Social living labs for digital participation: designing with regional and rural communities

“Fostering digital participation through Living Labs in regional and rural Australian communities,” is a three year research project funded by the Australian Research Council. The project aims to identify the specific digital needs and practices of regional and rural residents in the context of the implementation of high speed internet. It seeks to identify new ways for enabling residents to develop their digital confidence and skills both at home and in the community. This two-day symposium will bring together researchers and practitioners from diverse backgrounds to discuss design practices in social living labs that aim to foster digital inclusion and participation. Day one will consist of practitioner and research reports, while day two will provide an opportunity for participants to imagine and design future digital participation strategies. Academic participants will also have an opportunity to contribute to a refereed edited volume by Chandos Publishing (an imprint of Elsevier)

Speculative design and heterogeneity in indigenous nation building

This paper presents a methodological exploration in postcolonial HCI. We share early insights of designing a digital platform for Indigenous nation building in Australia that speculate ways to catalyse, provoke and support necessary discussions of governance, plurality, cultural integrity and knowledge ownership. Rather than expecting consensus building or striving for problem-resolution, prototyping this digital platform has begun revealing tensions, complexities and possibilities that are significant to nation building. Manifesting and actively debating these became an epistemological pursuit for knowledge generation, but also a necessary ontological one in actively carving out 'agonistic' engagements that challenges hegemony and practice ploy-vocal future-making

Ambiguity for Social Self-tracking Practices: Exploring an emerging design space

Ambiguity is gaining attention in self-tracking research as a means to go beyond the mere quantification of body signals. Recent research has suggested that ambiguity can be used even to enable social connection mediated by personal data. To explore this design space more widely, we organized two design workshops with a total of 67 participants. In this paper, we present three design concepts, as outcomes of the workshops, which use ambiguity to enable social self-tracking practices. We then discuss how these concepts demonstrate the potential of ambiguity to encourage collective sense-making, directly impact the user’s social relationships, and offer multifaceted perspectives on reality

Interaction in motion: designing truly mobile interaction

The use of technology while being mobile now takes place in many areas of people’s lives in a wide range of scenarios, for example users cycle, climb, run and even swim while interacting with devices. Conflict between locomotion and system use can reduce interaction performance and also the ability to safely move. We discuss the risks of such “interaction in motion”, which we argue make it desirable to design with locomotion in mind. To aid such design we present a taxonomy and framework based on two key dimensions: relation of interaction task to locomotion task, and the amount that a locomotion activity inhibits use of input and output interfaces. We accompany this with four strategies for interaction in motion. With this work, we ultimately aim to enhance our understanding of what being “mobile” actually means for interaction, and help practitioners design truly mobile interactions

Handle the way: Enhancing web accessibility for people with disability

The web has become the primary mechanism for information delivery. However, for people with an intellectual disability there can be significant barriers in accessing the web. This research aims to design a novel solution to help people with a disability, especially people who cannot type easily or correctly, to access the web independently. We propose to utilize Near Field Communication tokens to store and materialize website addresses into tangible handles for web access. Most importantly, we use tokens to store frequently used key words and serve as visual aids to enable query through combination of different search tokens. This solution has the potential to improve the quality of life yet is still relatively simple and affordable. Furthermore, together with other advanced technologies such as 3D printing for personalized tokens, it opens up the opportunities for co-design between people with disability and caregivers, customized services and collaborative support for diverse users via online volunteers

Interaction in motion: designing truly mobile interaction

The use of technology while being mobile now takes place in many areas of people’s lives in a wide range of scenarios, for example users cycle, climb, run and even swim while interacting with devices. Conflict between locomotion and system use can reduce interaction performance and also the ability to safely move. We discuss the risks of such “interaction in motion”, which we argue make it desirable to design with locomotion in mind. To aid such design we present a taxonomy and framework based on two key dimensions: relation of interaction task to locomotion task, and the amount that a locomotion activity inhibits use of input and output interfaces. We accompany this with four strategies for interaction in motion. With this work, we ultimately aim to enhance our understanding of what being “mobile” actually means for interaction, and help practitioners design truly mobile interactions

Exploring the Role of Data-supported Social Interaction manifested through Public Displays

This paper presents the early findings of studies in the role of data informing the interaction between the user, public and public display. It focuses on exploring how different strategies amplify and stimulate these datasupported interactions. Building on the work by Tomisch et al (13), we establish a taxonomy for databased features under the category of key elements in urban visualisations: 1) addressed topics, 2) input technologies, and 3) visualisation output. We analyse how these factors facilitate social interactions meaningfully through case studies of previous projects developed and implemented by Media Architecture research community. We suggest that data properties and manifestation play a significant role in 1) sustaining attraction to passers-by 2) enriching public understandings of display, and 3) encouraging diverse participation

OSKARRR:Data-driven Design Speculations For The Future of Domestic Waste

Waste infrastructure is largely non-digital and resists mapping and datafication. Waste itself can be seen as material information, revealing of its creators, which is lost along with the material resources that are thrown away. Design and HCI can unlock this information. Most people’s engagement with waste begins and ends at the domestic dustbin, with minimal consideration of what is wasted and where it goes. When aggregated waste practices have significant sustainability impacts. Digital technologies designed to raise awareness of environmental issues compete for our finite cognitive capacity with the demands of everyday life. To address this challenge, this paper uses speculative design of domestic waste devices. These speculative ‘data objects’ build on work in speculative design, sustainable HCI, and waste infrastructure mapping. The aim of this pictorial is to provoke debate on digital technology’s ability to engage us with consumption and waste, resulting in behavior change and reduced environmental degradation

Sens-Us: Designing Innovative Civic Technology for the Public Good

How can civic technology be designed to encourage more public engagement? What new methods of data collection and sharing can be used to engender a different relationship between citizens and the state? One approach has been to design physical systems that draw people in and which they can trust, leading them to give their views, opinions or other data. So far, they have been largely used to elicit feedback or votes for one or two questions about a given topic. Here, we describe a physical system, called Sens-Us, which was designed to ask a range of questions about personal and sensitive information, within the context of rethinking the UK Census. An in-the-wild study of its deployment in a city cultural center showed how a diversity of people approached, answered and compared the data that had been collected about themselves with others. We discuss the findings in relation to the pros and cons of using this kind of innovative technology when wanting to promote civic engagement or other forms of public engagement