Betterbox is a deck of cards designed to help people run workshops to think through ethical, practical, and societal implications of technology. The cards can be used to facilitate discussions and drive innovative thinking in your technology projects.
The Betterbox deck consists of four suits, each containing 13 cards, and one 'Values' Major Arcana containing 22 cards:
- Users: Cards representing various stakeholders in technology projects, from direct users to regulatory bodies.
- Facilitation/Design Exercises: Tools and techniques for workshop facilitation and design thinking.
- Practicalities: Cards addressing real-world considerations that impact technology implementation.
- Non-functional Requirements: Technical considerations beyond basic functionality.
The card sizes and the structure of the deck are based on Tarot decks, and you can have some fun experimenting with Tarot spreads to inspire your thinking about the project! But for now, there's nothing that maps the cards to traditional Tarot card decks on an individual basis, so I wouldn't make any personal life decisions based on your readings.
The cards can be used in various workshop settings to:
- Ground your practice in your Values
- Identify key stakeholders and their needs
- Plan and facilitate design thinking sessions
- Consider practical implementation challenges
- Address technical requirements systematically
- Ensure ethical considerations are integrated into technology development
This repository contains the Jekyll-based website for Betterbox, hosted at https://laurawmcd.github.io/betterbox.
To run this website locally:
- Install Ruby and Bundler
- Clone this repository
- Run
bundle install - Run
bundle exec jekyll serve - Visit
http://localhost:4000/betterbox
Contributions to improve the cards or website are welcome. You can edit the pages for individual cards directly on the Github page itself (see some useful instructions here). Alternatively, please:
- Fork the repository
- Create a feature branch
- Make your changes
- Submit a pull request
Betterbox is offered under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license.
For more information about Betterbox, contact:
- Via website: Contact form
- Bluesky: @techladylaura