Design Futures · Speculative UX · Systems Thinking · Ethics

Designing Systems of Control in Unequal Societies

Exploring how design mediates power, surveillance, and compliance through speculative systems analysis

OVERVIEW

This speculative UX case study examines how design systems can reinforce power, surveillance, and inequality within highly structured societies. Using The Hunger Games as a conceptual lens, the project shifts focus from individual narratives to the systems that shape behaviour, perception, and control at scale.

1

THE DESIGN QUESTION

How might design systems reinforce or resist power, control, and inequality in societies where choice is deliberately constrained?

2

CONTEXT & SCENARIO

The world of Panem operates as a fictional but internally consistent system where design is embedded into governance. Spatial segregation, ritualised selection processes, broadcast media, and symbolic architecture are intentionally designed to reinforce authority and discourage collective resistance.


This project treats the scenario as a lens, not a narrative reference, allowing real-world tensions to surface around surveillance, propaganda, behavioural conditioning, and unequal access to safety and resources.

Panem map

3

CULTURAL ANALYSIS (METHOD)

To understand how values and power are embedded into the system, the project used the CULTURA framework to analyse authority, behaviour, symbolism, and social norms.


This helped translate fictional dynamics into real UX concerns such as trust, compliance, and exclusion.

CULTURA framework diagram

4

PERSONAS ( System Roles )

Personas were created to represent different relationships to power, visibility, and control. Rather than personal goals, they highlight how risk and agency vary across groups within the system.

5

SYSTEMS OF CONTROL

Rather than focusing on individual users, this project analyses interconnected systems that collectively maintain authority and suppress resistance.

Several patterns emerged

Centralised Authority

Power reinforced through symbolic dominance and spatial hierarchy

Ritualised Participation

Coercive processes framed as civic duty

Environmental Control

Designed spaces that limit autonomy while appearing neutral

Environmental Control

Designed spaces that limit autonomy while appearing neutral

6

SPECULATIVE SYSTEM ARTEFACTS

Speculative artefacts were introduced to translate abstract systems of control into tangible interactions. These artefacts are not proposed products, but critical design probes used to expose how authority, surveillance, and participation are mediated through design.


They function as tools for questioning—not solutions.

Speculative artefacts used to examine control, visibility, and compliance.

Voice & Surveillance

VoiceBox

Emotional Exposure

Hologram in public space

Immersive Perspective

VR headset sketches

7

ETHICAL TENSIONS & TRADE-OFFS

Rather than presenting technology as a neutral solution, this project surfaces the ethical tensions that emerge when safety, participation, and control are mediated through systems.


By distributing decision-making across interfaces, sensors, and simulations, the system raises critical questions about power, responsibility, and unintended consequences.


These tensions are not framed as problems to be solved, but as design constraints that shape how such systems should be approached.

Key Ethical Tensions

Surveillance vs Safety

Increased monitoring may reduce immediate risk, but persistent surveillance risks normalising observation beyond moments of crisis. What begins as protection can evolve into control.

Efficiency vs Human Agency

Automated alerts and system-driven responses improve coordination, yet may reduce space for human judgement, dissent, or refusal—particularly in high-pressure situations.


Empathy vs Manipulation

Immersive and emotional technologies can foster understanding, but they also raise questions about emotional coercion and whether empathy can be engineered ethically.

Access vs Inequality

Safety technologies may disproportionately benefit those with greater resources or political power, reinforcing existing inequalities rather than reducing them.

8

REFLECTION: DESIGNING FOR CONSEQUENCES, NOT OUTCOMES

This project intentionally avoids proposing a single “ideal” solution.

Instead, it treats UX design as a tool for:


  • Revealing hidden power structures


  • Making ethical trade-offs visible


  • Designing for uncertainty rather than optimisation


By using speculative environments, the work reframes UX from interface design to systems thinking, where responsibility is shared across people, infrastructure, and governance.

9

LEARNINGS & DESIGN TAKEAWAYS

Designing for systems requires prioritising relationships, not features


  • Ethics must be treated as a design material, not a post-deployment concern


  • Fictional extremes can reveal real-world design failures more clearly than realistic scenarios


  • UX can shape behaviour indirectly by structuring visibility, trust, and participation

10

Waleed Sohail Ansari

UX & Visual Designer

Based in the

Open to junior / graduate roles

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3D & Spatial Experiments

Motion & Kinetic Design

UX Case Studies

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