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This could include their ATMs, customer service, transfer between
institutions, and more. Often a designer (or critic) will only be con-
cerned with a subset of a network system, but it’s always good to pay
attention to how that piece interacts with the whole and how the system
responds to those inputs.
Agency
What is the component’s capacity to act on the other parts of the net-
work or the system as a whole? Can a person interfacing with the prod-
uct influence the rules of the system? Or, are his potential actions con-
strained by other aspects of the system? How much freedom does each
network component have within the system?
The agency of each actor within the system depends on its role. From
a human perspective, agency can describe how much power a user
can exert on other parts of the network, versus being limited to spe-
cific actions in specific contexts. Different actors will have different
amounts of agency at different times.
Opacity
How clear is the network from the perspective of a participant or
observer? Are the connections easily visible or are they hidden? The
opacity of a network can influence how much agency each actor has
and help to create the desired texture.
In our traffic-light example, we see a very opaque system, one where
the means of interacting are often completely hidden. It would be easy
to interact with the system and still not even know that it exists. In this
example, the opacity has a direct impact on a person’s agency, but if the
system behaves properly, the texture might still be smooth. Roughness
will become apparent if the system misbehaves and nobody can see
what is happening.
Reflexivity
How do you know what is happening in the network? How does it
inform the different actors, both human and nonhuman, what state it
is in and if there are any problems? Feedback and communication is a
vital piece of any system.
Reflexivity is the way in which the particular system provides feed-
back based on states, actions, and behaviors. This is an indication that
the rules of the system are enforced. By providing feedback when a
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