Helpful Technology Should Give People More Agency, Not Less

The simplest test for aligned technology is whether the user leaves with more ability to choose, act, and understand.

The Agency Test

A tool can be useful and still reduce agency. It can make a task faster while making the user less skilled. It can make entertainment easier while making attention less free. It can personalize choices while narrowing what the person ever sees.

The agency test asks a clearer question: after using this product, is the person more capable of choosing well?

What More Agency Looks Like

More agency means the user understands the system, can change its settings, can refuse personalization, can export data, can see why something is recommended, and can leave without losing their identity or livelihood.

It also means the product strengthens the user's own capacities: judgment, learning, memory, creativity, attention, relationship, and practical action.

What Less Agency Looks Like

Less agency often hides behind convenience. The system chooses the feed, ranks the options, sets the defaults, nudges the purchase, writes the answer, stores the memory, and slowly trains the person not to do those things themselves.

At first, that feels like help. Over time, it can become dependence.

Build For Exit And Return

A humane product should be easy to leave and good to return to. It should not punish the user for having a life outside the product.

American Fabric's standard is technology for liberty: tools that help people live more fully in the family, the workplace, the town, and the country, not tools that turn every part of life into a captive interface.

Research note: This article is part of American Fabric's public-facing research library. Inline charts are generated from the local datasets linked below.