“Pick Someone Who Can Kick Your Ass” - Moneywork in Financial Third Party AccessThis paper explores some of the new possibilities for financial third party access that are enabled by "open banking". The term open banking is used to designate the availability of banks' customer data through application programming interfaces (APIs). Financial third party access refers to the mechanisms that facilitate the engagement of others in the management of our personal finances. Engaging trusted others in personal finances may be especially valuable for individuals experiencing financial hardship or life circumstances that place their financial stability at risk. We deployed a new third party access tool enabled by the UK Open Banking APIs for 90 days with 14 people who self-identified as living with a mental health condition. The tool, which was developed by a financial technology startup founded by the second author, allowed participants to select a trusted "ally" who was notified when certain transactions took place in participants' bank accounts. During the deployment, the 14 participants and 8 of their "allies" took part in a diary study and pre- and post-deployment interviews. The experiences of our participants reveal the inadequacy and shortcomings of existing formal third party access mechanisms, and the moneywork involved in financial third party access. We argue that focusing on this moneywork can help us design flexible, proportionate and practice-sensitive services for financial third party access that move beyond discourses of protection and control in order to enable meaningful financial collaboration.2020BPBelén Barros Pena et al.Social Support, Donation, and MoneyCSCW
PizzaBlock: Designing Artefacts and Roleplay to Understand Decentralised Identity Management SystemsThis pictorial describes in detail the design, and multiple iterations, of PizzaBlock – a role-playing game and design workshop to introduce non-technical participants to decentralised identity management systems. We have so far played this game with six different audiences, with over one hundred participants – iterating the design of the artefacts and gameplay each time. In this pictorial, we reflect on this RtD project to unpack: a) How we designed artefacts and roleplay to explore decentralised technologies and networks; b) How we communicated the key challenges and parameters of a complex system, through the production of a playable, interactive, analogue representation of that technology; c) How we struck a balance between playful tangible gameplay and high-fidelity technical analogy; and d) How approaches like PizzaBlock invite engagement with complex infrastructures and can support more participatory approaches to their design.2020JRJonathan Rankin et al.Privacy by Design & User ControlParticipatory DesignDesign FictionDIS
Designing IoT Resources to Support Outdoor Play for ChildrenWe describe a Research-through-Design (RtD) project that explores the Internet of Things (IoT) as a resource for children's free play outdoors. Based on initial insights from a design ethnography, we developed four RtD prototypes for social play in different scenarios of use outdoors, including congregating on a street or in a park to play physical games with IoT. We observed these prototypes in use by children in their free play in two community settings, and report on the qualitative analysis of our fieldwork. Our findings highlight the designs' material qualities that encouraged social and physical play under certain conditions, suggesting social affordances that are central to the success of IoT designs for free play outdoors. We provide directions for future research that addresses the challenges faced when deploying IoT with children, contributing new considerations for interaction design with children in outdoor settings and free play contexts.2020TDThomas Dylan et al.Northumbria UniversityCollaborative Learning & Peer TeachingChildren & Family IoTCHI
Designing for Digital Playing OutWe report on a design-led study in the UK that aimed to understand barriers to children (aged 5 to 14 years) 'playing out' in their neighbourhood and explore the potential of the Internet of Things (IoT) for supporting children's free play that extends outdoors. The study forms a design ethnography, combining observational fieldwork with design prototyping and co-creative activities across four linked workshops, where we used BBC micro:bit devices to co-create new IoT designs with the participating children. Our collective account contributes new insights about the physical and interactive features of micro:bits that shaped play, gameplay, and social interaction in the workshops, illuminating an emerging design space for supporting 'digital playing out' that is grounded in empirical instances. We highlight opportunities for designing for digital playing out in ways that promote social negotiation, supports varying participation, allows for integrating cultural influences, and accounts for the weaving together of placemaking and play.2019GWGavin Wood et al.Northumbria UniversityEarly Childhood Education TechnologyChildren & Family IoTCHI
Programmable Donations: Exploring Escrow-Based Conditional GivingThis paper reports on a co-speculative interview study with charitable donors to explore the future of programmable, conditional and data-driven donations. Responding to the rapid emergence of blockchain-based and AI-supported financial technologies, we specifically examine the potential of automated, third-party 'escrows', where donations are held before they are released or returned based on specified rules and conditions. To explore this we conducted pilot workshops with 9 participants and an interview study in which 14 further participants were asked about their experiences of donating money, and invited to co-speculate on a service for programmable giving. The study elicited how data-driven conditionality and automation could be leveraged to create novel donor experiences, however also illustrated the inherent tensions and challenges involved in giving programmatically. Reflecting on these findings, our paper contributes implications both for the design of programmable aid platforms, and the design of escrow-based financial services in general.2019CEChris Elsden et al.Northumbria UniversityPrivacy by Design & User ControlResearch Ethics & Open ScienceCHI
JourneyCam: Exploring Experiences of Accessibility and Mobility among Powered Wheelchair Users through Video and DataRecent HCI research has investigated how digital technologies might enable citizens to identify and express matters of civic concern. We extend this work by describing JourneyCam, a smartphone-based system that enables powered wheelchair users to capture video and sensor data about their experiences of mobility. Thirteen participants used JourneyCam to document journeys, after which the data they collected was used to support discussions around their experiences. Our findings highlight how the system facilitated the articulation of complex embodied experiences, and how the collected data might have particular value in surfacing these experiences to help inform urban design and policymaking. Participants valued the ways in which JourneyCam's moving image and sensor data made hard-to-express sensations apparent, as well as how it enabled them to surface previously unrecognised issues. We conclude by highlighting future opportunities for how such tools might enable citizens to inform and influence civic governance.2019SRSunil Rodger et al.Newcastle UniversityMotor Impairment Assistive Input TechnologiesSmart Cities & Urban SensingCommunity Engagement & Civic TechnologyCHI
Sorting Out Valuation in the Charity Shop: Designing for Data-Driven Innovation through Value TranslationRecent work within HCI and CSCW has become attentive to the politics of data and metrics in order to highlight the implications of what counts and how. In this paper, we relate these discussions to the longstanding distinctions made between value and values. We introduce literature on ‘Valuation Studies’ and argue for understanding the politics of data through valuation – an ongoing social practice that transforms socially embedded values into different forms of more abstract value. This theoretical work is developed through an ethnographic study of contemporary UK charity shops, as a site focused on the labour of valuation, but embedded in both local and global values. Through this study, we consider implications for the intervention and design of ‘data-driven innovation’, with a particular focus on distributed ledger technologies. We argue that these technologies inevitably engage in valuation, and require careful attention to the ongoing processes by which value is translated and performed by different stakeholders.2019CEChris Elsden et al.Economic encountersCSCW
Making at the Margins: Making in an Under-resourced e-Waste Recycling CenterHCI and CSCW literature has extensively studied a wide variety of maker cultures. In this paper, we focus on understanding what making is like for people and communities who do not have access to advanced technological infrastructures. We report on six-month-long ethnographic fieldwork at a non-profit, resource-constrained, e-waste recycling centre that engages members from a low socioeconomic status (SES) community in making activities. Our findings show that making in such a setting is shaped by local economic and social factors in a resource-constrained environment and highlight how this community engages in a wide range of making activities. In describing these making activities, we emphasize how making was conducted to purposely enable ongoing and future making by others; promoted the wellbeing and skill development of centre members; and was socially-engaged to address concerns in the local community. We conclude by discussing how such type of making contributes a new understanding of maker culture, one that is appreciative of resource-constraints, integrates different sources of value, and is embedded in local place.2019DVDhaval Vyas et al.Making and Collaborative DesignCSCW
Rethinking Engagement with Online News through Social and Visual Co-AnnotationThe emergence of fake news, as well as filter bubbles and echo chambers, has precipitated renewed attention upon the ways in which news is consumed, shared and reflected and commented upon. While online news comments sections offer space for pluralist and critical discussion, studies suggest that this rarely occurs. Motivated by common practices of annotating, defacing and scribbling on physical newspapers, we built a mobile app – Newsr – that supports co-annotation, in the form of graffiti, on online news articles, which we evaluated in-the-wild for one month. We report on how the app encouraged participants to reflect upon the act of choosing news stories, whilst promoting exploration, the critique of content, and the exposure of bias within the writing. Our findings highlight how the re-design of interactive online news experiences can facilitate more directed, “in-the-moment” critique of online news stories as well as encourage readers to expand the range of news content they read.2018GWGavin Wood et al.Northumbria UniversityUniversal & Inclusive DesignMisinformation & Fact-CheckingUser Research Methods (Interviews, Surveys, Observation)CHI
Everything We Do, Everything We Press: Data-Driven Remote Performance Management in a Mobile WorkplaceThis paper examines how data-driven performance monitoring technologies affect the work of telecommunications field engineers. As a mobile workforce, this occupational group rely on an array of smartphone applications to plan, manage and report on their jobs, and to liaise remotely with managers and colleagues. These technologies intend to help field engineers be more productive and have greater control over their work; however they also gather data related to the quantity and effectiveness of their labor. We conducted a qualitative study examining engineers’ experiences of these systems. Our findings suggest they simultaneously enhance worker autonomy, support co-ordination with and monitoring of colleagues, but promote anxieties around productivity and the interpretation of data by management. We discuss the implications of data-driven performance management technologies on worker agency, and examine the consequences of such systems in an era of quantified workplaces.2018LBLyndsey L Bakewell et al.Loughborough UniversityWorkplace Monitoring & Performance TrackingCHI
Making Sense of Blockchain Applications: A Typology for HCIBlockchain is an emerging infrastructural technology that is proposed to fundamentally transform the ways in which people transact, trust, collaborate, organize and identify themselves. In this paper, we construct a typology of emerging blockchain applications, consider the domains in which they are applied, and identify distinguishing features of this new technology. We argue that there is a unique role for the HCI community in linking the design and application of blockchain technology towards lived experience and the articulation of human values. In particular, we note how the accounting of transactions, a trust in immutable code and algorithms, and the leveraging of distributed crowds and publics around vast interoperable databases all relate to longstanding issues of importance for the field. We conclude by highlighting core conceptual and methodological challenges for HCI researchers beginning to work with blockchain and distributed ledger technologies.2018CEChris Elsden et al.Northumbria UniversityAlgorithmic Fairness & BiasTechnology Ethics & Critical HCICHI
Accountability Work: Examining the Values, Technologies and Work Practices that Facilitate Transparency in CharitiesCharities are subject to stringent transparency and accountability requirements from government and funders to ensure that they are conducting work and spending money appropriately. Charities are increasingly important to civic life and have unique characteristics as organisations. This provides a rich space in which HCI research may learn from and affect both held notions of transparency and accountability, and the relationships between these organisations and their stakeholders. We conducted ethnographic fieldwork and workshops over a seven month period at a charity. We aimed to understand how the transparency obligations of a charity manifest through work and how the workers of a charity reason about transparency and accountability as an everyday practice. Our findings highlight how organisations engage in presenting different accounts of their work; how workers view their legal transparency obligations in contrast with their accountability to their everyday community; and how their labour does not translate well to outcome measures or metrics. We discuss implications for the design of future systems that support organisations to produce accounts of their work as part of everyday practice.support organisations to produce accounts of their work as part of everyday practice.2018MMMatt Marshall et al.Newcastle UniversityAlgorithmic Transparency & AuditabilityContent Moderation & Platform GovernanceCHI
Enabling the Participation of People with Parkinson’s and their Caregivers in Co-Inquiry around Collectivist Health TechnologiesWhile user participation is central to HCI, co-inquiry takes this further by having participants direct and control research from conceptualisation to completion. We describe a co-inquiry, conducted over 16 months with a Parkinson's support group. We explored how the participation of members might be enabled across multiple stages of a research project, from the generation of research questions to the development of a prototype. Participants directed the research into developing alternative modes of information provision, resulting in ‘Parkinson’s Radio’ — a collectivist health information service produced and edited by members of the support group. We reflect on how we supported participation at different stages of the project and the successes and challenges faced by the team. We contribute insights into the design of collectivist health technologies for this group, and discuss opportunities and tensions for conducting co-inquiry in HCI research.2018RMRoisin McNaney et al.Lancaster UniversityMental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesParticipatory DesignCHI
Making Problems in Design Research: The Case of Teen Shoplifters on TumblrHCI draws on a variety of traditions but recently there have been calls to consolidate contributions around the problems researchers set out to solve. However, with this comes the assumption that problems are tractable and certain, rather than constructed and framed by researchers. We take as a case study a Tumblr community of teen shoplifters who post on how to steal from stores, discuss shoplifting as political resistance, and share jokes and stories about the practice. We construct three different “problems” and imagine studies that might result from applying different design approaches: Design Against Crime; Critical Design and Value Sensitive Design. Through these studies we highlight how interpretations of the same data can lead to radically different design responses. We conclude by discussing problem making as a historically and politically contingent process that allow researchers to connect data and design according to certain moral and ethical principles.2018EEEnrique Encinas et al.Northumbria UniversityTechnology Ethics & Critical HCIParticipatory DesignCHI