The Algora (Nos Algorithmes)

What can I learn?

A playful card-based kit, from the "Nos Algorithmes" project, for collectively assessing the impacts of a public algorithm. Through a game of discussion cards, players from different profiles — decision-makers, designers, public agents, users — express and confront their points of view to map an algorithm's desired, unexpected and undesired effects.

Core insight

The real impact of a public algorithm is rarely what its designers intended; it only becomes visible when the different people it touches compare what they actually experience. Impact assessment is a collective, not a technical, exercise.

How to use it in daily work

A structured tool for facilitating a conversation about a concrete public algorithm with a mixed group, surfacing harms and side effects that no single perspective would catch.

• Use the cards in a workshop with clients and caseworkers to unpack how a benefits- or job-matching algorithm actually affects the people subject to it.
• Borrow the "desired / unexpected / undesired impact" framing to structure your own thinking when a client is affected by an automated decision.