Double Binds and Double Blinds: Evaluation Tactics in Critically Oriented HCI

Critically oriented researchers within Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) have fruitfully intersected design and critical analysis to engage users and designers in reflection on underlying values, assumptions and dominant practices in technology. To successfully integrate this work within the HCI community, critically oriented researchers have tactically engaged with dominant practices within HCI in the design and evaluation of their work. This paper draws attention to the ways that tactical engagement with aspects of HCI evaluation methodology shapes and bears consequences for critically oriented research. We reflect on three of our own experiences evaluating critically oriented designs and trace challenges that we faced to the ways that sensibilities about generalizable knowledge are manifested in HCI evaluation methodology. Drawing from our own experiences, as well as other influential critically oriented design projects in HCI, we articulate some of the trade-offs involved in consciously adopting or not adopting certain normative aspects of HCI evaluation. We argue that some forms of this engagement can hamstring researchers from pursuing their intended research goals and have consequences beyond specific research projects to affect the normative discourse in the field as a whole

Ghosts in the Smart Home

We are in the midst of a ‘post-anthropocentric’ turn in design, research and technology. The term refers to a renewed interest in a wide range of concepts, theoretical perspectives, and methodologies. Ghosts in the Smart Home is a post-anthropocentric experiment which manifests as a film whose cast of characters are all internet connected ‘smart’ devices. The motivation is to prototype and establish new ways to see, to be, and to know, which respond to the 21st century’s complex socio-technical system

When the implication is not to design (technology)

As HCI is applied in increasingly diverse contexts, it is im-portant to consider situations in which computational or in-formation technologies may be less appropriate. This pa-per presents a series of questions that can help researchers, designers, and practitioners articulate a technology’s appro-priateness or inappropriateness. Use of these questions is demonstrated via examples from the literature. The paper concludes with specific arguments for improving the conduct of HCI. This paper provides a means for understanding and articulating the limits of HCI technologies, an important but heretofore under-explored contribution to the field

“America Is Like Metamucil”: Fostering Critical and Creative Thinking about Metaphor in Political Blogs

Blogs are becoming an increasingly important medium— socially, academically, and politically. Much research has involved analyzing blogs, but less work has considered how such analytic techniques might be incorporated into tools for blog readers. A new tool, metaViz, analyzes political blogs for potential conceptual metaphors and presents them to blog readers. This paper presents a study exploring the types of critical and creative thinking fostered by metaViz as evidenced by user comments and discussion on the system. These results indicate the effectiveness of various system features at fostering critical thinking and creativity, specifically in terms of deep, structural reasoning about metaphors and creatively extending existing metaphors. Furthermore, the results carry broader implications beyond blogs and politics about exploring alternate configurations between computation and human thought. Author Keywords Metaphor, political blogs, blog readers, computational metaphor identification, critical thinking, creativity

Demographically Representative Survey on Facebook Non/Use 2015

Survey data collected via the Qualtrics platform. If you use these data, please cite the following. Baumer, Eric P. S., Patrick Skeba, Shion Guha, and Geri K. Gay. (2019). All Users are (Not) Created Equal: Predictors Vary for Different Forms of Facebook Non/use. Proceedings of the ACM: Human-Computer Interaction, 3(CSCW)