Author: Lexi

For my final hack, I revisited my third hack, Desmos Diary, where I transformed an online graphing calculator into a medium for encrypted self-expression. The original version repurposed Desmos—traditionally an educational mathematics tool—into a digital diary, with each letter meticulously encoded as individual linear equations. Through this, I aimed to challenge assumptions about writing, visibility, and accessibility within the digital interfaces we regularly use and trust.

In this beta release, I evolved this technical experiment into a narrative exploration, taking the form of a brief story about a student unknowingly ensnared in a digital trap disguised as supportive guidance. The revised hack, presented as a fake PDF homework assignment from a fictional tutoring service called SecretMathPrep, appears innocuous at first glance: simple assignment instructions and rows of equations. However, when graphed in Desmos, these equations reveal a chilling hidden message: “I AM ALWAYS WATCHING YOU.” The initial innocuous instructions take on new meaning, as the assignment previously stated that the tutor “looks forward to watching [students] complete this assignment,” abruptly switching from a benevolent to sinister tone.

This project continues the central tension of the original Desmos Diary—highlighting the gap between a tool’s intended purpose and its potential when used in unexpected ways. However, rather than focusing inward through personal journaling, this iteration emphasizes external threats, specifically how common digital tools can be manipulated to create illusions of safety, authority, and trust.

Encoding as Entrapment

While the original hack centered on personal introspection and voluntary encoding, this version imagines encoding as a weapon used against an individual. Here, the student is not the encoder but the unsuspecting decoder of someone else’s concealed intentions. The decoding process mirrors a standard mathematics assignment, involving solving and graphing equations, common classroom tasks aimed at reinforcing fundamental mathematical concepts. Typically, such assignments are educational, non-threatening, and purely pedagogical. However, when the assignment’s outputs are intentionally crafted to convey hidden textual messages, the activity transcends educational boundaries and enters the realm of social manipulation, illuminating how easily digital interactions can be weaponized under the guise of normalcy and legitimacy.

While the dangers of encoding might seem distant from everyday life—often viewed as complex issues relevant only to large-scale entities such as governments—these risks can also manifest in simpler, more accessible forms. Consequently, misuse becomes equally possible. To highlight this potential for manipulation, the project situates viewers in the relatable role of a student seeking extra assistance with their math coursework.

The idea for this plot did not arise from any personal experience or inspiration, but rather from a realistic issue I could foresee with our current technological interactions. Students are seeking more online support for classwork, as an easily accessible channel. While some students may have access to more personal, paid forms of help, there are many students without the means to afford these services. The internet affords these students more democratic forms of academic support but also creates accessible channels for predators. These effects, in conjunction with the misuse of encoding, inspired my idea for this imbalanced digital relationship.

As the narrative reveals that the tutor is “watching” the student, though the exact nature of this observation remains deliberately ambiguous. Whether interpreted as physical stalking or digital surveillance, the scenario underscores the vulnerability of online users, the threats posed by digital surveillance, and the ease with which common technologies can be misused.

Considering Technological Utopianism and the Illusion of Access

This hack invites consideration of technological utopianism, building upon O’Shea’s critique of those envisioning ‘ideal’ future societies without fully considering how to achieve them. These idealized visions often depend on unrealistic power structures, inherently creating social inequalities, especially in education and literacy. While graphing concepts might seem universally educational, the ability to solve these math problems is often either lost over time or never acquired due to unequal educational access. Tools like Desmos, therefore, exist within systems of expertise and privilege. Most individuals are not trained to interpret equations as language, and even those with the necessary skills must invest substantial time decoding a complete message. Thus, encoding acts as a form of gatekeeping, delivering messages exclusively to those already equipped to understand them.

Speculative Design and Critical Play

Inspired by Dunne and Raby’s speculative design framework, this project functions as a “provocation”—an artifact designed not to solve problems, but to highlight them. It raises critical questions: What happens when support turns harmful? How can interfaces weaponize trust?

The fake assignment sheet, presented as an innocuous PDF, further questions authenticity and authority in educational contexts. Its convincing appearance mirrors typical online educational resources—bland, cheerful, and stripped of context. This realism lends the project its unsettling power. If printed and handed directly to a student, would anyone notice the hidden threat?

To conclude, this Beta Release seeks to challenge the viewer to question not only how digital tools are used but also their realistic vulnerabilties to misuse. Exploring the relationship between education, digital tools, and manipulation, the project underscores the complex potentials of common digital interactions.

LF

Good software is designed with specific purposes in mind, but its constraints and affordances can shape user interactions in unexpected ways. In this project, I repurposed Desmos—a graphing calculator software—as a medium for journaling. Rather than using it for purely mathematical visualization, I encoded diary entries as linear and nonlinear equations to subvert its intended purpose and question the assumptions embedded in its design. Initially, I was concerned that this approach might lack an element of surprise or critical engagement, given that using equations to “draw” is not entirely novel. However, as I worked through the process of journaling, I discovered deeper insights into the nature of digital writing, storage, and accessibility in this unique medium.

The core of this project is the challenge of translating written language into mathematical equations. I initially attempted to replicate my handwriting, incorporating curves and varying slopes, but the difficulty of encoding these features led me to adopt a more digital-clock style, composed primarily of horizontal and vertical lines. This simplification introduced inconsistencies; for instance, my “A” characters differ in structure, which I found to reflect the tension between personalization and the rigid mathematical logic imposed by the software.

Creating each equation was slow and meticulous. Though these types of transformations transformations are not inherently ‘complex’ mathematical concepts, their manual application proved time-consuming, even with the aid of graphing calculators. This experience underscored the necessity of more advanced computational tools like Mathematica, which automate such transformations, in contrast to Desmos’ more constrained functionality. Desmos, while user-friendly and widely accessible, does not support batch processing or dynamic transformations, requiring users to input equations individually. This limitation, while frustrating, highlighted the software’s underlying design philosophy: it prioritizes accessibility and visualization over advanced computational manipulation.

Beyond the act of writing, the challenge of storing these diary entries revealed another layer of intervention. While Desmos allows users to save graphs, it does not provide a mechanism for annotating or contextualizing saved equations. The true artifact of this project is not a single equation nor Desmos “sheet,” but rather the ordered collection of equations, yet there is no clear way to archive this evolving assemblage within Desmos itself. Instead, I resorted to manually documenting the equations in Notion equation blocks. However, the process of transferring equations between platforms proved cumbersome—copying and pasting was not seamless, often requiring manual re-entry. 

Speculative Design: Questioning Function and Accessibility

Dunne and Raby’s speculative design framework suggests that designers can engage in “problem-finding,” using design as a tool for critique and provocation. My intervention aims to raise several key questions about the nature of digital writing, secrecy, and accessibility.

Who Is This Useful For?

One speculative application of this system is encryption. While each equation encodes a meaningful message, looking at them in isolation does not reveal their content. Unlike conventional text, which relies on direct visual recognition, reading these equations demands significant effort—the reader must manually plot each line to reconstruct the message. This characteristic makes the system effective for secrecy but impractical for conventional journaling, where ease of access and retrieval are essential. The paradox of this approach is that while it could function as an obscure method of communication, it undermines the very purpose of a personal diary, which is meant to be revisited and reflected upon over time.

Who Can Read This?

This approach to writing is inherently exclusionary. While graphing is a standard component of U.S. mathematics curricula, it is not a skill most people retain for everyday use. Moreover, even individuals with mathematical literacy are not trained to ‘read’ equations as they do words and sentences. Deciphering a message in this format requires not only knowledge but also a significant investment of time and cognitive effort.

This exclusivity parallels historical examples of technological elitism, such as the Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) at MIT (Levy). Early computing culture was built around small, insular communities where technical knowledge was only accessed by those who could afford it. Moreover, the insulated nature of this helps serve as a gatekeeping mechanism. Similarly, my hacked journaling method creates an implicit intellectual barrier—only those with specific expertise can engage with it. This raises critical questions about who has access to knowledge and whether certain forms of writing privilege specific groups over others.

Cultural Interventions

By using Desmos as a medium for journaling, my project engages with multiple layers of digital media, each with distinct cultural implications. In particular, the exclusivity of this system becomes apparent at the “Form and Function” and “Reception and Operation” levels. Encoding text as equations creates a communication system that is both unique and highly restrictive, requiring specialized knowledge to interpret. Unlike traditional text, which is immediately recognizable and readable, this system demands significant effort from the audience, reinforcing barriers to accessibility and limiting who can engage with the content in a meaningful way.

This project not only serves to repurpose software—it is an exploration of how digital tools shape knowledge production, accessibility, and communication. The constraints of Desmos reveal the underlying assumptions about how software is meant to be used. My intervention aims to challenge these assumptions, questioning the ways in which digital platforms mediate self-expression and who gets to participate in these mediated forms of writing.

Ultimately, this speculative hack raises larger questions: How do digital tools influence what we consider to be legitimate forms of writing? Who gets to access and interpret information? And how might we rethink the possibilities of digital communication beyond the constraints imposed by existing software? By hacking Desmos into a medium for journaling, I invite viewers to critically consider the technologies they regularly encounter and imagine alternative interpretations of our ways of writing.

LF

“Battleship” has long framed the gravity of military conflict into an accessible game of strategy and luck. Within this transformation lies a problematic glossing over of war’s human cost. My modification of a vintage Battleship game does not completely reimagine this classic game but amplifies and reveals meanings that existed but remained overlooked. The simple addition of physical representations of civilian casualties to one player’s board creates a space for moral questioning about how we engage with war through play.

After an unsuccessful digital prototype, I chose a vintage Battleship set for its timeless aesthetic—a quality that parallels the enduring impact of war. The central modification involves placing three small baby figures on one player’s board alongside their ships. This asymmetrical design, in which only one player hosts these civilian figures, deliberately mirrors the way real-world civilian tolls often remain abstract to those not directly affected, while also highlighting inherent imbalances.

The modification itself introduces subtle but significant structural changes. On the opponent’s board (the player without the baby figures), a discreet warning states “1 hit for a casualty” beneath the standard menu of hits required to sink ships. Each baby figure occupies four spaces but needs only one hit to “sink”—a stark commentary on how mass civilian deaths are commonly reduced to a single, devalued statistic. I made minimal alterations to the instructions, merely noting “3 special” surprises for one opponent, thereby preserving the game’s functionality while introducing moral weight.

In designing this hack, I considered Rittel and Webber’s characteristics of “wicked problems,” as discussed in Sicart’s analysis of ethical gameplay (Sicart 95). More specifically I focused on how wicked problems resist simple solutions; any attempt at resolution can create new complications. By modifying Battleship, I aimed to engage with these complexities in several ways.

First, I address how the civilian cost of war cannot be easily resolved or morally quantified. Placing the baby figures on only one player’s board generates an informational asymmetry that parallels real-world conflicts: one side remains unaware of the magnitude of their actions until after inflicting damage. This design choice reflects the incomplete or contradictory knowledge often central to wicked problems, echoing the lingering ethical questions about war throughout human history.

Second, the adaptation illuminates how attempted solutions to wicked problems spawn fresh ethical dilemmas. I drew further inspiration from the “Men Against Fire” episode of Black Mirror, where soldiers are visually manipulated to perceive specific civilians as monsters, thus enabling violence without remorse, and asserting and dangerous message about the true threat of genocide. Although this technology is ethically fraught, it is not impossible that it could be justified under a purported “greater good,” demonstrating that solutions to wicked problems can never be purely good or bad but often create their own complications.

My game modification aimed to align with Flanagan’s discussion how of critical play creates space for “careful examination of social, cultural, political, or even personal themes” (Flanagan 6). However, rather than disrupting the play space completely, it operates through what I call an intervention of amplification – stepping in to heighten awareness of meanings already present in the game’s structure. Thus, the subversive elements in this project operate on multiple levels. Rather than fully reskinning or rewriting the game’s narrative, my intervention intensifies existing nuances. While adding baby figures highlights the tragedy of civilian deaths in a straightforward manner, this modification also draws attention to how the game already abstracts the thousands of lives represented by the ships themselves. This dual critique underlines both the loss of innocent lives and our acceptance of military casualties as mere game pieces.

This design engages Sicart’s concept of ethical gameplay provides crucial theoretical grounding for the project by establishing a complex interplay between the procedural mechanics and representational elements of play. By introducing deliberate tension between these layers, the modification creates a meaningful cognitive dissonance for players. The hidden warning about civilian casualties and the intentionally asymmetric distribution of knowledge between players serves to disrupt the traditional flow of gameplay satisfaction. This disruption manifests as a form of cognitive friction – where players must simultaneously navigate their desire to succeed at the game while processing the moral implications of their actions. The uneven information landscape forces players to confront uncomfortable realizations about civilian casualties only after damage has been inflicted, mirroring real-world scenarios where the human cost of military action often becomes apparent too late. This careful design choice compels players to engage in deeper moral contemplation about warfare and its consequences, pushing beyond the surface-level abstraction present in the original game to consider the profound human impact in a way that the standard version deliberately avoids or minimizes. Moreover, this consideration evolves as the player reflects on the nature of the original game, extending the possible remorse of guilt they felt for the baby casualties to the theoretical lives carried on each ship.

Moreover, as a game that has been played through many generations, I also hoped that a sense of nostalgia for the players would help invoke reflective or meditative thought about the game. The vintage set I chose deliberately taps into this familiarity, allowing players to first approach the game with comfortable recognition before encountering the modification’s moral implications. This nostalgic connection creates an additional layer of cognitive friction – players must reconcile their childhood memories of Battleship as innocent entertainment with a new awareness of how the game has always abstracted the human cost of warfare. By building on players’ existing emotional connection to the game, the modification gains power from the contrast between remembered playful engagement and newfound ethical consideration. The familiar grid, plastic pieces, and classic “hit or miss” mechanics take on new meaning when players discover the presence of civilian casualties, transforming nostalgic comfort into critical reflection.

Overall, my goal in this Hack was not transform the game’s meaning completely, but to create space for moral consideration within its existing framework. Adding physical representations of civilian casualties while maintaining the game’s core mechanics highlights how war games simultaneously engage with and abstract away from the human cost of conflict. I hope project demonstrates how subtle interventions can reveal layers of meaning in familiar play spaces, encouraging critical reflection on how we engage with serious themes through play.

LF