A Token Gesture: Non-Transferable NFTs, Digital Possessions and Ownership DesignThis paper presents the design, deployment and qualitative study of a large-scale, public, generative art exhibition, through which passers-by could create artworks, and mint a non-fungible-token (NFT). Following the month-long exhibition, during which 229 anonymous participants produced artworks, 69 non-transferable NFTs were minted, we surveyed (33) and interviewed (14) expert and novice participants about their experiences. We explored contemporary challenges of owning digital things, and the extent to which NFTs, and `Web3' technologies offer meaningful forms of ownership. Our findings describe how the inability to trade this NFT, and its unique circumstances of acquisition, made it meaningful in ways that extended beyond its immediate (limited) utility and offered participants something through which to construct identity. Reflecting on the aspirations, contradictions, and misconceptions of forms of ownership enabled by NFTs, we conclude with proposals for renewed attention in HCI to the nature of digital possessions, and the potential for �ownership design�.2024CEChris Elsden et al.Session 3c: Speculative Design and Emerging TechnologiesCSCW
Deliberating Data-Driven Societies Through Live Action Role PlayPeople's data practices and their supporting personal informatics are imbued with a wide range of concepts of value that are central to their data imaginaries. They inform how individuals adopt particular products and services. This elusiveness of value creates a challenge for designers to gauge users' value preferences, which are personal, contextual and abstract. We propose deliberation as a process to operationalise design for elicitation, reflection and value formation, using Live Action Role Play (LARP). The paper demonstrates how our deliberative LARP precipitates the otherwise ethereal data values to unfold in a social setting. We argue that engaging people in reflecting on and playing out their own value formation offers designers more powerful insights to address complex challenges of data-driven societies. We report on our findings that agency and negotiability are key to transcend the politics of preferences in data practices and thus enhance acceptability.2021KPKruakae Pothong et al.Community Engagement & Civic TechnologyParticipatory DesignResearch Ethics & Open ScienceDIS
A Right Time to Give: Beyond Saving Time in Automated Conditional DonationsSmart Donations is a blockchain-based platform that offers users ‘contracts’ that donate funds to certain causes in response to real-world events e.g., whenever an earthquake is detected or an activist tweets about refugees. We designed Smart donations with Oxfam Australia, trialed it for 8-weeks with 86 people, recorded platform analytics and qualitatively analysed questionnaires and interviews about user experiences. Temporal qualities emerge when automation enforces conditions that contributed to participants’ awareness of events that are usually unconscious, and senses of immediacy in contributing to crisis response and ongoing involvement in situations far-away while awaiting conditions to be met. We suggest data-driven automation can reveal diverse temporal registers, in real-world phenomena, sociality, morality, and everyday life, which contributes to experiencing a ‘right time’ to donate that is not limited to productivity or efficiency. Thus, we recommend a sensitivity to right time in designing for multiple temporalities in FinTech more generally.2021NBNicola J Bidwell et al.International University of Management, Northumbria UniversityContext-Aware ComputingAlgorithmic Fairness & BiasSustainable HCICHI
Creative Transactions: Special Digital Monies in ‘Break Kickstarter’ Crowdfunding CampaignsThis paper conceptualizes ‘creative transactions’ – payment for creative work – as a rich site for the study, design and innovation of new financial technologies, and ‘special digital monies’. For most, creative labor remains highly precarious and underfunded and those working in the creative industries frequently rely on diverse forms of funding for their work. As a case study, we draw on a corpus of 87 ‘Break Kickstarter’ crowdfunding campaigns, where project creators were encouraged to break conventions and “rethink what a Kickstarter campaign can be”. By studying how these innovative projects broke fundraising conventions and experimented with the transactional attributes of a Kickstarter campaign, we show how they reconfigured the payment for creative work, and developed new relations between creators and their audiences. Drawing on these analyses, we derive new ideas and opportunities for the design of special digital monies to support novel creative transactions beyond crowdfunding campaigns.2021CEChris Elsden et al.University of EdinburghVisual Impairment Technologies (Screen Readers, Tactile Graphics, Braille)Algorithmic Fairness & BiasSustainable HCICHI
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
Should I Agree? Delegating Consent Decisions Beyond the IndividualObtaining meaningful user consent is increasingly problematic in a world of numerous, heterogeneous digital services. Current approaches (e.g. agreeing to Terms and Conditions) are rooted in the idea of individual control despite growing evidence that users do not (or cannot) exercise such control in informed ways. We consider an alternative approach whereby users can opt to delegate consent decisions to an ecosystem of third-parties including friends, experts, groups and AI entities. We present the results of a study that used a technology probe at a large festival to explore initial public responses to this reframing -- focusing on when and to whom users would delegate such decisions. The results reveal substantial public interest in delegating consent and identify differing preferences depending on the privacy context, highlighting the need for alternative decision mechanisms beyond the current focus on individual choice.2019BNBettina Nissen et al.University of EdinburghPrivacy by Design & User ControlPrivacy Perception & Decision-MakingCHI
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
Autonomous Distributed Energy Systems: Problematising the Invisible through Design, Drama and DeliberationTechnologies such as blockchains, smart contracts and programmable batteries facilitate emerging models of energy distribution, trade and consumption, and generate a considerable number of opportunities for energy markets. However, these developments complicate relationships between stakeholders, disrupting traditional notions of value, control and ownership. Discussing these issues with the public is particularly challenging as energy consumption habits often obscure the competing values and interests that shape stakeholders' relationships. To make such difficult discussions more approachable and examine the missing relational aspect of autonomous energy systems, we combined the design of speculative hairdryers with performance and deliberation. This integrated method of inquiry makes visible the competing values and interests, eliciting people's wishes to negotiate these terms. We argue that the complexity of mediated energy distribution and its convoluted stakeholder relationships requires more sophisticated methods of inquiry to engage people in debates concerning distributed energy systems.2019LPLarissa Pschetz et al.University of EdinburghSustainable HCIEnergy Conservation Behavior & InterfacesCHI
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
Exploring Machine Autonomy and Provenance Data in Coffee Consumption: A Field Study of BitbaristaTechnologies such as distributed ledgers and smart contracts are enabling the emergence of new autonomous systems, and providing enhanced systems to track the provenance of goods. A growing body of work in HCI is exploring the novel challenges of these systems, but there has been little attention paid to their impact on everyday activities. This paper presents a study carried out in 3 office environments for a 1-month period, which explored the impact of an autonomous coffee machine on the everyday activity of coffee consumption. The Bitbarista mediates coffee consumption through autonomous processes, presenting provenance data at the time of purchase while attempting to reduce intermediaries in the coffee trade. Through the report of interactions with and around the Bitbarista, we explore its implications for everyday life, and wider social structures and values. We conclude by offering recommendations for the design of community shared autonomous systems.2018ETElla Tallyn et al.Transactions and CurrenciesCSCW
The Ethnobot: Gathering Ethnographies in the Age of IoTComputational systems and objects are becoming increasingly closely integrated with our daily activities. Ubiquitous and pervasive computing first identified the emerging challenges of studying technology used on-the-move and in widely varied contexts. With IoT, previously sporadic experiences are interconnected across time and space in numerous and complex ways. This increasing complexity has multiplied the challenges facing those who study human experience to inform design. This paper describes the results of a study that used a chatbot or ‘Ethnobot’ to gather ethnographic data, and considers the opportunities and challenges in collecting this data in the absence of a human ethnographer. This study involved 13 participants gathering information about their experiences at the Royal Highland Show. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the Ethnobot in this setting, discuss the benefits and drawbacks of chatbots as a tool for ethnographic data collection, and conclude with recommendations for the design of chatbots for this purpose.2018ETElla Tallyn et al.University of EdinburghParticipatory DesignUser Research Methods (Interviews, Surveys, Observation)CHI
GeoCoin: Supporting Ideation and Collaborative Design with Smart ContractsDesign and HCI researchers are increasingly working with complex digital infrastructures, such as cryptocurrencies, distributed ledgers and smart contracts. These technologies will have a profound impact on digital systems and their audiences. However, given their emergent nature and technical complexity, involving non-specialists in the design of applications that employ these technologies is challenging. In this paper, we discuss these challenges and present GeoCoin, a location-based platform for embodied learning and speculative ideating with smart contracts. In collaborative workshops with GeoCoin, participants engaged with location-based smart contracts, using the platform to explore digital `debit' and `credit' zones in the city. These exercises led to the design of diverse distributed-ledger applications, for time-limited financial unions, participatory budgeting, and humanitarian aid. These results contribute to the HCI community by demonstrating how an experiential prototype can support understanding of the complexities behind new digital infrastructures and facilitate participant engagement in ideation and design processes.2018BNBettina Nissen et al.University of EdinburghCitizen Science & Crowdsourced DataParticipatory DesignCHI
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