with adversarial design
During the workshop, we encountered several instances where moments of debate and
contention between the participants yielded very fruitful insights and took the
conversation to a higher level. These instances happened as part of the activities the
participants were performing, like answering questions which led to further discussion or
partaking in role play. We propose that these moments of debate could be seen as an
effect, where our design workshop made the participants challenge and question each
others position. We wish to explore how the contentious moments of the workshop
could potentially function as inspiration for adversarial design. These proposals should
be aimed at constructing arenas where the states of continuous contestation, ongoing
questioning and the reframing of status quo that typify adversarial design are present.
These features of adversarial design do the work of agonism, in the sense that they
“prompt recognition of political issues and relations, express dissensus, and enable
contestational claims and arguments” (DiSalvo, 2012:12). The instances presented
below can be inscribed into a technological design, giving potential users the ability to
explore the issue of transparency in an innovative way, so that they can recognize the
issue and identify with it. Such an approach differs from the attempts previously
35

described (the wage report and the Del Din Løn campaign) because it doesn’t aim to
generate solidarity and unison under a common cause. Rather, the primary motive of
our approach becomes facilitating the process of translation and opening black boxes in
order to address the lack of wage transparency. In addition, we explore how this
process can aid the emergence of issue publics, all with a vantage point in the users’
own situation.
The first example of a contentious moment between two workshop participants was
during the brainstorming round. The participants were discussing the following
questions: “Have you ever seen someone sharing their wage on social media? Have
you ever shared your own wage on social media?” This question sparked the following
exchange:
Simon: “I would feel very insecure about sharing my wage because I'm in the private
sector. I mean if I were a nurse I would think it would be the normal thing to do. But I
work as a management consultant and I really don't think the campaign was aimed at my
species.
Peter: But you could do it for the course to enlighten?
Simon: Yes that is true, but given that I am earning more than a nurse, I would be
putting myself in a position of a bad guy and I didn't want to do that.”
Peter: “That is just the system...”
Simon: “Yes yes I see, and I guess I agree with you in the sense that.... On an ethical
level, but on a personal level I just neglected to do that.“
Kasper:In an ideal world it should be ethically right to do it on social media, but you
would just look like a total douchebag. People would say, why are you doing that?
(workshop transcription)
This interaction illustrates that Simon distances himself from the issue given his position
in the private sector, and believes that to post his wage on social media is a form of
showing off. His initial point of view is that, form his own perspective, the Del Din Løn
campaign is not relevant for him. He believes that sharing his wage in unison with the
36

nurses would make him seem “like a douchebag” because his wage, in the private
sector, is much higher. Then, follows a moment of contestation between the
participants, where Peter confronts Simon to see his engagement as a way to shed light
on the issue from a less self centered perspective. What seems to be uncovered is his
change of perception. Peter alerts him of the enlightening potential of such an act,
which apparently creates some form of contemplation in Simon, as he considers the
ethical implications of the situation. His reaction to Peter’s argument could also be
interpreted as a shift in how he understands the issue as a whole. Later on, an alliance
gets formed when Nina chimes in and states her support to Peter’s point further
strengthening his argument (workshop transcription).
Another situation of debate took place later in the workshop. This situation happened as
the participants were role playing the scenarios, specifically the first one with the
construction worker (Bjarne), and the office manager (Tom). While interacting with each
other, the participants are discussing Bjarne’s background and how it can influence his
decision making in the scenario. This prompts the participants to discuss how the
existing wage app could include more background variables when searching for
professions. Here is the initial exchange:
Simon: “You could split the data (…) through a lot of background variables so that you
could actually compare Bjarne to his type, statistically speaking, so that you could
segregate on people working on Zealand versus Jutland for example.”
Jette: “And sectors maybe…”
Simon: “Yeah and number of children, sectors, the list grows if you just sit down and
think of it.” (workshop transcription)
The frame of the discussion has now shifted from role playing the scenario, into a more
general, solution-oriented direction. Next, Peter asks Simon and Jette why the number
of children is important. The interaction then devolves into a discussion about whether
37

or not children should be visible in the statistics of the app. Simon believes it should, but
Peter questions it:
Peter: But wouldn't you want to... Fight that? Bjarne has four children let's say. So
instead of comparing to other workers in similar position having four children, you should
compare with everyone even those that have no children, in order to negotiate
(workshop transcription).
Simon then argues that having more children often means working less in practice: “the
effect is different because if you have more children you would probably work less and
that would be the reason why you get less pay, not the children themselves (workshop
transcription), Peter questions this statement and asks how that would work in practice.
Here Jette joins the conversation, supporting Simon’s viewpoint. She argues that in her
job, she is one of few who does not have children and therefore often ends up working
late: “It's usually me who gets stuck with handing in the final deliveries because I'm not
in a rush the same way they are” (workshop transcription). Simon and Jette end up
agreeing on that having children is a choice that could potentially affect income, while
Peter seems to end up relinquishing his arguments.
These two sets of interactions can be regarded as inscribed in the pragmatist notion of
a situation. This is the context entailing the active participants who share their views, the
other silent participants, the surrounding environment of the workshop, the props and
other material artifacts, and the social constructs of how they relate to publicly sharing
their wage on social media. This example was insightful, because it illustrates how
different understandings of an issue can cause moments of contestation. This can in
turn, lead to a shift in perspective, which is the effect the aim to replicate in our design
proposal. We wonder: how would people use the technological artifact to situate
themselves in the agonistic space of wage transparency?
38

Furthermore, we believe that these two sets of interactions show that some important
political differences between the participants can be unveiled through small
disagreements in the debate. We were able to foster these interactions by asking
questions on the controversial topic of wage transparency, and by taking the
participants of the workshop through situations dealing with the topic through other
characters as proxies in role play scenarios.
4.2 Description of the app - Creating arenas for debate
Based on the two examples above, we propose the following. The idea is to
encapsulate what takes place in these interactions and inscribe that effect into a digital
app.
The app should introduce the user to the issue in a short and engaging manner when
the user first interacts with it. We argue, based on our workshop as described in chapter
three, that such an introduction primes the user to engage in the topic, by prompting
questions and reflections. This could be achieved by replicating the scenarios of the
workshop as animated videos that play once the user engages with the app for the first
time. The user could for example be prompted to consider a certain social situation
where the transparency issue was involved and be drawn into a debate situation with
other users from there. In line with adversarial design, the app should facilitate debate
and ongoing questioning that challenges and inquires into the current political condition
(DiSalvo, 2012:116).
We propose a function for users to create qualitative statements and arguments in a
shared agonistic space, potentially facilitated through a comment ranking system. Such
a system would allow users to vote up or vote down each others posts. Users partaking
in the debate, would come from different backgrounds with different perspectives
potentially engaging in contentious moments that would unveil the same kinds of
differences as those presented in the examples above. For example, a user realizing
39

through debate, that sharing one’s wage is in fact not necessarily considered a boastful
gesture by someone in a lower tax bracket (as Simon realized in the workshop). This
could change that user’s perspective to a high degree and influence the way she further
participates in the debate, perhaps even persuading that user to take active part in
addressing the issue by being more open about wages or spread the new found
perspective elsewhere, on the app or in practice. Informed by DiSalvo, the intent of this
design proposal
4.3 The process of translation and the opening of black boxes
Interactions between users in a shared agonistic space could unfold as processes of
translation. Such processes could enable users to recognize wage transparency as an
issue, by unpacking it through debate. The intent of our design is to let the users
negotiate problematization based on their own situations. This proposal is therefore put
forth with the intent and knowledge that the object would be subject to diverse readings
by people with different backgrounds and varying understandings of the issue. Because
of the multitude of different users with different situations, many processes of
translations can be conceived. We will now conceptualize a process of translation and,
happening as a result of future users debating in the designed space.
4.4 A hypothetical example of translation
We have elaborated these comments, drawing inspiration from testimonies of the wage
report issued by the Institute of Human Rights. We have imagined an interaction
between user A and user B, stating their different points of view on disadvantages of
transparency:
User A:Knowing exactly what my colleagues make would just make me mad. I have to
train young people who come in to my office all the time, and I think they earn more
than me even though I’m their senior, and have the experience to train them. Knowing
40

exactly what they make would just make me even more mad, because I would not think
it was fair.

(Warming, 2017:56-81)
Several users rank this argument highly and post their own comments of agreement.
User B arrives to the debate and raises the following counter argument:
User B: You have to realize that if you are suddenly able to see exactly what people
make, you would have a much better case for expressing your feelings of unfairness to
your colleagues or your boss, and perhaps changing the situation. Maybe if you start by
talking about your own wage, that would a step in the right direction? (Warming,
2017:56-81)
In this hypothetical situation, this counter argument is rated highly as well, as many
users join in and try to highlight this as a reason why wage transparency is important.
They start debating how wage transparency could improve their positions, chances of
negotiating fair wages and develop further arguments for the debate. As this happens,
the issue becomes problematized and alliances start to form. A presumption is put forth
which is then subject to confirmation, questioning or transformation. A general feature of
ANT is that, it does not differentiate between human and non-human actants, which is
also relevant here. The users participating in the debate represent actants in the
network, but they also bring in other non-human actants because of their situations -
such as their age, professions, gender, edification, social status, relationship with
colleagues etc. They all contain actions and interests in the issue in certain ways.
After the initial presumption the users start locking their allies in place by the process of
interessement, in which one actant starts defining the tendencies of another. Actants
are now trying to strengthen other actants’ ties to the cause, and weaken or cut off their
connection to other actants that might define them differently. In our example, users are
now trying to convince each other to talk about wages in their workplace to create
41

transparency. They argue that although this might be difficult or awkward at first (people
might for example jeopardize their good relations with their colleagues) the advantages
of transparency outweighs that fact. So in ANT terms - the actant that is called
“relationship with colleagues” is being diminished in the network in order to enable the
new connection to “transparency is needed”.
In the process of enrollment, the initial construction of interessement is now transformed
into actual participation. Users are now getting ready to act according to the
presumption put forth in the problematization, which is that transparency should prevail
over personal feelings, because it favors the wage negotiations of everyone. Different
actants will take on different roles in this process. For example, the literacy of one user
will be used in order to spread this idea on social media, the social status of another will
be used to spread the idea to a powerful circle of social relations - and so forth.
Mobilization is the point in which the role of the actants is carried out. The question now
becomes whether or not the masses can be convinced to join the network. Will the
powerful social relations buy the argument? Will the idea spread on social media? If it
does, it can be argued that some of the black boxes on which this lack of dialogue sits
would be opened as part of that process - supporting the realization of wage
transparency. One could speculate that a technological artifact, for example an app,
could contain the ability to allow the formation of publics to take place, because users
with the shared situation, and jointly impacted by the issue, would be able to find one
another and potentially spark publics into being.
42

5 - Discussion
5.1 Acknowledging the limitations of our design
One of the limitations of our design proposal prompts the question: How do we invite the
potential users who do not agree that transparency is inherently good? Not everyone
feels that their wage should be shared for various reasons. From this point of view,
ideally our designed arena for debate would be one where users who are against
transparency can also partake. Because wage transparency is a wicked problem, (a
problem with no clear solution to it) it is important that the platform for debate is also
able to encapsulate this in its inherent design. In other words, if the debate space is
occupied only by proponents of transparency the space risks becoming an echo
chamber where people are mostly agreeing with one another. Thereby, it would not
qualify as an agonistic space anymore. Attracting a large amount of people is not an
easy task, and ideally, we would like the space to contain a wide representation of the
Danish population.
Debating is something that you learn, debating is a social situated skill. We also need to
emphasize that you need a certain level of digital and intellectual literacy in order to
enter the debate. Edification is required in order to understand the different points of
view, and you have to be able to claim your perspectives. People with a low level of
edification towards debate skills and limited academic competences, might have
difficulties in conveying their opinions in an effective manner, in accordance with the
platforms’ socially constructed rules.
43

Our debate design proposal can lead to some consensus biases in the way that a highly
ranked argument can generate a lack of contestation. In other words, one of the
limitations can come from the influence of a highly ranked proposal. Well known
individuals who enter the debate could gain popularity in the space not based on what
they say but based on their persona. A well known person with public recognition could
enter the space and start commenting. Their comments might well have a higher status
and would get ranked higher simply because of their social prestige. Making the users
anonymous or semi-anonymous could avoid this problem. Users can be assigned a
user-id upon joining the site that is randomly generated. This allows users to identify
one another in the debate space while still preserving anonymity. Anonymity is also
important on another level in the debate as it allows people to confide in the space itself.
This is key if people are to openly discuss their thoughts and experiences regarding
wages, highlighting the severity of the issue.
Conclusion
This paper investigates wage transparency in Denmark as a political issue and explores
how adversarial design can be applied as a technological design proposal, in order to
form debate around the issue and potentially open the black box of wage transparency.
By using the Deweyan concept of issue publics, it is attempted to illustrate through
contemporary societal interventions, such as the Del Din Løn Campaign and the wage
report “Hvad tjener du?” developed by the Danish Institute of Human Rights, that the
issue of wage transparency, although it holds equality implications, has not been
recognized and effectively acted upon by the public. This is exemplified through a short
analysis of the recent OK18 agreement negotiations, where it is uncovered how even
public debates in Danish society, do not seem to address the lack of transparency
around wages. The paper argues that the lack of discussion can be understood and
investigated as an actant, which has black boxed a combination of socio-cultural,
44

technological and political factors, and consequently preventing the emergence of the
issue of wage transparency in Denmark.
A design proposal is presented, which exemplifies an app that serves as a platform of
debate based on the theoretical assumption that the dialogue of wage transparency
could be kindled through the users’ agency and debate, facilitated by adversarial
design. This claim is based on empirical findings from a workshop, where participants
consisting of Danish wage earners role played through social scenarios that concerned
social interactions about wage. The workshop highlighted disparity between the
participants, as it showed their differences in perspectives and opinions towards the
issue. These differences turned into fruitful moments of debate. The design proposal
presented in this report is the attempt to manifest our findings in a technological
application.
Further research could be done into exploring how to best facilitate and create such
arenas for debate. The question of how specifically to design for contentious situations
that aim to spark debate about wage transparency is essential, but it is out of the scope
of this report. We propose that the issue of wage transparency is a problematic, political
situation, made up of a diversity of actants with multiple agendas. Adversarial design, as
a way to give form to such a situation, allows the elements of such a situation to be
uncovered, analyzed and potentially incorporated into a new whole, in the form of a
technological artefact. Designing such artefacts can be seen as an inquiry into the
political situation. A design as the one proposed in this paper brings together a wide
array actors, bringing their beliefs about what constitutes a thriving democracy, social
customs and norms with imagined functionalities - what the situation is precisely seems
to be uncertain, and the character of its future is vague. At first glance, it is a difficult
situation to comprehend and even more so, difficult to act on. Adversarial design
provides some structure, as it has the ability to draw out and instantiate the political
issues of which it consists, giving it form through the agency and translation of the
45

users. More research is required in order to understand how such agency can be
provided without favoring the debate in one direction, but if such designs can be
achieved, it could uncover the issue of wage transparency and enable publics to form
around it, potentially addressing the inequality it causes.
46

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