I try to remember to share terms/concepts that I find helpful in illuminating and understanding the world. Two that I apparently haven’t shared and need to share are:
- Triangle of satisfaction
- Contributive justice
The triangle of satisfaction is simply a way to explain how we get to satisfaction for something, acknowledging that it includes 3 parts: result (or outcome), emotion, and process. For tech work, we often talk about acceptance criteria (super important to agree on what the outcome is) and this also builds into the process (agile, iterative, how we get to the outcome), which also supports the emotion on how all of this works out. While we absolutely need a successful outcome (to meet acceptance criteria of the definition of done on the deliverable), we also have to do it in the right way (procedural justice), or we seriously lose out. All of this is core to the work I’ve been doing under the frame of compassionate computing.
I learned contributive justice from T-Kay Sangwand’s article (thanks to T-Kay!) which explains that contributive justice “emphasizes that justice is achieved not when benefits are received, but rather when there is both the duty and opportunity for everyone to contribute labor and decision-making.” This definition explains the world I want and the way I want to be in the world, as part of us: we all work together to make a better world possible. I shared this with Brian Keith (who taught me the terms procedural justice and appreciative inquiry, among many others) and it was new to him. Given that we regularly discuss distributive justice, procedural justice, agency, and other core concepts in relation to systems and practices in our work for supporting people, we checked Wikipedia to make sure this was covered. It wasn’t. Now, there is a brief page on contributive justice. Please help to improve this page so that more folks know and think with this important concept!