Online, everyone is a user. From cloud-based software and templates to the built-in editing tools of social media, user-friendly interfaces enable their customers to give form to ideas with little to no technical expertise via semi-automated processes. Plug-and-play platforms make for plug-and-play politics. The seemingly smooth experiences – and the resulting feelings of agency and expertise – are made possible by blackboxed computational operations.

Silvio Lorusso and dubravka sekulić will discuss how user-experience design turns platform participation into content production in a conversation ranging from graphic design to architecture, urban planning to net art. When politics becomes content, what roles does it really play?