Data, Design and Civics: An Exploratory Study of Civic Tech
Civic Tech, Participation and Society
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Boehner, Kirsten
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DiSalvo, Carl
Proceedings of the ACM CHI'16 Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems
2016-05-07
v.1
p.2970-2981
© Copyright 2016 ACM
Summary: Civic technology, or civic tech, encompasses a rich body of work, inside and
outside HCI, around how we shape technology for, and in turn how technology
shapes, how we govern, organize, serve, and identify matters of concern for
communities. This study builds on previous work by investigating how civic
leaders in a large US city conceptualize civic tech, in particular, how they
approach the intersection of data, design and civics. We encountered a range of
overlapping voices, from providers, to connectors, to volunteers of civic
services and resources. Through this account, we identified different
conceptions and expectation of data, design and civics, as well as several
shared issues around pressing problems and strategic aspirations. Reflecting on
this set of issues produced guiding questions, in particular about the current
and possible roles for design, to advance civic tech.
Indoor weather stations: investigating a ludic approach to environmental HCI
through batch prototyping
Papers: design strategies
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Gaver, William W.
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Bowers, John
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Boehner, Kirsten
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Boucher, Andy
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Cameron, David W. T.
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Hauenstein, Mark
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Jarvis, Nadine
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Pennington, Sarah
Proceedings of ACM CHI 2013 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
2013-04-27
v.1
p.3451-3460
© Copyright 2013 ACM
Summary: In this project, we investigated how a ludic approach might open new
possibilities for environmental HCI by designing three related devices that
encourage environmental awareness while eschewing utilitarian or persuasive
agendas. In addition, we extended our methodological approach by
batch-producing multiple copies of each device and deploying them to 20
households for several months, gathering a range of accounts about how people
engaged and used them. The devices, collectively called the 'Indoor Weather
Stations', reveal the home's microclimate by highlighting small gusts of wind,
the colour of ambient light, and temperature differentials within the home. We
found that participants initially tended to relate to the devices in line with
two 'orienting narratives' of environmental tools or ludic designs, finding the
devices disappointing from either perspective. Most of our participants showed
lingering affection for the devices, however, for a variety of reasons. We
discuss the implications of this 'sporadic interaction', and the more general
lessons from the project, both for environmental HCI and ludic design.
Reflections on representation as response
Thoughtful theory of humanity
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Boehner, Kirsten
interactions
2009-11
v.16
n.6
p.28-32
© Copyright 2009 ACM
Nourishing the ground for sustainable HCI: considerations from ecologically
engaged art
Sustainability 1
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DiSalvo, Carl
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Boehner, Kirsten
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Knouf, Nicholas A.
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Sengers, Phoebe
Proceedings of ACM CHI 2009 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
2009-04-04
v.1
p.385-394
Keywords: art, design, reflective HCI, sustainable HCI
© Copyright 2009 ACM
Summary: Sustainable HCI is now a recognized area of human-computer interaction
drawing from a variety of disciplinary approaches, including the arts. How
might HCI researchers working on sustainability productively understand the
discourses and practices of ecologically engaged art as a means of enriching
their own activities? We argue that an understanding of both the history of
ecologically engaged art, and the art-historical and critical discourses
surrounding it, provide a fruitful entry-point into a more critically aware
sustainable HCI. We illustrate this through a consideration of frameworks from
the arts, looking specifically at how these frameworks act more as generative
devices than prescriptive recipes. Taking artistic influences seriously will
require a concomitant rethinking of sustainable HCI standpoints -- a
potentially useful exercise for HCI research in general.
ArtLinks: fostering social awareness and reflection in museums
Aesthetics, Awareness, and Sketching
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Cosley, Dan
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Lewenstein, Joel
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Herman, Andrew
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Holloway, Jenna
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Baxter, Jonathan
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Nomura, Saeko
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Boehner, Kirsten
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Gay, Geri
Proceedings of ACM CHI 2008 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
2008-04-05
v.1
p.403-412
© Copyright 2008 ACM
Summary: Technologies in museums often support learning goals, providing information
about exhibits. However, museum visitors also desire meaningful experiences and
enjoy the social aspects of museum-going, values ignored by most museum
technologies. We present ArtLinks, a visualization with three goals: helping
visitors make connections to exhibits and other visitors by highlighting those
visitors who share their thoughts; encouraging visitors' reflection on the
social and liminal aspects of museum-going and their expectations of technology
in museums; and doing this with transparency, aligning aesthetically pleasing
elements of the design with the goals of connection and reflection. Deploying
ArtLinks revealed that people have strong expectations of technology as an
information appliance. Despite these expectations, people valued connections to
other people, both for their own sake and as a way to support meaningful
experience. We also found several of our design choices in the name of
transparency led to unforeseen tradeoffs between the social and the liminal.
Interfaces with the ineffable: Meeting aesthetic experience on its own terms
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Boehner, Kirsten
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Sengers, Phoebe
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Warner, Simeon
ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction
2008
v.15
n.3
p.12
© Copyright 2008 ACM
Summary: A variety of approaches have emerged in HCI that grapple with the ineffable,
ill-defined, and idiosyncratic nature of aesthetic experience. The most
straightforward approach is to transform the ineffable aspects of these
experiences into precise representations, producing systems that are
well-defined and testable but may miss the fullness of the experienced
phenomenon. But without formal models and codified methods, how can we design
and evaluate for a phenomenon we aren't sure can be adequately captured? In
this article, we present a case study of a system for reflection and awareness
of emotional presence that was, in a sense, lived into being. Through system
design, use, and evaluation we recount how the system evolved into something
that enhanced rather than impoverished the sympathetic awareness of another. In
discussing the strategies and results of the case study, we examine what it
means for the HCI community to not only design for aesthetic experiences but
also bring aesthetics into the practice of HCI.
How HCI interprets the probes
Designing for specific cultures
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Boehner, Kirsten
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Vertesi, Janet
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Sengers, Phoebe
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Dourish, Paul
Proceedings of ACM CHI 2007 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
2007-04-28
v.1
p.1077-1086
© Copyright 2007 ACM
Summary: We trace how cultural probes have been adopted and adapted by the HCI
community. The flexibility of probes has been central to their uptake,
resulting in a proliferation of divergent uses and derivatives. The varying
patterns of adaptation of the probes reveal important underlying issues in HCI,
suggesting under acknowledged disagreements about valid interpretation and the
relationship between methods and their underlying methodology. With this
analysis, we aim to clarify discussions around probes, and, more importantly,
around how we define and evaluate methods in HCI, especially those grounded in
unfamiliar conceptions of how research should be done.
Evaluating experience-focused HCI
SIG
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Kaye, Joseph 'Jofish'
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Boehner, Kirsten
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Laaksolahti, Jarmo
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Ståhl, Anna
Proceedings of ACM CHI 2007 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
2007-04-28
v.2
p.2117-2120
© Copyright 2007 ACM
Summary: A growing trend in the field is the development of experience-focused HCI,
which emphasizes the experience of using the technology, rather than the focus
on the task that is characteristic of many other approaches HCI. A focus on
experience also means that research concentrating on such technologies produces
a different kind of knowledge than task-focused HCI, and that this knowledge
must be validated in different ways. Importantly, this focus means that
evaluation techniques designed for evaluating task-focused measures, such as
classical notions of usability, are inadequate (although far from unnecessary)
for the evaluation of experience. In this SIG, participants who are interested
in designing, building or currently evaluating experience-focused projects will
discuss ways to do so. This SIG is intended to appeal to a broad cross section
of the CHI community, ranging from practitioners and developers to computer and
social scientists.
How emotion is made and measured
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Boehner, Kirsten
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DePaula, Rogério
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Dourish, Paul
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Sengers, Phoebe
International Journal of Human-Computer Studies
2007
v.65
n.4
p.275-291
Keywords: Affective computing; Affective evaluation
© Copyright 2007 Elsevier B.V.
Summary: How we design and evaluate for emotions depends crucially on what we take
emotions to be. In affective computing, affect is often taken to be another
kind of information -- discrete units or states internal to an individual that
can be transmitted in a loss-free manner from people to computational systems
and back. While affective computing explicitly challenges the primacy of
rationality in cognitivist accounts of human activity, at a deeper level it
often relies on and reproduces the same information-processing model of
cognition. Drawing on cultural, social, and interactional critiques of
cognition which have arisen in human-computer interaction (HCI), as well as
anthropological and historical accounts of emotion, we explore an alternative
perspective on emotion as interaction: dynamic, culturally mediated, and
socially constructed and experienced. We demonstrate how this model leads to
new goals for affective systems -- instead of sensing and transmitting emotion,
systems should support human users in understanding, interpreting, and
experiencing emotion in its full complexity and ambiguity. In developing from
emotion as objective, externally measurable unit to emotion as experience,
evaluation, too, alters focus from externally tracking the circulation of
emotional information to co-interpreting emotions as they are made in
interaction.
Advancing ambiguity
Privacy 1
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Boehner, Kirsten
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Hancock, Jeffrey T.
Proceedings of ACM CHI 2006 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
2006-04-22
v.1
p.103-106
© Copyright 2006 ACM
Summary: Ambiguity is an important concept for HCI because of its pervasiveness in
everyday life, yet its emergent nature challenges the role of design. We
examine these difficulties with regards to Aoki and Woodruff's [1] proposal to
use ambiguity as a resource for designing space for stories in personal
communication systems. We challenge certain assumptions about ambiguity and
propose a set of design and evaluation guidelines that flow from this
re-conceptualization of ambiguity and design.
Beyond just the facts: transforming the museum learning experience
Work-in-progress
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Thom-Santelli, Jennifer
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Boehner, Kirsten
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Gay, Geri
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Hembrooke, Helene
Proceedings of ACM CHI 2006 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
2006-04-22
v.2
p.1433-1438
© Copyright 2006 ACM
Summary: We present Museum Detective, a handheld system designed for use by school
children to encourage guided learning through paired discovery of one object in
an art museum. Initial analysis showed that children were able to use the
devices cooperatively and exhibited longer-term retention of information about
the artifacts in the gallery. We propose that the design of the Museum
Detective interface can be refined to further encourage students to actively
transform their museum learning experience.
Imprints of place: creative expressions of the museum experience
Late breaking results: short papers
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Boehner, Kirsten
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Thom-Santelli, Jennifer
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Zoss, Angela
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Gay, Geri
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Hall, Justin S.
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Barrett, Tucker
Proceedings of ACM CHI 2005 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
2005-04-02
v.2
p.1220-1223
© Copyright 2005 ACM
Summary: Personalization and social awareness, important aspects in the definition of
a place, are traditionally overlooked in the design of technology for museums.
We describe Imprints, a system to enhance the role of visitor participation
beyond information receiver to active creator of sense of place. Overall
response to the Imprints system is explored through interviews and log analysis
of use. Despite some usability issues, response to the system was positive, and
it was appropriated for both personalization and awareness of others. The
results suggest an opportunity to introduce technology that plays with the
dynamic between private expression and public presence in the traditional
environment of the art museum.
