The User Reconfigured: On Subjectivities of Information

Foundational to HCI is the notion of “the user.” Whether a cognitive processor, social actor, consumer, or even a non- user, the user in HCI has always been as much a technical construct as actual people using systems. We explore an emerging formulation of the user—the subjectivity of in- formation—by laying out what it means and why research- ers are being drawn to it. We then use it to guide a case study of a relatively marginal use of computing—digitally mediated sexuality—to holistically explore design in rela- tion to embodiment, tactual experience, sociability, power, ideology, selfhood, and activism. We argue that subjectivi- ties of information clarifies the relationships between de- sign choices and embodied experiences, ways that designers design users and not just products, and ways to cultivate and transform, rather than merely support, human agency

Wanting to live here: design after anthropocentric functionalism

Design research has recently turned to theoretical perspectives, including care ethics and posthumanism, to counter the industrial processes that have led to climate crisis. As design theorists and ethnographers of interaction, we researched experimental eco-farming in a community that shared many of these theoretical and ideological commitments. Our goal was not to offer an account of use and provide design implications in support of it. Instead, we chose to identify concrete practices and artifacts that embody the sorts of industrial transformations that we are seeking—even if they are manifest in an imperfect or partial form. We encountered practices focused on community building, local resilience to climate disruptions, experiments in eco-farming, economic survival, and attracting the next generation. One interlocutor translated these concerns into a simple binary, asking, “do we want to live here?” This paper contributes to a design research agenda that might (eventually) provide an affirmative answer

Criticism – for Computational Alternatives

Criticism is a reflection on the dialectical relation between content and technology, a relation that is often political, tied to Marxist dialectics or to other concepts of criticism from aesthetic and literary theory. This workshop will ask how we can bridge between criticism of technology and design. If we are to envision and design critical alternatives, how can critical approaches to technology help? What do we need to take from criticism, which concepts of criticism and how can they be applied?

The Future of Making: Where Industrial and Personal Fabrication Meet

This one-day workshop seeks to reflect on the notion of fab- rication in both personal and industrial contexts. Although these contexts are very distinct in their economical and polit- ical vision, they share important characteristics (e.g., users interacting with specific fabrication equipment and tools). The workshop topic spans from personal fabrication to (au- tomated) production, from applied to theoretical considera- tions, from user requirements to design as a crafting practice. We will address changes in production that affect humans, e.g., from mass production to Do-It-Yourself (DIY) produc- tion, in order to discuss findings and lessons learned for in- dividual and collective production workplaces of the future. We aim to explore the intersections between different dimen- sions and processes of production ranging all the way from hobbyist to professional making. Furthermore, the workshop will critically reflect on current developments and their conse- quences on personal, societal, and economical levels includ- ing questions of the reorganization of work and labor, inno- vation cultures, and politics of participation.

Exploring Social Justice, Design,and HCI

The aim of this one-day workshop is to share existing research, discuss common practices, and to develop new strategies and tools for designing for social justice in HCI. This workshop will bring together a set of HCI scholars, designers, and community members to discuss social justice perspectives on interaction design and technology. We will explore theoretical and methodological approaches in and around HCI that can help us generatively consider issues of power, privilege, and access in their complexity. We will discuss the challenges associated with taking a justice approach in HCI, looking toward existing practices we find both productive and problematic. This workshop will bridge current gaps in research and practice by developing concrete strategies for both designing and evaluating social change oriented work in HCI, where agendas are made clear and researchers are held accountable for the outcomes of their work by members of their field site and the research community

Designing for and Reflecting upon Resilience in Health and Wellbeing

Resilience has been a long-standing theme in HCI research and design. However, prior work has different conceptualizations of resilience, tackles resilience at different scales, and focuses on resilience as the ability to adapt to adversity. This one-day workshop will bring together HCI researchers, interaction designers, healthcare professionals, healthcare service users, and carepartners to critically reflect upon the epistemological stances on resilience and foreground the notion of resilience in health and wellbeing research. Our workshop themes include: 1) reflecting upon the diverse conceptualizations of resilience; 2) designing for resilience from a social justice perspective; 3) designing for multi-stakeholder resilience for individuals, families, communities, and society

Perspectives on gender and product design

International audienceInteractive technologies have a profound mediating effect on the way we obtain and contribute to knowledge, relate to each other and contribute to society. Often, "gender" is not a factor that is explicitly considered in the design of these technologies. When gender is considered, products are often designed with idealised models of gendered "users" -- designed for men, designed for women, designed for boys, designed for girls, or designed for the "average user" who could be male or female. However, the ways in which gender-bias or gender-neutrality are constructed in the design process and the resulting effect on the interactive artifacts that are produced is not well understood. This workshop will address what HCI is currently bringing, and can bring, to the table in addressing this issue

“No powers, man!”: A student perspective on designing university smart building interactions

Smart buildings offer an opportunity for better performance and enhanced experience by contextualising services and interactions to the needs and practices of occupants. Yet, this vision is limited by established approaches to building management, delivered top-down through professional facilities management teams, opening up an interaction-gap between occupants and the spaces they inhabit. To address the challenge of how smart buildings might be more inclusively managed, we present the results of a qualitative study with student occupants of a smart building, with design workshops including building walks and speculative futuring. We develop new understandings of how student occupants conceptualise and evaluate spaces as they experience them, and of how building management practices might evolve with new sociotechnical systems that better leverage occupant agency. Our findings point to important directions for HCI research in this nascent area, including the need for HBI (Human-Building Interaction) design to challenge entrenched roles in building management

Open Design, Inclusivity and the Intersections of Making

This paper presents insights from an ethnographic study with a diverse population of makers in the city of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. By engaging individuals, groups and communities who 'make' in different contexts, we reveal under-explored perspectives on 'making' and highlight points of intersection between different kinds of making across the city. We reflect on the dynamics of these intersections and connect our observations to emerging discourses around 'open design'. In doing so, we argue for a renewed focus on 'inclusivity' and highlight a need for new infrastructure to support iterative, collaborative making within -- and across -- interconnected networks of makers