AI trust and norms

Find out what the intended users understand about AI: what it can and cannot do, that it can be wrong, and how to use it well for this task. The Digital Futures Lab playbook calls this critical AI literacy: an awareness of AI's strengths and limits, fitted to the user's needs and context. AI literacy rests on general digital skills, so find out those too. Many people in low-resource settings lack basic phone skills that designers take for granted. Some users do not realise they are talking to an AI rather than a person.

Find out who shapes whether the intended users will try an AI tool, and what those people think about it. Social norms are the unwritten rules a group holds about what behaviour is acceptable. They cover what people believe others do and what they believe others approve of. The people who matter can be close family, such as husbands, parents and in-laws, or community figures such as teachers, health workers and religious leaders. Some of them act as gatekeepers: they can open or close a person's access to new information.