Protocol worksheet

A fillable version of the sociotechnical protocol, same thirteen questions, nothing added. Nothing you type here is saved or sent anywhere; the answers live in this browser tab and disappear when you close it, so copy the result when you are done and paste it into your notes, a Problem Inventory entry, or a draft.

Your name

The technology

Harm or success case

Side A, interrogating any technology

1. Who designed this, and who was in the room when the problem was defined?

2. Whose problem does it solve, and whose problem does it claim to solve?

These are often different, and the gap is where trouble lives.

3. Whose data and whose labor make it run?

4. What does it assume about its users, and who breaks those assumptions?

A benefits portal that assumes a smartphone, a fixed address, and fluent English has already chosen its users.

5. Who bears the risk when it fails, and who carries the burden of appeal?

In MiDAS, the state made the error and the claimant did the paperwork.

6. What social arrangement does it create or reinforce, and how hard would that be to undo?

7. What did it replace, and what was lost in the replacement?

Side B, conditions of success

Run Side B on everything, including the failures; a failure's Side B tells you what was missing.

1. What made this work: the tool, the institution, or the people it amplified?

2. Whose participation shaped the design, and at what stage?

Advising at the end is not the same as deciding at the start.

3. Which guardrails were built in before deployment, and which were added after failure?

4. Would this replicate without its champions, its funding model, or its political moment?

5. Who verified the claims of success, and what would falsify them?

Vendor metrics are marketing until someone independent checks.

6. Who maintains this in year five?

Copy the result

The button assembles your non-empty answers into plain text and puts them on the clipboard. If the browser blocks clipboard access, the text appears in a box below instead, ready to select and copy by hand.