Modalities of Regulation in Sustainable HCI: Rethinking the Role of Design in Shaping Sustainable Behaviours and Society

Paper Title

Modalities of Regulation in Sustainable HCI: Rethinking the Role of Design in Shaping Sustainable Behaviours and Society

Publication Info

• Topic area: Sustainable HCI with a focus on regulation and design's role in shaping sustainable practices.
• Keywords: Sustainable HCI, regulation, design, law, norms, markets, architecture, environmental sustainability, datafication, digital platforms.

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: Sustainable HCI lacks a systematic discussion on the diverse meanings of regulation beyond hard law and how these regulatory forces interact with technology design.
• Significance: Understanding the interplay between regulation and design can help shape sustainable behaviors and societal practices, addressing environmental challenges like waste management and carbon emissions.
• Motivation and related work: Prior work in HCI has explored regulation primarily in terms of legal compliance, with limited focus on the broader regulatory modalities (law, norms, markets, architecture). This paper builds on Lawrence Lessig’s framework to address this gap and apply it to sustainable HCI.

Solution

• Proposed approach: The paper applies Lessig’s four modalities of regulation (law, norms, markets, architecture) to analyze two Scandinavian cases: TipTapp (a gig-work waste transportation platform) and Klimatkollen (a data visualization platform for corporate sustainability reports).
• Novelty:
  1. Extends Lessig’s regulatory framework to Sustainable HCI, emphasizing the interplay of modalities in shaping sustainable practices.
  2. Introduces historical, political, and socio-economic contexts to understand the regulatory dynamics of digital technologies.
  3. Positions designers as regulators, highlighting their role in shaping societal norms and compliance through design.
  4. Explores the proactive and reactive relations between design and regulation in sustainability contexts.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  • Analysis of two case studies (TipTapp and Klimatkollen) using Lessig’s modalities.
  • Deductive and inductive methods to explore the regulatory dynamics in design.
  • Examination of legal, market, and normative influences on technology-mediated sustainability practices.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • TipTapp: Introduced features like GPS-based waste disposal verification and QR codes for municipal monitoring, aligning with legal and market demands.
  • Klimatkollen: Standardized corporate sustainability data reporting, addressing gaps in EU regulations and enabling public and market scrutiny.
• Advantage over baselines:
  • Demonstrates how design can proactively shape regulatory compliance and societal norms, moving beyond traditional legal compliance frameworks.
  • Highlights the potential of datafication to transform unsustainable practices into actionable regulatory features.
• Experiments / evaluation:
  • Case studies based on interviews, legal analysis, and platform functionality reviews.
  • Analysis of historical and contextual regulatory dynamics in Sweden and the EU.
• Limitations and future work:
  • Limited to two Scandinavian cases; broader applicability needs exploration.
  • Focuses on environmental sustainability; other domains could benefit from similar analyses.
  • Calls for further research on the role of designers as regulators and the integration of legal expertise in design processes.

Summary

This paper applies Lawrence Lessig’s four modalities of regulation (law, norms, markets, architecture) to analyze the role of design in shaping sustainable practices through two Scandinavian case studies: TipTapp and Klimatkollen. It highlights how design interacts with regulatory forces to address environmental challenges like waste management and carbon emissions. The findings emphasize the proactive role of designers as regulators and the importance of considering historical, political, and socio-economic contexts in sustainable HCI. By demonstrating the interplay of regulatory modalities, the paper provides a conceptual foundation for advancing design methodologies that support environmental care and sustainability.