“When the implication is not to design (technology)” (pdf) is a classic 2011 CHI paper from Eric P.S. Baumer and Six Silberman on when not to design. It is continually relevant in human-computer interaction.

The paper asks three questions “that can help researchers, designers, and practitioners articulate a technology’s appropriateness or inappropriateness”:

  • Could the technology be replaced by an equally viable low-tech or non-technological approach to the situation?
  • Does a technological intervention result in more trouble or harm than the situation it’s meant to address?
  • Does a technology solve a computationally tractable transformation of a problem rather than the problem itself?

These questions are highly relevant to a lot of contemporary “AI” work.